Downloaded from YTS.MX
[woman] People always talk about the really big figures
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
who change things culturally.
Did they create this moment, or did the moment create them?
Martha's like that.
She made such an enormous mark on the culture.
[man] She is one of the most powerful women on the planet.
Martha Stewart!
- Martha Stewart! - Martha Stewart!
[woman] She has remained relevant for more than 50 years.
I'm Martha… [bleep] …Stewart.
I can do whatever I want.
- Martha Stewart! - Now, let's make that bed.
Ooh!
[high-pitched voice] Smoking on kush and hot pot.
[man 2] Martha is one of the greatest teachers ever.
She's the queen.
[woman] To this day,
you cannot take your eyes off Martha Stewart.
[woman 2] If there was ever the original influencer, it's Martha.
[woman 3] She made the world we're now living in.
[whimsical music playing]
[woman] American women needed to be redirected
from opening cans of cream of mushroom soup
and pouring it on top of broccoli and boiled chicken.
[woman] Before Martha, there were a lot of women who gave advice about homemaking.
And the number one thing about these women,
they had to be very nice.
I'm Betty Crocker, and I promise you a perfect cake every time you bake.
[woman] And what they were gonna show you how to do was easy.
[male announcer] A solid cylinder of mixed goodness.
[woman] When Martha came along,
she is saying something completely different.
If you're having a big crowd for Thanksgiving this year like we are,
you might wanna make more than one kind of turkey.
This is one of the most beautiful turkeys.
It's encased in a puff pastry.
[woman] She became an aspirational force to millions of people.
This idea that you could have it all.
[TV host] Martha Stewart. She's a self-made billionaire.
[woman] She was saying to women, "Homemaking can be a powerful thing."
I'm always trying to fill a void. Something that doesn't exist.
Something that people need and want and don't have.
[woman] She wanted to make it possible
for people to have the homes and surroundings that they wanted,
no matter whether you have money or not.
The high standards that Martha has set for herself
have become many other people's as well.
And that is the problem for a lot of women.
[woman] It's a fantasy world,
aspiring to a lifestyle that you can't have.
Homemaker porn, essentially.
[woman 2] People were threatened.
We have very strong but conflicted feelings
about how a woman should be at home.
"She's an intolerable perfectionist. She's a control freak." How do you plead?
Um, guilty.
People attack me for being a homemaker, but, in reality, what am I really doing?
I'm celebrating something that's been put down for so long.
I think I'm like the modern feminist.
[woman] Everyone thought she was perfect,
but it was still something she was striving for
and couldn't rest until she got it.
She was pursued by furies of her own creation.
[female reporter] Martha Stewart was indicted on criminal charges.
[woman 2] Her image is so associated with perfection,
and this is the antithesis.
[woman 3] She faces years in prison.
[Martha] Absolutely perfect.
- Perfectly, perfectly perfect. - Perfect condition.
- Perfectly secure. - Perfect little pattern.
Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Picture-perfect.
Mmm. The perfect ending to a perfect meal.
[woman] Somewhere along the line, Martha bought into the idea of perfection.
But the question is not whether perfection is attainable.
The question is, "At what cost?"
[music ends]
[male interviewer] What is it that you most dislike?
[Martha] That's a hard question to answer.
I dislike waste.
I dislike inefficiency.
Avoidance.
Impatience.
I dislike people who think they can do more than they can do.
I dislike not paying attention to details,
being mean just to be mean.
I dislike aprons and housedresses.
I used to dislike the color purple.
[chuckles]
A lot. But I don't dislike it so much-- And red. I…
I don't plant very many things red in my garden, if anything.
Uh, if something pops up red, it's usually taken out.
So red is another thing I'm not very fond of.
[gentle classical music playing]
Okay. Next? [chuckles softly]
It's October 18th.
We have lots to do in the garden.
I would like to lay the path to the summerhouse garden from the main road.
I think we should do rough stones like the other path,
more like cracked ice.
Send.
[phone beeps]
[Martha] There's a little saying that I really like.
If you wanna be happy for a year,
get married.
If you wanna be happy for a decade, get a dog.
And if you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, make a garden.
This garden looks pretty good.
I think we should probably do a little bit of trimming on the boxwood.
New paragraph.
I was maligned for being a perfectionist,
criticized for trying to create a lifestyle that was unattainable,
which was not the case at all.
What I was really trying to do was to educate.
There seem to be some dead peonies, which makes me very unhappy.
Send.
[phone beeps]
[Martha] I am a perfectionist.
And it runs in the family.
And it started with my father.
[whimsical strings music playing]
[Martha] Dad made each of us learn how to garden.
He could grow anything.
I was the ideal daughter.
I wanted to learn. He had a lot to teach. And I listened.
I was the one trusted to iron his linen shirts.
And he had the Harris Tweed jacket
and the turquoise-blue tie that matched his beautiful blue eyes.
My father was the handsomest father.
He loved me.
And it was very obvious to everybody that I was his favorite.
He thought I was more like him than the other children.
[music fades]
- [male interviewer] In what way? - Well, he was a perfectionist [laughs].
He got the job done that he could-- that he was set out to do.
Not his work work. He was… he was a failure in work.
[inquisitive strings music playing]
[Martha] He could've done pretty much anything he wanted to do,
and he was stuck in a salesman's job.
He sometimes started the day off with a large glass of coffee and red wine.
So is that an alcoholic? Maybe.
But he never looked like a drunk.
He never stumbled around and threw things and broke things.
That wasn't my father.
But he was a dissatisfied, unhappy human being.
He couldn't support six kids. And we needed food.
So we had gardens.
And we would trade for goods that we couldn't grow.
[Martha] He stood over you like a sergeant.
Mean.
[poignant music playing]
[Martha] "You're not doing it right."
[Eric] He would give us an order. "Weed the tomatoes."
And if we didn't follow through, we paid the penalty.
We had our whippings. It was the yardstick.
We dreaded the yardstick. And at times, it was the end of the belt.
To this day, I despise gardening.
[Martha] He had lost his job.
No money saved.
Six kids.
And they needed money.
["Good Lookin' by Etta James playing]
[Martha] There was a girl across the street who spent her free time modeling.
She and her mother one day said to me,
"You're pretty enough to be a model. Would you like to be introduced?"
I started off at $15 an hour,
which was a lot better than the 50¢ I was getting babysitting.
[male announcer] Busy, active people, stop!
Now you can odor-proof your body. Odor-proof…
That was a major event in Nutley, New Jersey.
Everybody stopped everything to watch Martha.
[Martha] But I was not a super-duper model.
I was never in that class.
But I was certainly successful.
I would give most of my paycheck to my mother
because they still had young children at home.
She made sure we always had good food.
She was such a good cook.
I stood by my mother's side in the kitchen,
learning everything I could.
She was a schoolteacher, and she had to cook 16 meals a day.
I thought that was pretty fantastic that she could do all that.
But the cookie-cutter house and the cookie-cutter life,
that was not for me.
[peppy strings music playing]
Martha had a scholarship to Barnard School in New York City, very prestigious.
[Martha] I really loved college.
I really liked history, art history, economics.
I was a popular girl on campus.
People knew who I was, a tall, blonde, pretty girl from New Jersey,
walking around in Bermuda shorts, looking chic.
I was looking for adventure,
looking for the future.
[music ends]
[Martha] At Barnard,
there was one woman who was driven to school in a great big Rolls-Royce.
And we all sort of scratched our heads. "Who the heck is that?"
She came up to me one day in an art class.
And she said, "I have a brother who goes to Yale Law School."
"Would you care to have a date with him?"
[mellow music playing]
[Martha] He picked me up in his little yellow Mercedes sedan.
I had never been in a Mercedes before.
We went out to dinner. He was very polite and handsome.
And he had traveled a lot.
It was exciting to meet a sophisticated young man.
And he had an American Express card, which was a very big deal in those days.
And he was just intriguing, playful, and nice.
By the end of dinner, I was madly in love.
Andy Stewart, oh my gosh.
A beam of light.
[Martha] Andy was so nice,
not at all like my father.
He would send me money for a train ticket,
and I would visit him every single weekend up at Yale.
I had never slept with anybody before this.
He was very aggressive.
And I liked it.
He proposed.
It seemed such a natural thing to do.
Fall in love and get married.
[music fades]
But I went home and told my dad, and my dad slapped me.
And he slapped me hard on my… on my face and said, "No. You're not marrying him."
"He's a Jew."
[melancholy music playing]
I remember getting that slap.
I was not at all surprised, because he was a bigot.
And he was impulsive.
But I said, "I'm gonna get married no matter what you think."
[poignant music playing]
[Martha] With the help of my mother, I made my wedding dress.
It had many tiny, little organdy-covered buttons down the back.
It was such a beautiful little dress.
The wedding day was very happy.
Very nice.
It was the beginning of my life.
[music fades]
[fast-paced strings music playing]
[Martha] We decided that we would take an extended honeymoon to Europe.
This was like a five-month trip.
I kept record of every menu, every single thing we ate.
It was eye-opening.
The preparation of the food…
I didn't even know that olives tasted anything other than those green olives
with red pimento in them from a jar.
Nobody was sophisticated back home in the 1960s.
The architecture…
and especially the gardens I visited…
it did awaken in me a love of cuisine, a love of travel, a love of discovery.
And I really felt this is the thing I'd like to spend my life thinking about.
[music fades]
[bell tolling]
[Martha] We went across Italy,
ending up in Florence the night before Easter.
And I had to go to church,
and I went to the cathedral.
Andy was back in the hotel room.
He didn't have any interest in going to the Duomo with me.
[sweeping classical music playing]
Listening to that amazing music in the cathedral…
It was a very romantic place,
crowded with tourists,
and met this very handsome guy.
[whimsical strings music playing]
[Martha] He didn't know I was married.
I was this waif of a girl hanging out in the cathedral on Easter Eve.
He was emotional. I was emotional.
It's just because it was an emotional place.
It was unlike anything I had ever experienced.
An expansive dome so beautiful and paintings all around you.
It was like nothing I had ever done before.
And so why not kiss a stranger?
[sweeping classical music playing]
[music fades]
[male interviewer] Uh…
Were you being, uh,
you know, what's the word I'm looking for?
Naughty?
[male interviewer] Was it naughty, or was it infidelity?
Neither. It was neither naughty nor in… in… unfaithful.
It was just emotional, of the moment.
That's how I looked at it.
And it was exciting because, I mean, it was a very emotional place.
I wish… I wish we could all experience such an evening.
[bell tolling]
[Martha] I was 19 years old.
And I didn't wanna go home.
[pensive music playing]
[Martha] We got back to New York, and reality came crashing down [chuckles].
My daughter, Alexis, was born.
Back then, everybody was having babies so young.
That was sort of, like, the style and the habit.
I thought it was a natural thing.
And, uh, it turns out it's not at all natural to be a mother.
It was hard for her to adapt to being a mom.
She was happy when Lexi went down to nap so that she could be on her own.
She took care of Lexi, but she didn't dote on her.
She was always a little bit chilly.
She's not good at her emotions, or expressing them, I should say.
That's not who Martha is.
Big Martha, Martha's mother,
she told me that she didn't think that she hugged Martha enough.
[Martha] Feelings, we didn't talk about stuff like that.
That wasn't part of our growing up.
We were loved
sort of obtusely when we were supposed to be loved.
I mean, there was not a lot of "affection" in our house.
It was the everyday.
Practical.
How could I be a really great mother
if I didn't have the education to be a mother?
Martha was hugely ambitious.
She was aiming
for something other than what she was at that particular moment.
I didn't know where she was going to end up,
but I knew she was going places.
It was just in every morsel of her being.
["These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra playing]
[Martha] My father-in-law was a stockbroker.
I thought it was an interesting occupation.
So I decided to try for Wall Street.
[indistinct chatter]
Wall Street was not a good one for women.
♪ These boots are made for walkin'…♪
[Andy] It had no women clerks, no women working for the exchange,
no women anything.
♪ One of these days These boots are gonna walk all over you ♪
[Andy] I mean, they didn't have a ladies' room.
♪ Start walkin' ♪
[Andy] I had a long interview with her,
and she said she didn't want to make a living
you know, just being a beautiful blonde.
She spoke well,
and her appearance was just perfect, you know what I mean?
I hired her.
[upbeat strings music playing]
[Martha] I was the only woman at the firm.
I had to sort of put my arm out like that.
The stuff that went on in the back seat of the taxis, I'm not gonna talk about.
But they were really smart.
And I learned a lot at that firm.
[Andy] Martha was really better than everyone at everything.
Very sleek, socially, with our clients.
They really loved her.
She said my broker will take me out to lunch.
The broker was Martha Stewart. [laughs]
That didn't make for a bad lunch.
[Martha] I was meeting a lot of people,
and that's where I learned how to behave around billionaires.
And, remember, at that time,
to be a billionaire was pretty extraordinary.
I started to rake in a lot of money.
She was making a quarter of a million per year.
Clients were making money hand over fist.
[music fades]
[Andy] We recommended a stock, and it went from six to 90 to six.
[somber music playing]
[Andy] And all of a sudden, they were losing money.
It really killed Martha
to be wrong on the market and lost money for people.
Whatever Martha can control is gonna come out fine.
It's what she can't control that is gonna drive her crazy.
I started to burn out because it was not an easy job.
So I quit Wall Street.
And we moved to Westport, Connecticut…
the furthest commuting town from New York.
[male interviewer] Why'd you pick Westport?
Because we found the dream house,
the wreck of Turkey Hill Road that we had to have…
[music fades]
…and to fix it up, you know?
If I hadn't had Turkey Hill, I would not be me right now.
But I would've been somebody. I would've been somebody else.
And I wouldn't just wouldn't have been Martha Stewart, homemaker.
[pensive music playing]
[Martha] It was a run-down farmhouse that had to be completely renovated.
My parents moved from a beautiful apartment on Riverside Drive,
dragged me to Connecticut.
We moved into this "charming" farmhouse
with a bathtub with no shower,
using the Tupperware to dunk water to wash your hair with.
[man on TV] The questions that have been raised in the wake of…
[Martha] It was during Watergate,
painting the house from top to bottom,
painting it by myself on a ladder listening to Watergate.
[man on TV] …the burglars who broke into the headquarters
of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate…
We were like the original settlers in Westport, Connecticut.
[rooster crows]
1976, chickens in your backyard.
The neighbors called Town Hall going,
"There's a lady over here on Turkey Hill that's got chickens in her backyard."
It was unheard of.
It was a little country set, and Martha was playing in it.
[Martha] I really liked the idea of fixing up a property,
of expanding a property, of growing things,
going back to the roots of Nutley, New Jersey.
The gardens were so beautiful.
She created those gardens with her bare hands.
[whimsical music playing]
[Kathy] They seemed to be having fun building Turkey Hill Farm.
[Martha] Those early days on Turkey Hill Road
made me realize that I really did enjoy homemaking, homekeeping,
keeping a home.
Andy became the president
of the ultimate art book publisher in America.
I thought, "Oh my gosh, how exciting."
"We can have all the people that are writing these books
at our house for dinner."
I was thrilled to entertain.
She hosted so much.
She'd invite all the neighbors. Thanksgivings and Easters…
The food itself, just delicious.
[Martha] It occurred to me that I enjoyed creating
fanciful, lovely, evocative kinds of entertaining.
Why not start a catering business?
[pensive music playing]
She was a genius.
She went from being a model
to being a stockbroker,
and then, all of a sudden, she was catering parties for her friends.
[Martha] I would make plum puddings for 200 people,
and I would do scones,
and I would do jams and jellies.
Handcrafted. Nothing store-bought. Everything homemade.
That caught on like wildfire.
The Museum of Modern Art.
The Metropolitan Museum.
A house in Greenwich or in a house in Westchester or a house in Bedford.
A cocktail party from six to eight at Sotheby's for 700 people.
We tried to be a little outrageous. We wanted to catch people's attention.
It wasn't just a vodka bottle.
It was a vodka bottle sitting in a block of ice.
Big crudités tables,
vegetables and grapes and fruits and cheeses.
Nothing like that had ever been done before.
[Lloyd] It was movie-set stuff.
Just the vision of those strawberries just falling out of the basket.
Beautiful.
[Martha] If you look at the old Dutch masters
and their great displays of food and fruits,
all of that did inspire me tremendously.
[man] Martha knows how to create pleasure and excitement.
She caters parties for such luminaries as Paul Newman, Beverly Sills…
[Martha] We captured the attention of many, many people
and became a million-dollar business.
That was the beginning of Martha Stewart.
[music fades]
Martha had this successful catering business,
a husband who runs this amazing publishing company,
the perfect marriage.
Things look fabulous.
But are they?
[melancholy music playing]
[Martha] He was not satisfied at home.
I don't know how many different girlfriends
he had during this time,
but I think there were quite a few.
Young women, listen to my advice.
If you're married, and you think you're happily married,
and your husband starts to cheat on you, he's a piece of shit.
And look at him. It's a piece of shit and get out of it.
Get out of that marriage.
But I couldn't do that, couldn't walk away.
[music fades]
[interviewer] Didn't you have an affair early on in the relationship
or when you were a stockbroker?
Uh, yeah, but I don't think Andy ever knew about that.
- He did say he knew about it. - He did?
- Yes, you had confessed to him. - Oh.
He says he didn't stray from the marriage
until you told him you had already strayed.
Oh, that's not true.
- I don't think. - But what happened? You had an affair…?
I had a very brief affair with a very attractive Irish man.
And, um, it was just nothing.
It was nothing
in terms of… It would never have broken up…
I would never have broken up a marriage for it.
It was nothing.
It was like the kiss in the cathedral.
[whimsical strings music playing]
Here were two people who had it all.
But I don't think they ever found happiness.
Lexi got caught in the middle of it.
She was so confused and so angry herself.
I grew up in a very uncomfortable house.
I've learned to suppress most of my emotions.
[Kathy] Martha didn't have that great joy in her marriage and raising a child.
And that was just the missing link.
You'd hear arguments with the staff.
She wanted something done a particular way.
Very much of a perfectionist.
The strong hand of their father,
that baton was passed to Martha.
People felt abused by her.
She got such wrong ideas about success.
[Lloyd] She is a great white shark.
You could get bit.
She would shake people down. You know, she was ruthless.
In the business world, that's a great trait for a man.
But, you know, for a woman…
You know, she was a bitch.
[music fades]
You know the story of how she was discovered?
She was catering a book party for Andy.
[Martha] It was quite an extraordinary event.
All the waiters and waitresses were dressed as fairies.
[Isolde] Another publisher said, "You should do an entertaining book."
[Martha] I said to myself, "Catering is very ephemeral."
You work so hard,
you get a beautiful celebration, and then it's gone.
But if you write a book that's well-liked,
that is forever.
At first, my publisher wanted it to be a book that was in black and white
with some pictures and recipes, more a cookbook than anything else.
The first thing she did was make it pretty clear
that this was going to be her book.
And if we didn't wanna do it the way she wanted to do it,
she wasn't interested in working with us.
[Martha] I wanted it to be an illustrated, all-color photographs of food and ideas,
a book that anybody could pick up
and learn how to have an interesting celebration.
[woman] "I grew up in a large family that always had guests."
"I loved the ease with which my mother added extra places,
a big platter of vegetables, a special pie,
flowers to the family table to create a special occasion."
So ambitious.
Entertaining was about so much. It wasn't just about food.
It was visionary.
[Martha] I wanted to provide education and information and inspiration.
Not too expensive, not too lavish.
Just common enough so that the lady in the diner serving your coffee
could go home and make the same thing at her house
that my friends in Greenwich in their big mansions could make.
It was all the same.
Martha tried to show everyday women
that they could bring beauty to their homes.
[Martha] I was the audience. That was the secret.
I was everybody who was reading that book. And they knew it.
That authenticity was so important.
[mellow music playing]
[Martha] They knew I was the same person. I cleaned my own house.
I raised my own child. I had my husband.
I had my garden.
The personal story meant a lot to the reader.
She was the first woman that saw the marketability of her personal life.
- Martha was the first influencer. - [music fades]
[pop music playing]
[TV host] She is Martha Stewart, a caterer extraordinaire.
I gotta tell you, this book, I've spent three hours just looking at it.
[announcer] When it comes to entertaining, she literally wrote the book.
So would you like to stuff a snow pea?
[male TV host] "Would you like to stuff a snow pea?"
- [laughter] - Would you like to stuff a snow pea?
[Susan] Martha was getting a lot of attention.
She was blonde and beautiful.
She was the package.
And Crown was signing her up for more books,
so she was off and running.
You know, she had one gear, forward.
She signed one of my books, "Perfectly perfect."
Everything she was gonna do would be perfectly perfect.
And I think, in a way, it ruined her life.
Because she's not "perfectly perfect."
♪ I just can't get enough ♪
[Martha] I was spending all that time doing all that stuff
and not really concentrating on my "life."
[interviewer] It sounds like you're expressing regret.
Well, what is more important,
a marriage or a career?
- You tell me. - I don't know.
[somber music playing]
Andy was extremely busy in his publishing business,
and when he was around,
it was always strained.
She was critical of him
in terms of what he'd be wearing or how he said something.
Andy handled her business arrangements.
Over the years,
they were much more like colleagues than partners in life.
They were in different universes.
And when Martha wanted Andy to be present in her universe,
he wasn't eager to be there.
There was greater and greater friction between them.
And then there were rumors floating around
that Andy had some sort of involvement with the girl
who was doing the flower arrangements at Turkey Hill Farm.
Martha was picking up on everything and getting more and more upset.
She would be frantic.
Migraines and sleeplessness.
At one point, she showed me where she tore her hair out of her own head.
She was mean to her staff.
She had lost control of Andy.
And so she was making everybody pay.
[Martha] Robyn worked for me.
And she'd lost her apartment or something, and I said,
"Oh, you can move into the… into the barn on the lower two acres."
We had a little apartment down there.
And when I was traveling, Andy started up with her.
It was like I put out a snack for Andy.
[interviewer] Did you confront her?
I did. Sure, I did.
I kicked her out immediately. You know, "What the hell are you doing?"
Andy betrayed me right on our property.
Not nice.
Martha Stewart is with us today.
She's a contributing editor of House Beautiful and wedding expert.
- I mean, this woman, you know weddings. - [Martha] I think I do. I've seen…
She was promoting the Weddings book.
I remember just thinking that was a horrible confluence.
[Martha] It's hard for me, personally, to talk about it.
Some people revel in this self-pity, et cetera, et cetera.
- I just don't. - [music ends]
I handed over letters that were very personal.
So guess what?
Take it out of the letters.
[somber strings music playing]
[woman] "Dearest Andy,
I cannot sleep."
"I cannot eat."
"My skin is worried and many lines that were not there are now there."
"I am agonizingly jealous of your other women."
"I can't bear that you use what we did together on others."
"Dear Andy,
I'm in a really fragile, breakable state right now."
"I really feel physically ill because of all this,
as if my brain were about to break."
"Dear Andy,
maybe you are planning to marry her and keep her with my money
so that she can paint herself in portraits in the nude."
"It is very titillating, isn't it."
"Maybe she will paint you in the nude also."
"I'd love to see that painting."
"I am very, very concerned about my privacy and my professional life."
"I am telling everyone that you are away for a while."
"That is all."
"Dear Andy, I understand your craving for sex with others."
"None will care about you like I do."
"None will ever love you as much."
"Give me another chance, Andy."
"I'm so sorry about so much."
"Why does it have to be too late?"
"Dear Andy,
again I feel betrayed and all alone."
"When you tell me that this is no longer your home,
after all we did here together,
why shouldn't I say I'm going to burn it down?"
[music intensifies]
[woman] "I have to go to San Francisco and talk about Weddings
and my wonderful life."
"I hope you are enjoying your freedom."
"And I hope my plane crashes."
[music ends]
[woman] "I am sitting on a plane right now crying, coughing,
feverish, and so miserable I cannot believe myself."
"I should be vital, beautiful, sexual, and desirable."
"And here I am, a total wreck."
"I'm 45 years old, worried and lonely, alone, hopeless."
"The future is a total blur."
[Martha] Twenty-seven years.
He's the one who wanted the divorce, not I.
He was throwing me away.
I was 40 years old. I was gorgeous.
You know, I was a desirous woman.
But he was treating me like a castaway.
He treated me really badly.
And, in return, I guess I treated him badly.
I didn't go run off with people. He was running off with people.
I always said I was a swan, and I was… I was…
And like all swans, they are monogamous.
And I thought monogamy was admirable.
I did. I thought it was admirable.
But it turned out that it wasn't-- It didn't save a marriage.
Can we get onto a happier subject?
I have planted every tree you see.
All of these, I've planted.
Several thousand.
[upbeat strings music playing]
[Martha] Hello.
We use the fallen trees for supports underneath.
All the trees are getting put away for the winter.
A garden is a beautiful place for me
because I like to get things done.
No, but see, don't… don't put this away like this.
This has to be trimmed.
You really clean it and put some earth here.
Give it a chance to grow some new stuff, okay?
- [man] Yep. I got ya. - And this can be trimmed all the way down.
- Yeah. - It'll grow again.
That's the whole idea of putting things away,
ready to be put away.
I never look the other way.
Okay, guys. Fasang, do not break these pots.
[man] Yeah.
[Martha] Do not break the pots.
I'm gonna go look at the foundation of the new one. It's good?
[men speak indistinctly]
[Martha] I look at a problem, look at it and try to solve it.
[music ends]
[TV test pattern sine tone]
[producer] And Entertaining, Martha Stewart.
- Hello, one, two, three, four, five. - Hi.
[producer] Not yet.
Not yet.
Let's put my-- I like this up.
- I can't stand-- I don't like it all flat. - [woman] Right.
She was part of a world where you married a man, and that's it.
And I don't think Martha ever expected to not be married.
She was embarrassed about it.
Martha doesn't have failure.
That was one of the first times something was going on that she couldn't fix.
She was worried going on book tour
as her separation became public was going to be tricky to navigate.
But it turned out people didn't care at all.
[producer] Three, two…
["The Look" by Roxette playing]
[Isolde] They just wanted to know how to make cakes.
[female reporter] Women across the country are lining up
to meet this hostess with the mostest,
this woman who has shrewdly sold herself to the American public
as the queen of perfection.
[camera clicking]
[Martha] After Andy left, I really lost myself in work,
the ideas for the future, and, luckily, I had them.
Luckily. I could have just been a miserable has-been housewife.
But I didn't let that happen to myself, and I'm so happy I didn't.
And it started with Kmart.
Now Martha Stewart is bringing her high-class style
to middle-class shoppers at Kmart.
Martha Stewart sheets, bedding, dishes, linens.
Everything for your home.
Kmart was believed to be so low-end.
But Martha was very prescient in realizing having a partnership
with a mass-market retailer would really be amazing.
[Martha] The Greenwich Garden Club canceled my appearance
because I had signed with Kmart and they didn't want anything downscale.
She understood that just because you don't have a lot of money
doesn't mean you don't have taste.
That was powerful.
If you had never heard of Martha before,
you heard about her now.
♪ Na, na, na, na, na… ♪
[man] We see a lot of you on television these days in these Kmart commercials.
Now, I think a lot of people would think that's an odd combination.
- Does it strike you as being odd? - Not at all.
Everybody who shops at Kmart,
and there's about 77 million people a month shopping there--
[man] Is that right? Seventy-seven million a month?
Yes, and, uh, they want beautiful things.
And I'm trying to get really gorgeous things into the store.
Well, what are they doing in Kmart if they're… [laughs]?
♪ She's got the look She's got the look ♪
[music fades]
[Martha] During this time, I'd done maybe six books,
and my publisher, they only wanted a book a year from me.
But I had so much more to say, and I thought, gosh, how about a magazine?
At the time, there were women's magazines,
but they didn't have the beauty, the depth of information that I wanted.
That was a huge void.
[upbeat music playing]
[Martha] My first stop was Condé Nast.
I talked to S. I. Newhouse himself, and he said,
"Well, what are you thinking of for the name?"
And I said, "Martha Stewart Living."
And he said, "It can't be Martha Stewart."
And I said, "Well, why not?" And he said, "Well, it's Condé Nast."
"That's our name. Condé Nast." And so he was a brand protector.
I moved on to this guy, Rupert Murdoch.
And he said, "I'm closing magazines now because that's not our business."
"I suggest you take it to Time."
Time was very much a man's world.
They did not get it at all.
I said, "Living is a subject that can be covered over and over again
for years to come."
"Living is limitless."
And they said, "Well, if you really mean that,
maybe this is a good idea."
We wanted to be the modern woman's magazine.
[Martha] Holidays, entertaining, food, decorating, kids, babies, crafting.
Those had never been put together, really, in one place before.
We created a beautiful issue,
which sold out.
[reporter] Thanks to the recession, the magazine business is in a deep slump.
But in all the gloom, there's one ray of sunshine,
Martha Stewart Living.
[Martha] Martha Stewart Living became an overnight sensation.
I was on the cover of almost every issue.
We became one of the most successful start-up magazines ever.
Please welcome Martha Stewart.
[audience applauding]
At that time,
women in huge numbers, they're saying, "I don't wanna be a housewife."
"I wanna have a job. I wanna have power."
But she realized that a lot of women in the work world,
they retain a connection to the house.
Martha said you can be this artist in your own right.
Beauty and perfection can be a powerful thing.
[Martha] There I am in Westport, Connecticut.
I had some friends, a few, of course,
but not many.
[upbeat music playing]
[Martha] My daughter said, "The place to go, Mother,
as a single woman in the summertime, is the Hamptons."
So I went to look.
The Realtor asked me, "What are you looking for?"
I said, "How about the wreck on the nicest street?"
The contractors all came, said, "What do you really wanna do?"
I said, "I just wanna make it into the most beautiful garden
with a beautiful house."
It was so clearly her vision at play.
We worked on Lily Pond Lane for about a year and a half.
And when we finished, it was my fiftieth birthday.
So I decided I'd have a great big fiftieth-birthday party.
It was like this gigantic party. Like, everybody was there.
People from the business world,
people in the movie business, the TV business.
The moment she was in that world,
it's just like the pool ball hits ten other balls,
and it's all happening.
[Martha] It was the beginning of the best era of the Hamptons.
[music fades]
She'll always say she's a late bloomer,
but I think she felt a little more free and empowered and,
"Okay, I have a new life now, and I'm going to live it."
I think she had more romances than you're gonna hear about.
And I think she enjoyed those.
[Sam] Martha did not like being around men who weren't smart.
I mean, look. She loved Charles Simonyi, so she loved rich guys,
even if they were weird.
[Martha] Charles created Word and Excel at Microsoft.
Total genius.
We started to go everywhere together. It was a different kind of life.
He had his own jet, building a boat in Germany,
and I started working on the boat with him.
I wasn't anxious to go dating and looking for another husband anywhere.
I just continued working, thinking, doing,
as I am always doing.
[interviewer] Have you had any relationships
where you talk about your feelings?
No, and that's probably why I haven't had very many personal relationships with men,
for example.
Uh, because I…
[scoffs] …couldn't care less.
I don't know what the real reason is. [laughs]
Um…
It doesn't interest me so much to know, you know,
"Oh, Charles," you know, "How do you feel this second?"
I don't care, actually.
I do care about,
"Charles, what are you doing? What are you thinking about?"
So I sort of gravitate towards people who are doing things all the time.
And I think more about everything that I'm doing,
things that I'm working on, things that I'd like to work on,
things that I'd like to accomplish.
That's where I'm best.
[upbeat strings music playing]
The next step was to do television.
But Time was a very, very conservative company.
They felt that if people saw Martha on TV,
they would not feel like they needed to buy the magazine.
[Martha] I always had hoped that I would be doing television
in conjunction with the magazine.
That was called synergy,
the dirty word… [chuckles]
…in the 1990s.
I was considered crazy.
But it worked.
If you had said before Martha existed,
"Do you want a TV show about someone who has much more money than you have,
is much better-looking than you'll ever be,
lives this amazing life, and does all these things with her very own hands,
they would have said, "Shit, no."
But once you made it, they loved it.
It's a good thing. It's a good thing. It's a good thing.
She teaches better than anybody.
Not only that you can understand it but that you wanna do it.
Don't overwork it.
We had a whole generation of young women whose mothers had worked,
so they didn't know how to do things.
And she felt we needed a way to show people
exactly how to do it,
step by step.
What we now call DIY, that was a revolution for America.
Finally, a subject matter that everyone kind of pooh-poohed
has all of a sudden become a national craze.
- It is a craze. - What is this subject?
Living. Living.
Everyday living.
It has always been, for me, a very serious subject.
Gentlemen, start your engines!
[engines revving]
[Martha] Kmart was going wild. Everybody was buying everything.
We were making, like, $70 million a year, straight to the bottom line.
She saw that she could create an empire for herself.
Martha was able to buy her name back and her magazine from Time.
She went to Kmart to get the money,
and Kmart advanced her the money against royalties.
It turned out to be a very good thing, if I can quote Martha. [laughs]
All of a sudden, we owned 100% of everything.
And that was the beginning of Martha, Inc.
[Martha] The plan was to create a company that was omnimedia in scope.
It was my idea to make the plan of the company the solar system.
One person at the center.
It hadn't been done like that before.
[reporter] What started as a small home-based catering business in 1976…
- I love that. - …has become
Martha Stewart Living Enterprises,
a multimedia corporation
bringing in something like $200 million a year.
Probably the only one-woman, one-person conglomerate.
She was like a superstar.
It was Martha Stewart everywhere you looked.
[TV host] Having finally freed herself from Time,
Martha Stewart is already plotting her next big move, going public.
[Martha] Going public is the American dream.
[TV announcer] Now, copy this.
Martha Stewart.
Is the pristine princess really the queen of mean?
America knows her as the happy little homemaker.
The more you know about this woman, the less you like her.
In the '90s,
that's when she really started getting slammed in the press.
"She's mentally unstable. She's crazy. She's insane."
That was not helpful right before the IPO.
When we were going public, everything was about Martha.
All of this is hanging on one person, one person, one person.
I remember hearing from people in the financial world,
and they said, "We're staying away from it."
[Martha] I thought it was a really sound business plan.
But when we presented this to various investors,
bankers thought it was a vulnerable investment
because of one person at the center.
They did not like the idea of a woman-run company like this.
Didn't like it.
The question of Martha being the brand,
it was the biggest fear on the part of the banks.
People kept saying, "What if she gets hit by a bus?"
"The brand would be destroyed."
Her brand was based on reputation
and also, frankly, her credibility.
Well, here's a news flash. Martha Stewart is not so perfect.
In the "What's fake?" department, Martha Stewart went on the Today show…
You've been spending too much time knitting frigging doilies.
[audience laughs]
And maybe that's why your husband left you!
I've always been baffled by the degree of hatred that people have.
I sometimes think it's because she does something that all of us,
theoretically, could do.
She just does it way better.
It seems to drive people up the walls.
[woman] Who has the time for all of this?
For every woman who makes a complicated gingerbread house,
a million don't even have the time to bake a cookie.
She sets the standards.
And when people see her home, it makes you feel like a failure.
[TV host] Whatever is the opposite of laid-back is what Martha Stewart is.
The cabinets are being painted on the in-- Don't-- You cannot say this.
[TV host] A touch humorless, perhaps,
but how funny would you be
on four hours' sleep and a life devoted to details?
No, just tell him to leave the facades unpainted.
She was a tough boss,
but, you know, like, some of the behavior that she would be taken to task for
would be applauded if a man did it in the business world.
That's a cliché at this point, but it doesn't mean it wasn't true.
She was obviously held to a different standard.
She got under men's hair.
This idea that you could be a homemaking expert who's a bitch.
Like, that was such a clash of ideas.
Don't crack it.
[man] Someone watching Martha, or reading Martha,
might be to just be driven up the wall because they'll never get to that
perfect point of casual, easy perfection.
But they might.
They may not ever make that cake,
but they can dream about it.
[upbeat music playing]
[woman] Can we get the boom out, please?
[reporter] She built a multimedia empire.
Now Martha Stewart sets out to conquer Wall Street.
[indistinct chatter]
Did you ever think this was gonna happen when you first started this business?
- Oh, yes, I knew it from day one. - [laughing]
[photographer] Martha, one more with the gavel.
[camera shutter clicks]
[bell ringing]
What a thing to experience,
all the noise and the bell ringing and the smiles,
because you could watch on the ticker how the price was going up.
[woman] How's it feel to be the chairman of a publicly-traded company?
I must tell you, we're really excited.
It's, um, a good thing.
[laughter]
Did you ever imagine that your sort of brand of domesticity
would ever make it so big that you would bring this company public?
When you have the trust of your audience,
they will come to you when they need information,
and we're teachers, and we aim to continue to teach.
[laughing]
- Selling at 38 right now. - [exclaiming]
I would like to make a toast
that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
is a very good thing
and will continue to be a very good thing for a very long time.
Gael Towey, would you stand up too?
All the women went into the ladies' room, and Martha's standing there going,
"I'm the wealthiest woman in the world."
…today's move that values her stock at $1.2 billion.
- Oh, nice. - Quite a payday.
Good for her.
You couldn't have found somebody who was happier at that moment in time.
She had achieved all the success that a small girl from Nutley,
whose father was a salesperson and whose mother was a teacher…
[TV host] You issued the stock, and then how much did you make?
- So it's, like, a billion dollars. - You're worth a billion dollars?
What does it mean to be the first female self-made billionaire in American history?
People took me seriously.
I was invited to join the New York Stock Exchange board.
I was on the board of Revlon.
[Kevin] We had this infusion of resources.
It was just rocket fuel.
We got an office down at Starrett-Lehigh.
That building was awful.
But Martha saw nothing but potential.
It was like being on an Olympic team with the best of the best.
We were producing more and more magazines.
It started off with Living, and then we did Weddings,
and then we did Baby, and then we did Kids,
and then we did Blueprint, and then we did Whole Living,
and then Everyday Food.
And then there were the TV series.
Nothing we couldn't do.
The rest of the world was starting to realize her vision.
[Martha] Joan Didion wrote a very astute essay in The New Yorker
about a woman like me becoming powerful.
[woman] "To her critics,
she seems to represent a fraud to be exposed,
a wrong to be righted."
"However much she's got, Martha wants more."
"And she wants it her way and in her world,
not in the balls-out boys' club realms of real estate or technology,
but in the delicate land of doily hearts and wedding cakes."
"This is not a story about a woman who made the best of traditional skills."
"This is a story about a woman who did her own IPO."
"This is the 'woman's pluck' story,
the dust bowl story,
the burying-your-child-on-the-trail story,
the I-will-never-go-hungry-again story,
the Mildred Pierce story,
the story about how the sheer nerve
of even professionally unskilled women can prevail,
show the men."
"The dreams and the fears into which Martha Stewart taps
are not of 'feminine' domesticity
but of female power,
of the woman who sits down at the table with the men
and, still in her apron,
walks away with the chips."
[music ends]
[Martha] These brilliant men, these brilliant bankers,
couldn't see the real value in this idea of omnimedia.
They just didn't see it.
But we showed 'em, didn't we?
That was the pinnacle of success.
And it lasted for a period of time,
and then it didn't.
[mellow music playing]
[Martha] I was on my way to Cabo, Mexico,
traveling with my friend Mariana Pasternak.
We had a fuel stop in San Antonio, Texas.
I called my office,
as a dutiful CEO of a New York Stock Exchange company would do.
My assistant said my stockbroker had called me about ImClone.
ImClone was a biotech company started by a friend of mine, Sam Waksal.
Dr. Waksal had created a drug called Erbitux
that had great potential for curing several diseases.
So I called Peter Bacanovic, who was my broker.
It was a very short conversation saying,
"The stock's going down. I think we should sell."
And I said, "Good. Sell."
Continued on my way to Cabo.
Didn't think about it again.
[firecrackers popping]
Probably six months later, the shit hit the fan.
[anchor] The FBI arrested Sam Waksal at 6:30 this morning.
[reporter] Did you commit insider trading?
[reporter 2] Samuel Waksal learned on December 26th of last year,
two days before the public announcement, that the FDA would not approve Erbitux.
Prosecutors charged Waksal then tipped two family members.
[reporter 3] He is among the many examples of chief executives
accused of enriching themselves and their associates
while many shareholders lose a fortune.
At that time,
you had these rich people playing around with stocks
and decide that the law doesn't apply to them.
[reporter 4] This modern-day rogues' gallery made millions
while leading their companies to near financial ruin or worse.
I don't think that there's any word for it but outrageous.
The Department of Justice set up a task force
to focus on white-collar crime
because the public confidence was very quickly eroding
after scandal after scandal.
How can business have any credibility when these characters are pulling stuff
like you read about almost every day?
So, with ImClone, the chronology is as follows.
The government saw several people having unloaded ImClone stock
in advance of the announcement of the results not going well.
So names come up.
Among those is Martha Stewart.
[music fades]
[David] Martha Stewart.
[pensive music playing]
[Martha] It came as a surprise when I got a call from my law firm
that I was being requested by the U.S. attorney
for an appearance to question my sale of ImClone.
They got me in a taxi, and we went downtown.
My lawyers told me,
"Anything that is not clear, you just say, 'I do not remember. I do not recall.'"
I wasn't scared because I hadn't done anything wrong that I knew about.
My lawyers didn't think I had done anything wrong.
I did exactly what my lawyers had told me.
Answer everything as truthfully and as honestly as I could possibly.
And when I didn't remember, I said I didn't remember.
And I went back to work.
The public did not become aware of this investigation until June of 2002,
when Sam got arrested.
That's when the circus began.
[female reporter] Also under scrutiny, Waksal's friend Martha Stewart,
who sold ImClone stock on the same day Waksal's family sold.
[female reporter 2] Shares of her company, Martha Stewart Omnimedia,
sinking 22% since news of the ImClone sale broke.
[Martha] The legal team…
I was advised to keep quiet.
Bad advice.
She's lost so much money, instead of selling her stuff at Kmart,
she may have to actually start buying stuff there.
[commentator] It's a company that exists wholly
to promote the lifestyle and brand image of the CEO.
So if… if that image is damaged,
uh, the company really suffers.
[TV host] What a beautiful day in New York today, isn't it?
Here's how lovely it was today.
Martha Stewart was doing her insider trading outside.
- [laughter] - It was a fact.
[reporter] Stewart is avoiding cameras, but that hasn't stopped the questions.
Martha was somebody who was of interest to the media.
It had to be addressed.
[reporter] In a statement, Stewart says
she "had no improper information
and that the transaction was entirely lawful."
[TV show theme music playing]
Martha is here this morning for her weekly turn here on The Early Show.
- Martha, it's good to see you. - Hi. We're gonna make salad, but--
We are. But first, let me ask you a few things about all this.
You've released a statement saying that you were not involved
in any insider trading.
But you haven't public… publicly commented on this.
What… what do you say about the allegations here?
Well, as you understand, uh,
I'm involved in an investigation that has very, um, serious implications.
So… uh, and many people are involved in this whole investigation,
and I'm just not at liberty, at this time, to make any comments whatsoever.
And I certainly hope that the matter is resolved, um, in the very near future.
[Susan] The world was wondering what went on with the stock sale,
and there was no answer that was good.
I have nothing to say on the matter. I'm… I'm really not at liberty to say.
And, uh, as I said, I think this will all be resolved in the very near future.
And I will be exonerated of any ridiculousness.
I… I know that image is… is so important for you
and everything that you've created over the years.
In the midst of all this, the stock price of the company, um, has dropped.
So the media frenzy that's surrounded this the last week or so,
how is it for you to be in the middle of that?
[Susan] The anchor really pushed her, and…
[inaudible]
I wanna focus on my salad.
[music ends]
"I just wanna make my salad."
Right on the air.
So that was not good.
It was instantly in the press.
[dramatic music playing]
[Susan] "Can't take the heat," blah-blah-blah.
There was tons of stuff that fed the stories.
Pictures of her and Sam.
The story was really alive.
There was an enormous amount of negative tabloid coverage.
Journalists were looking to make their mark on teardown stories,
and she was exactly the number one target.
It was unbelievable.
It kept going.
That month, that summer, fall, it never stopped.
[music fades]
[strings music playing]
Everybody's focus, especially the government's,
was that Sam had tipped Martha about the FDA news.
Now, that's a genuine crime.
But it was obvious that she didn't even speak to him until after she traded.
Sam was in enormous trouble.
Nobody could get away with what he tried. I just don't understand it.
But in terms of Martha, you know, he didn't tip her.
And so Martha's lawyers were very relieved.
[reporter] You said people from the SEC and the Justice Department were there.
- Did they ask you about Martha? - Yes.
A lot?
Yes.
They wanted me to say I told her.
And had I done that, I wouldn't have gotten in trouble.
I got the sense that if they could have Martha,
they would be unbelievably happy campers.
So you should know I called my mom.
I said, "You know, Mom, they want me to say I tipped Martha,
and they'll leave me alone."
She goes, "Tell 'em you tipped Martha."
[laughs]
[Sam] So I thought that was funny. But I didn't.
I didn't give Martha Stewart insider information.
Period.
And, by the way,
so we know…
You know who wanted me to say that?
[indistinct chatter]
Jim Comey.
[music ends]
[dramatic music playing]
Good afternoon.
We are here this afternoon to announce the filing of criminal charges
by this office
and civil charges by the SEC
against Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic.
Let me talk for a minute about what is not in the indictment.
Ms. Stewart and Mr. Bacanovic have not been charged
with criminal insider trading.
That may seem odd at first glance.
But it is, in my view, the appropriate treatment of this case.
Peter Bacanovic and Martha Stewart
had not spoken to anyone in the Waksal family.
And so, what they did was not illegal.
So the government had to hear back their case.
This criminal case is about lying.
Lying to the FBI,
lying to the SEC,
and lying to investors.
People said,
"How can you be charged with lying about a crime that you never committed?"
And it was a good question.
She wasn't criminally charged with insider trading,
but during her interview,
we had the sense that she was not being truthful about why she sold.
She said she didn't recall being told that the Waksals were selling,
and that was not why she traded.
But we believed she knew that Sam Waksal was selling the shares.
Lying to the FBI is a crime with profound consequences.
[ominous music playing]
Comey loved a touch of theater and was obviously very ambitious.
He went on to be deputy head of the Justice Department, head of the FBI.
[Jim] If these two people had only done
what parents have taught their children for eons,
even if you're in a tight spot, lying is not the way out.
"Lying, lying, lying. It's about lying." Come on.
Ninety-five out of 100 prosecutors would not bring this case.
Comey was self-righteous,
and he's not afraid to go places other people wouldn't go.
Martha was a convenient way
to look like they were doing something to combat corporate wrongdoing,
even though her case had nothing to do with the corporation she ran.
[reporter] There are many who believe Martha Stewart's being singled out
because she's successful, because she's a woman.
Why Martha Stewart?
Martha Stewart is being prosecuted not because of who she is
but because of what she did.
I have no idea what they were thinking.
I think it may have been that they were a bunch of prideful men
who couldn't bear being embarrassed
if they couldn't get her for insider trading,
and they wanted revenge,
or if they were just a shower of fucking sanctimonious twats.
[man] She is now being prosecuted in a very high-profile case
about something that wasn't, in fact, a crime.
- That's what bothers a lot of people. - [man 2] It looks bothersome.
- Why are they going after her? - [cop] Behind the barrier!
A lot of commentators said, at the time, that she was being made an example of.
The trade that Martha did
that got her into so much trouble was worth about $45,000,
a very small amount in the grand scheme of things.
Everybody asked, "What if she gets hit by a bus?"
Nobody said, "What if she gets indicted for lying to the feds?"
Nobody said that.
[reporter] On the CBS Market Watch,
the Martha Stewart scandal has taken a big toll on her media company.
Down 86% from last year.
Every emerging new detail that seems to work against her
is met with a rousing cheer in many quarters.
The press was absolutely after Martha,
and Martha personally, not the company.
The guiltiest pleasure of all,
watching Martha Stewart scurry into a courthouse under an umbrella.
There was a nastiness to people's attitudes to Martha.
Why do people love to hate her?
You always wanna see Little Miss Perfect fail.
[music ends]
[interviewer] You bring out the most profound emotions in people.
Martha, why do so many people hate you?
[sighs]
It is day one in Martha Stewart's obstruction of justice trial,
and all of the world is watching.
[plucky music playing]
Trials are all about competing narratives. That's what they are.
And their narrative was pretty easy to present.
Fancy Martha got a tip, and then she lied about it.
[indistinct yelling]
[John] In our narrative,
which is a woman famed for being on top of everything
and a perfectionist
doesn't really remember what happened.
[sighs]
[John] It's very tough.
- [reporter] Morning. - [reporter 2] How do you feel?
Just great.
She certainly could've pleaded guilty.
And there were discussions about trying to resolve the case.
But she didn't want to admit to the fact that she had lied.
You have to get up in court and say,
"I knowingly and intentionally lied to the government."
I never asked, "Do you think you were guilty?"
I don't think she thinks she was.
She'd have had a hell of a time getting up to admit wrongdoing.
Through her body language and demeanor,
she was maintaining her innocence to the very end.
But as the days passed,
it became more and more obvious that this was not going well for her.
The trial very quickly devolved into,
"Did she lie when she said the stock sale had nothing to do with Sam Waksal?"
So the whole question was,
"How are we gonna know if she told the truth?"
As it turned out,
the person who knew
was Peter Bacanovic's secretary,
Douglas Faneuil.
[female reporter] This star witness is a baby-faced 28-year-old
who the government is counting on to prove that Martha Stewart lied
about why she dumped her shares of ImClone stock two years ago.
Doug Faneuil was the most important piece of evidence.
He had been directed by Bacanovic
to tell Martha Stewart about Waksal selling his stock
so that she could act on it.
[reporter] Faneuil testified Bacanovic ordered him
to tell Stewart about the Waksal sale.
His testimony had the complete ring of truth to it,
including the fact that Martha treated him like shit,
because people knew that Martha treated underlings like shit.
[woman reading] "I have never ever been treated more rudely
by a stranger on the telephone."
"She actually hung up on me."
Not only was he telling you
about the events that took place that were incriminating about Martha,
he was telling you about Martha.
He was telling you about what she was like.
[man] "She made the most ridiculous sound
I've heard coming from an adult,
kind of like a roaring lion underwater."
[dramatic strings music playing]
[Simon] We were suddenly getting this window into the real Martha,
this abrasive bully of a person
that a lot of people in New York were aware of,
but the public at large wasn't.
[female reporter] Faneuil described Stewart's phone manner as rude,
confirming she even threatened to take her account elsewhere
if the telephone hold music wasn't changed.
[Simon] The prosecution,
they wanted to make Martha Stewart out to be a difficult, abrasive person.
They wanted to paint her as the villain, and they were pretty successful.
Martha Stewart has come across as petty, as demeaning,
as kind of a bad person.
And, you know, as much as that shouldn't matter in a case like this,
it does.
That'll get men's attention,
some woman just being rude and imperious and dismissive of a man.
So this is all about her being a woman now, Miss Lafferty?
Is that what you're gonna try to convince me about?
What this is about is a targeted prosecution
of a person who happens to be a woman but happens to be a certain kind of woman,
a wildly successful woman, uh, an arrogant woman.
Our concern is that this is a message that you… you can't really be a bitch.
It's what… it's what we're calling a bitch hunt.
We were only there because she was famous and knew she was in a lot of trouble.
Those factors together sell newspapers.
We all wanted our pound of flesh.
Martha is very concerned with how she's perceived.
And this was so much press, unrelenting, and virtually all negative.
[Martha] It was obscene.
And I had to keep my composure,
keep my head upright and not cry.
Remember? Women in business don't cry?
You don't cry.
[music ends]
As the case went on,
the drumbeat of the evidence was getting louder and louder and louder,
and it crescendoed with Mariana Pasternak…
[plucky strings music playing]
…who was the last nail in the coffin.
[Martha] This is my best friend.
I was matron of honor at her wedding.
I was the godmother to her children.
Mariana Pasternak was a confidante of Martha Stewart,
and she was there on vacation with Martha
while this was taking place.
Martha had briefly mentioned to me that she sold her ImClone stock.
She knew she should not have told me about that.
She made me a witness.
[music ends]
Good afternoon, Miss Pasternak.
Do you have any recollection of speaking with Ms. Stewart
on the subject of brokers while you were in Mexico?
[Mariana] I remember one brief statement which was,
"Isn't it nice to have brokers who tell you those things?"
[audience gasps]
It was like a thunderclap that happened in the court at that moment.
You know, that was an absolutely devastating line.
It fed straight into the government's case that Martha had received this secret tip
from her stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic,
that the Waksal family was selling shares in ImClone Systems.
And it basically showed her up to being a liar.
[male reporter] According to her, Martha Stewart knew
that Sam Waksal was selling his ImClone stock.
That's one of the crucial issues in this case.
I truthfully testified, as my legal obligation was.
That's why I said those words.
And I looked in the courtroom, and I saw Martha's eyes,
you know, that cold, icy look in her eyes.
I knew our friendship was over.
[Martha] By the time Mariana got onto the stand,
she was a damaged human being.
She is frightened.
She was told what to say.
It made me very sad.
She was a human being,
and she was obviously under an incredible amount
of pressure and strain.
And… and you couldn't help but notice that she looked wounded.
[woman] Leave Martha alone! Leave her alone!
- Leave Martha alone! - We were horrified.
To see what was happening to her was very, very upsetting.
[woman] She's a doll. Leave her alone. Leave Martha alone.
[reporter] Now, as Stewart's supporters gather outside
of the courthouse to await her fate,
the jury will be inside deliberating the facts.
[indistinct chatter]
[reporter 2] Trial analysts say the problem for the government is that
however compelling its witnesses may have been,
it never produced a smoking gun.
[suspenseful music playing]
[reporter 3] The best defense is the case never should have gone to trial.
For jurors to look at this and say to themselves,
"Boy, this sure seems like a selective prosecution."
On the other hand, if they focus strictly on the question of,
"Do we believe that she had some sort of tip?"
I think Martha Stewart's in trouble.
You know, you stand, obviously, when they come in.
It's the tensest moment you can imagine.
[judge] Members of the jury,
I have received your verdict, and I will now read it.
Defendant Martha Stewart…
[music fades]
Guilty, guilty, guilty on all these counts of whatever.
[somber music playing]
[Martha] The New York Post lady was there
just looking so smug.
She had written horrible things during the entire trial.
She's dead now, thank goodness, and she doesn't have to--
Nobody has to put up with that crap that she was writing all the time.
My daughter, she fainted when they read the verdict.
Poor child.
It was so horrifying and incomprehensible.
And then I woke up and I was, unfortunately, still there. [laughs]
[indistinct chatter]
[inaudible]
[female reporter] Martha Stewart, now a convicted felon,
left the courthouse to some cheers.
[chanting] We love Martha! We love Martha!
[Martha] It was so horrifying to me that I had to go through that,
to be a trophy for these idiots in the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Those prosecutors should have been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high.
[man cheers]
[Martha] I was a trophy.
A prominent woman, the first billionaire woman in America,
"We got her."
[horn honks]
[reporter] Now I'm being told that trading has been halted,
uh, on Martha's stock.
[male reporter] Once the jury spoke, the price plummeted to $10 and change.
Analysts believe that it will go down further and could hit, uh, $5.
[male reporter 2] Stewart's TV show was canceled today
by 18 CBS and UPN stations.
[female reporter] Advertisers have fled her flagship magazine.
She was one of the strongest brands that ever existed.
I mean, stronger than Coke, stronger than McDonald's.
[reporter] Facing prison time,
Martha Stewart further distanced herself from the media company she built,
resigning from the board of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
and stepping down as Chief Creative Officer.
[Martha] I was on the top of the world.
I was sitting on the board of the New York Stock Exchange.
I was sitting on the board of the Revlon Corporation.
I lost control of my company. I lost all my board seats.
Absolutely horrific.
[male reporter] There is, right now, complete panic
going on at Martha Stewart Living.
I think it's basically over for Martha Stewart Omnimedia.
[music fades]
[birds chirping]
She's disappointed of her feeling like her life was wasted.
Everything she did is ignored over something trivial
that maybe didn't happen.
[indistinct conversation]
[man] And a lot of people want to know, first of all, how are you doing?
I mean, see, I don't wanna have an interviewer's voice.
[man] Oh, no, we're gonna…
What I'm gonna do is we're gonna try to do it the whole thing in your voice.
So then maybe it shouldn't be a question. Maybe you should just talk about…
You should just say, "Talk about this." Don't a… don't ask me a question.
- [man 2] Suck in that gut when they do. - [man] Come on.
You ready?
- [sighs] - [man] Nice and sweet.
[man clears throat]
So this is Easter Sunday, 2004.
And I have, uh, invited
somewhere between 16 and 20 people
for brunch.
So the menu is hard-boiled eggs, which I already did,
blood orange curd cake that Alexis is making.
The salmon…
This is one month before sentencing. I don't know what's gonna happen.
[somber music playing]
[man 2] How do you prepare yourself for what may occur?
[Martha] Well, you know, you go to the dentist,
you go to the gynecologist,
and you just make sure that you're in as best shape as you possibly can
to let your body and your mind take whatever comes.
- [woman] You needed the bone out or no? - [Martha] Yes, that's the whole idea.
Here, I'll… I'll… Want me to show you?
The press made me out to be a person that I'm not.
I don't think I've been the mean and nasty and horrible person
portrayed in certain publications.
I'm strict and I'm demanding
and I'm all those good things that make a successful person.
Recently, I critiqued a teacup.
I said, "How's that selling?"
Young man said to me, "Well, not well." And I said, "Do you know why?"
"Pick up the teacup."
"Can you fit your finger in the teacup handle?"
He took that as a gross criticism.
But that I said it was held against me.
To critique a teacup handle for my own company
was considered a bad thing.
I consider it a good thing.
Never use soap on it, okay?
Never.
That would never have gotten in our catalog before.
[music increases in intensity]
And I'm supposed to pussyfoot around such an idi… nitwit?
[music fades]
[Martha] What knife are you using to cut those?
- [woman] This one. - Well, isn't that a stupid knife?
- [woman] I don't know. - [Martha] Why?
Why would you use a little knife to cut a big orange?
You know how fast a big knife cuts?
Okay, you don't get that on film, because,
I mean, I don't know what to do anymore.
Okay?
[somber music playing]
You use a big knife to cut oranges, okay?
But really, you have to pay attention and be efficient.
Look, so much easier. Okay?
[reporter] Have you ever visited a prison?
[Martha] Um, no… [laughs] …no I haven't.
[reporter] Do you have any idea what it's like?
Um, no, not really.
Strip searches…
I don't think in a minimum-security prison there's gonna be strip searches.
- Oh, yes, Martha. - Maybe. Maybe I'm uninformed.
Maybe you should do research on what it's like in prison.
I don't wanna sound stupid. I hardly wanna talk about it.
You can do it? No matter what?
[helicopter thrumming]
[reporter] Morning, and you're looking at a shot outside the federal courthouse
in lower Manhattan right now.
Martha Stewart is just emerging from the courthouse
after receiving her sentence from Judge Miriam Cedarbaum.
[reporter 2] Five months in prison,
five months of home detention,
two years of probation,
and a fine of $30,000.
When she was sentenced, it was very emotional.
[crowd] Save Martha!
[Sophie] So shocking.
- [crowd] Save Martha! - [man speaks indistinctly]
[woman] Injustice!
[news anchor] Welcome to Alderson,
the prison town
that will be Martha Stewart's home for the next five months.
[male reporter] Its nickname may be Camp Cupcake,
but the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia, is no picnic.
[reporter] Prison guards have said they can't guarantee the famous inmate
won't be harassed.
Are we gonna be able to follow her around and make sure that no inmate bothers her?
No.
[female interviewer] Stewart has been so in control.
How hard is that going to be,
how difficult for Martha Stewart to give up control?
[male commentator] Well, uh, it's gonna be terrible.
It's gonna be terrible for Martha Stewart.
[music ends]
[birds chirping]
[somber music playing]
[woman] "Friday, October 8th."
"Entry 5:55 a.m."
"Pearl earrings okay, although questioned."
"No contacts allowed. Threw all in box."
"Physical exam, stripped of all clothes."
"Squat, arms out,
cough."
"Embarrassing."
I had to do all that crap that you see in the movies.
You… you can't even believe that that's what you're going through.
[woman] "Taken to room J11, second floor."
"My room contains an old double-decker bedstead,
metal spring, and metal frame."
"The springs are very saggy and thus an unhealthy bed set."
"I would actually prefer the top."
"But over 62 years old,
and you automatically are given a lower bunk."
[music ends]
[woman] "4:00 a.m., wake up."
[pensive music playing]
[woman] "5:00 a.m., shower, shampoo."
"7:00 a.m., 'coffee.'"
"What worries me is the very poor quality of the food
and the unavailability of fresh anything,
as there are many starches and many carbs, many fat foods."
"No pure anything."
We had the worst coffee imaginable.
I wasn't a coffee drinker anyway, but, boy, that coffee was terrible.
And the milk was ter-- Everything was terrible.
[woman] "Visit to library."
"Watched Grand Canyon, Reader's Digest Series."
"One has to use this time to learn something new every day."
"Putting me here is a joke."
"And everyone seems to know that."
[music fades]
[woman] "Today I saw two very well-dressed ladies walking,
and I breezed by them,
remarking on the beautiful warm morning and how nice they looked."
"When I realized, from the big silver keychain,
that they were guards,
I lightly brushed the chain."
[chain clinking]
"Later, I was called in to be told never, ever to touch a guard
without expecting severe reprimand."
"Of course I apologized,
but the incident was so minor when it occurred
that I did not think about it for the rest of the day."
[ominous music playing]
[cell door slams]
[Martha] I was dragged into solitary for touching an officer.
No food or water for a day.
This was Camp Cupcake, remember? That was the nickname.
Camp Cupcake.
It was not a cupcake.
I went almost every weekend.
I'd get there the night before and get up at about four in the morning
and take some giant blankets
because you had to get on line out of your car in order to get a table.
[poignant music playing]
I watched her walk in
in prison-issued sweats and eyeglasses.
And I had never, ever seen Martha in eyeglasses before.
There was some embarrassment that she had,
especially with somebody like me who she'd known for so long.
And there were people there that were looking to do something to her.
They wanted to hurt her.
[music fades]
[Martha] Late at night, walking home in the dark,
you could've been jumped.
People were jumped, beat, beaten.
Um, stuff like that happened.
I was warned.
But I was not protected.
[pensive music playing]
[rooster crows]
[woman] "Another day."
"I visited the greenhouses."
"There's no fertilizers, no pots, no seeds, et cetera."
"There is a small garden designed and planted by an inmate
who is here for a long time."
"She too has no resources."
"I gave her some of my gardening books, and she was very grateful."
"Prison does nothing to reform,
to rehabilitate, to educate, to make people feel better,
or to induce people to go on to better things."
- [music fades] - [typewriter clacking]
[woman] "Charles Simonyi. First of all, how are you?"
"I have not gotten an email or even a note from you for so long."
[somber music playing]
[woman] "I'd love to hear from you."
[interviewer] Why'd your boyfriend only visit you once?
[Martha] I don't think he liked hanging out with somebody in jail.
He was out on his boat, floating around the world.
[typewriter clacking]
[Martha] That was distressing to me.
[woman] "The days are quite indistinguishable one from another."
"And I am feeling a bit out of touch."
"A bit alone."
"A bit solitary."
[owl hoots]
[woman] "I feel very inconsequential today,
as if no one would miss me if I never came back to reality."
[interviewer] You wrote about wondering if…
if you didn't return, would anyone miss you?
Oh.
Hmm.
I had to keep my self-esteem
and my conviction that I was a good person.
I mean, it was a pretty terrible time.
Listen, here's this girl from a family
of eight in Nutley, New Jersey, living modestly, who gets a good idea,
builds it into something really fine, and profits from it.
That's basically my story.
And then… then falls in a hole.
And that hole, I had to climb out of a fucking hole.
[upbeat music playing]
[woman] "Rose at 6:00 a.m., showered, dressed,
touched up the upstairs bathroom, my week's job."
"I rushed over to the chapel where the Muslim women
had asked me to be one of five speakers to a good gathering of interesting souls
who want so much to better themselves and improve their situations."
"I encouraged them to be entrepreneurial
if they had a good, unique, and clear idea,
one that would help others, an idea that many needed or wanted."
"The same things I've been saying for many years
that still resonate and make sense."
"And I know the girls all took something away with them
from my remarks."
[Martha] I was asked to help with business plans.
It was just interesting to hear the hopes and dreams of these women.
I mean, at first she was a little bit bossy.
She was used to being the boss.
But it didn't take her long to realize that we were all in this boat together.
[woman] "Susan Spry picked dandelions,
sorrel, wild onions, and garlic,
and gave me half her harvest."
"She has been here for 12 years. Smart. A gardener in training."
"She is so happy to have someone now to talk to about gardening
and picking and health and vegetables with."
"I am looking forward to a feast."
Martha tried to make life pleasant.
She said to me, "I wanna have dinner. We'll have cucumber sandwiches."
I thought, "Cucumber sandwiches? What is a cucumber sandwich?"
[laughs] "I dunno what a cucumber sandwich is."
She was congenial with everyone.
She was definitely wanting to be a part of everyone's life there.
[woman] "Time is passing quickly,
and soon I will return to the world to which I belong."
"There is much to discuss, think about, plan."
"When I get out in March,
I want many things ready to get right to work."
[music ends]
[reporter] Good evening.
Although Martha Stewart's term doesn't officially end here until Sunday,
the thinking around here is that she could be out
as early as tomorrow morning,
just in time for spring and just in time for the next chapter of Martha, Inc.
[woman] "Prison."
"What was it really like?"
"Was I frightened?"
"Was I worried? Was I bored?"
[pensive music playing]
[woman] "I had time for the very first time in many years to contemplate,
to not worry,
to get rid of the stress of three years."
"New friends."
"New ideas germinating."
"Ability, through it all, to be productive."
"My return to my life coincides with the advent of spring
and all that is fresh and new."
We did become close. We became good friends.
We helped each other through a very difficult time.
I do believe that… that Martha had a profound effect on me.
[woman] "And I wish, from the bottom of my heart,
that I could help every one of these women find a better life
for them, their kids,
and their families."
[hopeful music playing]
[helicopter thrumming]
[reporter] Martha Stewart's five months in a federal prison have come to an end.
[reporter 2] There she is, Martha Stewart.
[people cheering]
[woman] How do you feel? How do you feel?
[people cheering and shouting]
We picked her up,
and my first words to her were, "What the fuck are you wearing?"
[Martha] In prison, I found the best craftspeople.
This beautiful poncho was gifted to me by one of the inmates,
and it looked really great leaving the prison.
[chuckles]
My boyfriend, Charles, sent his plane to pick me up.
I was very happy to be getting out of there.
[male reporter] To thunderous applause here in Manhattan today,
Martha Stewart returned to work after more than a few days off.
She rallied and thanked the troops at Martha Stewart Omnimedia.
[Martha] I love all of you from the bottom of my heart.
And I'm really glad to be home.
[sniffs]
[audience clapping]
She had lived before that being worried about what people thought of her.
And then the worst thing that could possibly happen happened.
And she survived it.
[music fades]
[Isolde] She'd been set free by going to prison.
[The Martha Stewart Show theme song playing]
[audience clapping and cheering]
[Martha] I am free.
No ankle bracelet.
[audience cheering]
Mark Burnett, the creator of The Apprentice,
proposed a daily show, The Martha Show.
And I was excited about that, because yes, of course I wanna do that.
[man] Do you think you're back?
I hope that I have reemerged as a teacher,
as a purveyor of great information.
We are going to mix up the rub, and you're going to rub it into the meat.
Wow.
[audience laughing]
Okay.
[Martha] Mark Burnett wanted a talk show with variety guests,
and I really wanted my old format of how-to.
She was at a vulnerable moment right then.
Had Martha not gone to prison,
she wouldn't have done the deal with Mark Burnett.
She lost control.
[audience shrieking and laughing]
And the result wasn't what she or the audiences came to expect.
It just felt forced.
[Martha] I thought I could teach you something today.
And now, do you get to cook a lot at home or not?
[laughs] I…
I cannot imagine Martha wanting to spend her time
with celebrities who were not expert at whatever it is they were doing.
Those damn TV shows were a grade of malice.
People gravitated to Martha Stewart not because she was celebrity adjacent
or because she was a celebrity.
It was because of what she stood for.
And the daytime show, that wasn't authentic to Martha.
[Martha] Mark Burnett missed the point of Martha Stewart.
Live audience and crummy music and… Ugh.
That was more like prison
than being at Alderson.
Just shows when she controls everything,
it works more than if she lets someone else control.
Martha wanted to do so many things.
But she wasn't allowed to be a CEO because of the conviction.
[reporter] Stewart is charging full steam ahead
to try to save her company.
This year, they posted a $35 million loss.
[Gael] The renegotiation of the Kmart contract was pitiful.
And the deals that we were being offered weren't as lucrative.
When you're not making the money that you need to make,
there is a lot of confusion.
And the relationship to authenticity was harder and harder to hold on to.
You can't do everything perfectly.
In the 2000s,
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
increasingly became a very struggling and shrinking company.
Her social and cultural relevance just declined.
Once you took Martha out of the CEO seat,
things were not gonna work as well.
Martha didn't have the control to bring the company back.
It was a publicly traded company.
There were things that Martha simply had to get out of the way on
and had absolutely no authority on.
Very hard thing for Martha to accept.
[pensive music playing]
[Martha] I was much more agile prior to prison.
And my life became a little less exciting.
And I think also, it affected my relationship with Charles.
We had this elaborate trip planned.
We were visiting the president of Iceland and we were in bed,
and he said, "You know, Martha, I'm going to get married."
He said, "I'm gonna get married to Lisa."
I said, "Lisa who?"
I mean, he hadn't told me a word.
[somber music playing]
[Martha] "And, by the way, her parents don't want me to ever speak to you again."
I thought that was the most horrible thing a person could do.
How can a man who spent 15 years with me
just do that?
What a stupid thing to do to someone that you actually cared about.
So, second "divorce."
[music fades]
The Wall Street Journal is reporting this exclusively
that Martha Stewart is close to selling her empire,
called Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, to a retail licensing company…
[reporter] …sequential licenses on a number of brands,
including items in Jessica Simpson's collection
and Linens 'n Things.
That was a devastating moment because it marked the end of an era.
[wistful music playing]
There are moments in time that are inflection points.
As I look back on that, I think, Jesus, how that fucked up everything.
She'd have this company that now would be worth tens of billions of dollars.
It would've been huge. The whole world would've been different.
Imagine.
[Martha] My company was founded by me,
based on all my ideas and my creativity
and my inner thoughts, put it that way.
And no longer.
Being owned by somebody else
is not the same as having your own company at all.
Ugh.
[female reporter] How much money?
[Martha] Did I lose?
Personally, oh, I'm sure--
$500 million?
No, probably more than $1 billion, of course.
- So… - More than $1 billion?
[Martha] Yes, and…
Enough. Let's get on with… with the future.
By that time,
if you wanna believe in mojo,
I think my mojo was damaged.
I wasn't as adept as I had been.
Something slowed me down.
But I have two mottos.
One is, "Learn something new every day."
And the second one is,
"When you're through changing, you're through."
Change that garden if you don't like it.
Rip it out, and you start all over again.
[peppy percussive music playing]
[crowd cheering and yelling]
[man] Justin!
Justin Bieber, he really was sort of at the lowest point of his life.
[Justin] What'd you say?
- [man] You heard. - I'll beat the fuck out of you.
[Jonas] And so his manager and Justin
both thought the Comedy Central Roast would be an opportunity
for Justin to kind of get out in front of this train wreck
that was happening all around him.
- So, stakes were high. - [screams]
Nothing's off limits. It's a roast. You hit everywhere.
[Jonas] Justin's manager called me one day and he goes,
"I got the greatest thing ever."
"I got Martha Stewart."
[man] Martha, for us right here!
[Jonas] Martha's a legend,
and she's bringing in her own experience, having been in prison.
And that was also the trajectory that Justin was on.
It was like an intervention. [chuckles]
At that point, Martha had been off the air for a few years.
And, culturally, she had become pretty irrelevant.
[reporter] What was your reaction
when they asked you to be here for the Bieber roast?
Cool. Cool.
[Meg] It just felt like it came out of left field.
It really was like, what?
[Martha] My publicist said,
"This is a little bit out of your milieu, Martha."
And my daughter said, "Okay, Mom, yeah, sure, go out and do Comedy Central."
She said, "Have you ever watched a Comedy Central Roast?"
And I said, "Well, I… I think so."
I hadn't watched anything.
[man in crowd] Hey, Martha!
- [crowd clamoring] - [clapping]
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Kevin Hart.
And welcome to the Comedy Central roast of Justin Bieber.
- [crowd cheers and applauds] - [Kevin] Yeah!
We're about to give this boy a ass whupping that he deserves. We are.
We are!
For all the Black people that are confused about that old white woman on the couch,
that's Martha Stewart.
- [laughter] - Yeah, right there.
That's Martha Stewart right there.
Martha Stewart had her shirt off in my dressing room.
[laughter]
Stop. Stop. Stop.
Don't get the wrong idea.
She just wanted me to titty fuck her! Yeah!
[audience laughs]
I'm just trying to loosen y'all up. I'm sorry.
[Martha] Alexis said, "You know they roast you too?"
And I didn't pay any attention to that.
Martha, it's nice to see you, uh, interacting with Black people
for the first time since prison.
- That's really nice. - [audience laughs]
Martha is so old, her first period was the Renaissance.
[audience laughs]
The real surprise to all of us
was what everybody else was saying about her.
That was not something we had been warned about.
All these rappers onstage,
and Martha Stewart has done the most jail time.
Everything that transpires in a roast is in the pursuit, of course, of a laugh,
but also to get to some sort of truth.
[Kevin] Martha Stewart, everybody.
- [crowd cheering] - [upbeat music playing]
First of all, thank you, Kevin Hart.
It's really great to be here-- Oh, there you are.
Sitting and listening to you yell your jokes over the last hour
is the hardest time I've ever done.
As we all know,
Kevin is one of the biggest movie stars in the business right now,
and he deserves it.
He's struggled for years.
When he finally got his first big paycheck,
he spent $150,000 on a watch. [laughs]
I forget that term, uh, for that.
It's not African American rich.
It'll come to me.
[audience laughs]
You would never know that Snoop Dogg is 43 now,
which is three times as long as actual dogs live
and twice as long as most of his friends.
[dismayed laughter]
[Jonas] You expected her to come up and do something soft.
But she went the other way.
I do a lot of gardening,
but you are without a doubt
the dirtiest used-up ho I have ever seen.
[Jonas] It shocked the audience. How could Martha Stewart be that funny?
Let's get to the reason I'm here tonight, which is to give Justin Bieber some tips
to use when he inevitably ends up in prison.
[audience laughs]
I've been in lockup, and you wouldn't last a week,
so pay attention.
The first thing you'll need is a shank.
I made mine out of a pintail comb and a pack of gum.
[audience laughing]
[laughs]
I'll show you how later.
It's so simple.
I found Bubblicious works best, and it's so much fun to say.
You see, when I did my stretch,
all the hood rats on my cell block
wanted to break off a piece of Martha Stewart's ass,
so I decided some bitch needed to get got.
I walked into the chow hall,
picked out the biggest bull dyke,
and I stuck her.
From then on, prison was easier than making blueberry scones.
[crowd roars with laughter]
[Martha laughs]
[upbeat strings music playing]
[Jonas] She was the star of that roast.
It was a masterstroke.
[Martha speaks indistinctly]
[Meg] It was brilliant in so many ways,
because it was Martha reclaiming her identity.
Whoo!
[Meg] And it really made waves.
It catapulted her into a younger audience
who said, "She's one of us."
[Martha] I sat next to Snoop for seven hours.
And he was smoking away, blunt after blunt,
and I was just getting higher and higher sitting there.
We just so happened to be sitting side by side,
and my secondhand smoke, you know, created an idea
that maybe we should hang out and talk about some things.
In the beginning, it was more about me telling her I like what she do,
and how she get down.
And I felt like she'd be an upgrade for me just to be in her presence.
And it spawned an adventure.
[exclaiming]
[Martha] We've put together a kind of funny, quirky,
entertaining dinner-party show where we actually cook.
Melding cultures is a good thing.
That is such an exquisite pairing because of everything that she represents,
and he just seems like the polar opposite.
It was just a hit.
- [Snoop] Work on 'em, Martha. - [woman] Yeah.
I like the way you're spinning that sugar round them balls. That's nice.
[laughter]
[man] It fucked me up when I see you with Martha Stewart.
'Cause I'm like, yo, man, I grew up off Snoop.
[Snoop] When me and Martha got a chance to hang out,
we discovered that we love the same things and we have the same beliefs in life.
We love to love and we love to teach.
- [audience cheering] - Pretty good.
[woman] I have said this, and I will say it again.
If you're not following Martha Stewart on social media,
you're truly missing out.
♪ Fresh out the clink Cooking up Martha Stewart ♪
She embraced social media
in a way that most people in their seventies
did not know how to embrace. [laughs]
♪ Gravy with your mama in the kitchen Martha Stewart ♪
I picked this up earlier today.
♪ I keep a cougar, Martha Stewart ♪
[Meg] The culture found her again.
And she's still the Martha that we knew from decades ago.
Make hay when the sun shines.
[Meg] Her brand endured because there was something there that was genuine.
She's a hustler, and she's shrewd as hell.
[director] And action.
BIC EZ Reach lighters, perfect for lighting up.
All your celebrations.
[Caitlin] The hardest thing to do is to retain cultural relevance
as an older woman,
and she's done it.
And now she's reinvented herself as the sexy grandmother.
- [woman] That's called a thirst trap. - [Martha] I heard that.
[presenter] Introducing this year's cover model,
Martha Stewart.
[woman] She's the oldest Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.
[Martha] A hundred billion impressions.
[woman] Do not try to pigeonhole Martha Stewart.
She is the mother of reinvention.
[whimsical music playing]
[man] The definitive American woman of our time.
[TV host] There are just a handful of people
who have literally changed the way we live in our culture,
what we buy, what we think about,
and she is one of them.
[Susan] Martha created a world,
a world of lushness and beauty.
[woman 2] Her specialty was good taste and creativity.
It's missing.
And I think we were a sadder world.
[Susan] She was preposterously perfect,
and that comes with some loneliness,
especially if you're a woman.
It's automatic.
[Meg] All along the way, there were people who were doubters,
the haters, and the people who really wanted to bring her down.
Part of the remarkable aspects of her story is that she has triumphed
over so much of that.
By being more accepting of the things that she could not control,
it made her more relevant to the world.
[Susan] She quit being the goddess, and she became one of us,
one of the women who had it rough
and came out and said, "I'm going forward."
Just checking to make sure everything has water and is growing nicely.
I worry about all my seedlings.
[woman] "The cultural meaning of Martha Stewart's success
lies deep in the success itself…
which is why even her troubles and strivings are part of the message,
not detrimental but integral to the brand."
[Martha whistles, clicks tongue]
[woman] "She has branded herself not as Superwoman
but as Everywoman."
[Martha] I have always looked for voids.
What doesn't exist? What needs to exist?
What can I do to help fill that void?
You see a… a field,
and you turn that field into a fantastic garden.
You see a flower that shouldn't be there,
you put something in its place that belongs.
I don't wanna put up with imperfection.
Although, I've learned as one gets older,
imperfections are a little bit more okay
than they were when I was a little younger.
I think, uh, I think imperfection is… is something that you can deal with.
[laughs]
[inspiring strings music playing]
[music ends]
["Beautiful" by Snoop Dogg playing]
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Oh yeah, there's something about you ♪
♪ Beautiful, I just want you to know ♪
♪ You're my favorite girl ♪
♪ Oh yeah, there's something about you ♪
♪ Beautiful, I just want you to know ♪
♪ You're my favorite girl ♪
♪ Oh yeah, there's something about you ♪
♪ I know you gon' lose it This new Snoop shit ♪
♪ Come on, baby boo You gots to get into it ♪
♪ Don't fool with the player With the cool whip ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah You know I'm always on that cool shit ♪
♪ Walk to it, do it how you do it ♪
♪ Have a glass Let me put you in the mood ♪
♪ Little cutie looking like a student ♪
♪ Long hair with your big, fat booty ♪
♪ Back in the days You was a girl I went to school with ♪
♪ Had to tell your moms and sister To cool it ♪
♪ The girl wanna do it I just might do it ♪
♪ Hit her up with some pimp-pimp fluid ♪
♪ Mami don't worry, I won't abuse it ♪
♪ Hurry up and finish So we can watch Clueless ♪
♪ I laugh at these bitches When they ask who do this ♪
♪ But everybody know Who girl that you is ♪
♪ Beautiful, I just want you to know ♪
♪ That you're my favorite girl ♪
[vocalizing]
♪ See, I just want you to know That you are really special ♪
[vocalizing]
♪ Oh yeah, there's something about you ♪
♪ Snoop Dogg clothing That's what I'm groomed in ♪
♪ You got my pictures on the wall In your room and ♪
♪ Girls be complaining You keep me booming ♪
♪ But girls like that Wanna listen to Pat Boone ♪
♪ You's a college girl But that don't stop you from doin' ♪
♪ Come and see the Dogg In the hood near you and ♪
♪ You don't ask why I roll with a crew ♪
♪ And twist up my fingers And wear dark blue ♪
♪ And on the East side That's the crew I choose ♪
♪ Nothing I do is new to you ♪
♪ I smack up the world If they rude to you ♪
♪ 'Cause, baby girl, you so beautiful ♪
♪ Beautiful, I just want you to know ♪
♪ You're my favorite girl ♪
[vocalizing]
♪ See, I just want you to know That you are really special ♪
[vocalizing]
[song ends]