©Courtesy of Netflix
Martha, R. J. Cutler’s documentary about ex-con Martha Stewart will stream on Netflix on October 30 after its recent debut at Telluride. Cutler is a veteran documentarian whose earlier subjects included Anna Wintour, Elton John, Billie Eilish, and Dick Cheney.
Stewart, who had long been revered as an influential tastemaker, became the nation’s first self-made female billionaire. She served five months in jail in 2004 after she was convicted of obstructing justice in a fraudulent insider trading scandal.
“I was a trophy for those idiots,” Stewart says in the film. Donning her chef’s hat, she added “Those prosecutors should’ve been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high.” After her own time in the cooker, Stewart made a comeback. She now appears with hip-hop gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg in the VH1 cooking show titled Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party.
In describing her re-invention, Stewart says “I had to climb out of a hole. The cookie-cutter house and the cookie-cutter life, that was not for me. I could’ve just been a miserable, has-been housewife, but I didn’t let that happen to myself.”
The 83-year-old Stewart also confesses to Cutler that she’d been unfaithful to her ex-husband Andrew Stewart. The couple were married in 1961 and divorced in 1990. In the film’s trailer, she declares: “Young women, listen to my advice, if you’re married and your husband starts to cheat on you, he’s a piece of shit. Get out of that marriage.”
Stewart added that “Getting divorced was a terrible thing for me, because we were the first to divorce in my family. And that we haven’t spoken since the divorce is even more painful. But I’m very strong, and I’m very motivated to get on with life.”
When she was sentenced, Stewart vowed, “I’ll be back. I will be back. I’m used to all kinds of hard work, as you know, and I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid whatsoever.” Upon her release from prison, she declared: “The experience of the last five months in Alderson, West Virginia, has been life altering and life affirming. Someday, I hope to have the chance to talk more about all that has happened, the extraordinary people I have met here and all that I have learned.”
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