Netflix just released its highly anticipated documentary about Martha Stewart’s life. And while it was packed with several shocking revelations, Martha herself isn’t thrilled about the way she was depicted—at least in the second half of the film.
While Stewart praised the beginning, she called the rest “a bit lazy” in an interview with The New York Times. She particularly took issue with how much of the doc delved into her legal woes and subsequent prison sentence.
“The trial and the actual incarceration was less than two years out of an 83-year life. I considered it a vacation, to tell you the truth,” she told the newspaper.
Stewart was also upset over documentarian R.J. Cutler’s unflattering camera angles—she claims he chose the “ugliest” ones—and the musical score he chose for the film. Despite telling Cutler that rap music was “essential” to the documentary, he chose “some lousy classical score” instead, according to Martha. “[It] has nothing to do with me,” she said.
Stewart also felt there was a lack of context to the final moments of the film, when she is shown recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon. “Those last scenes with me looking like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden? Boy, I told him to get rid of those,” she added. “And he refused. I hate those last scenes. Hate them.”
Cutler reportedly told the Times that he was proud of the project, however, not surprised that Stewart found it hard “to see aspects of it.”
But despite her laundry list of complaints about the documentary, Martha did promote the film on her own social media, writing, “be sure to watch!” Her perception of the film wasn’t entirely negative, either.
“So many girls have already told me—young women—that watching it gave them a strength that they didn’t know they had,” she told the outlet. “And that’s the thing I like most about the documentary.”
Megan Schaltegger is an NYC-based writer. She loves strong coffee, eating her way through the Manhattan food scene, and her dog, Murray. She promises not to talk about herself in third person IRL.
