Martha Stewart has lived so many lives. She’s been a stock broker, caterer, author, model, television personality, and prisoner. However, there’s still a lot you might not know about the brilliant businesswoman and self-made billionaire who has reinvented herself time and time again.
The new Netflix documentary, Martha, offers an intimate look into Stewart’s life—from her childhood and early career to her trial and comeback. Here are the nine most surprising revelations from the film.
Martha learned to garden because her family struggled financially.
Martha Stewart became a billionaire in 1999. However, she earned the title as the first female self-made billionaire for a reason—she didn’t grow up with wealth. In fact, Stewart first learned to garden as a child as a way to help her family put food on the table. According to her brother, they would even trade crops with people for other goods.
“He stood over you like a sergeant,” Martha said of her dad. “Mean, mean. ‘You’re not doing it right.'”
“He would give us an order, ‘Weed the tomatoes.’ And if we didn’t follow through, we’d pay the penalty,” her brother chimed in. “To this day, I despise gardening.”
Martha was a stock broker before her media career.
While she’s described as the “original influencer” throughout the documentary, Stewart started out as a stock broker, which should hardly come as a surprise given her financial success and keen business mind. Ultimately, she left that career behind after moving to Connecticut. She redirected her aspirations to the catering business that would ultimately kick off her success in media.
Martha had a “brief affair.” Her marriage to Andy Stewart was never picture perfect.
The couple’s relationship was fraught with drama and infidelity. Stewart admitted to kissing a stranger in the Duomo in Florence, Italy, during her honeymoon. She later had a “brief affair with a very attractive Irish man,” though she called it “nothing.”
“I would’ve never broken up a marriage for it. It was nothing,” she said. “It was like the kiss in the cathedral.”
However, her husband Andy Stewart reportedly had many more affairs. “I don’t know how many girlfriends he had at this time, but I think there were quite a few,” she said in the documentary. He even took up with one of her employees that was living on the grounds of their Connecticut home at the time.
“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,” she said. “And look at him as a piece of shit and get out of it. Get out of that marriage. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t walk away.” The pair ultimately divorced after 29 years of marriage.
Her relationship with her daughter is complex yet close.
From the beginning, Martha had complex feelings about her role as a mother, telling viewers, “How could I be a really great mother if I didn’t have the education to be a mother?”
Even her daughter, Alexis, admits it was a difficult upbringing. “I grew up in a very uncomfortable house and I learned to suppress most of my emotions,” she said. The film narrator adds that “Martha didn’t have that great joy in her marriage and raising a child.”
However, despite the pair’s complicated relationship, they have remained tight-knit over the years. In fact, the pair bought an Upper West Side duplex together earlier this year.
Her former bosses didn’t want Martha Stewart to have her own television show.
Despite the indisputable success of her magazine empire, her bosses at Time Inc. were not keen on Martha taking her name and likeness to TV. In fact, the publishing company reportedly worried that if they had access to Stewart on television, they would not buy magazines.
Of course, they were very wrong.
Martha’s best friend testified against her in court.
During the most difficult time of Stewart’s life, she was betrayed by one of her closest confidants: her best friend, Mariana Pasternak, who testified against her.
“I truthfully testified as my legal obligation was,” Pasternak said in the documentary. “That’s why I said those words, and I looked in the courtroom and I saw Martha’s eyes. You know, that cold ice look in her eyes. I knew our friendship was over.”
However, Martha argued that her old friend was “a damaged human being” when she got on the stand. “She was frightened, she was told what to say. It made me very sad.”
Martha Stewart was dragged into solitary confinement in prison.
While serving out her sentence for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators, Stewart was tossed into solitary confinement after allegedly touching an officer. She was reportedly denied food and water for the entire day.
“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,” Stewart wrote in a letter from prison. “When I realized from the big silver key chain that they were guards, I lightly brushed the chain. Later I was called in to be told never, ever touch a guard without expecting severe reprimand.”
“This was Camp Cupcake, remember? That was the nickname. Camp Cupcake. It was not a cupcake,” she added.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has disputed Martha’s claims of being put in solitary confinement, according to US Weekly.
Martha’s boyfriend of 15 years told her he was marrying someone else while they were still together.
Stewart’s now-ex boyfriend Charles Simonyi—who was a billionaire in his own right as a creator of Microsoft Office—broke up with her after 15 years together. The pair was reportedly in bed together when he told her that he was planning to marry Lisa Persdotter, the daughter of a Swedish millionaire, and he could no longer have contact with her as a result.
“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?” she said. “What a stupid thing to do to someone that you actually cared about.”
Martha Stewart’s appearance at the Justin Bieber Comedy Central roast revived her career.
After prison, Martha Stewart said she lost her “mojo.” However, an unlikely TV appearance that helped her get it back: Justin Bieber’s Comedy Central roast, where she shocked audiences with her jokes.
“It was a masterstroke. It was brilliant in so many ways because it was Martha reclaiming her identity, and it really made waves,” Los Angeles Times reporter Meg James said.
It was at the roast where Martha also formed her unlikely friendship with Snoop Dogg, who she sat next to. “She just so happened to be sitting side by side, and my second-hand smoke created an idea that maybe we should hang out and talk about things,” the rapper added. It spawned the idea for their show, Martha & Snoop.
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.