Let’s play a game: What do you think of when you think of Martha Stewart? Her unlikely friendship with Snoop Dogg? A pre-#tradwife trad wife? A daytime television personality who served jail time? Something else entirely?
Well, did the fact that she’s the world’s first self-made woman billionaire cross your mind? R.J. Cutler’s new documentary, Martha (streaming now on Netflix), interrogates all those identities.
The film starts with Stewart, tireless at 83, zipping around the grounds of her 153-acre property in Bedford, New York, in what appears to be a souped-up golf cart, surveying her gardens and orchards as groundskeepers prepare them for winter. Such inspections allow her to ensure that everything is done properly; her garden is a perennial source of joy.
Later, sitting down with Cutler (the documentarian behind The September Issue), she quotes a Dutch proverb: “If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk. If you want to be happy for a year, get married. But if you want to be happy forever, plant a garden.” Though we’ll go on to hear from her associates and family in voiceover, Stewart herself is the only interviewee we see onscreen, her conversation with Cutler spliced with ample footage from a life and career that has spawned four TV shows, two magazines, and more than 100 books.
And the documentary goes there, no holds barred. Cutler asks Stewart about her personal life, public scrutiny, and her path to spending five months at Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia. (In 2004, Stewart was famously found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators relating to the sale of ImClone Systems stock in late 2001.) And he keeps things fair. Amid Stewart’s recollection of her husband’s infidelity, Cutler reminds Stewart that she had also strayed—and she did it first. The resulting exchange is highly amusing.
Stewart tells of her childhood in working-class Nutley, New Jersey, where her domineering father, a salesman in the garment manufacturing industry, encouraged his children to garden to help put food on the table—though Stewart’s good looks would eventually lead to modeling jobs with paydays that went further. Still, she cites those grueling hours in the garden as seminal to the foundation of her famous grit and work ethic.
