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Martha Stewart's Netflix documentary Martha has finally arrived to Netflix, and the homemaking icon isn't holding back. In Martha, the namesake looks back on her 50-year career and reveals details of her businesses, her marriage to Andrew Stewart, her time in prison, and her life in the public eye.
While things may have often appeared peachy for Stewart, she admitted that things have not always been sunshine and smiles.
Here are some shocking reveals from Martha, which is streaming now.
Martha grew up in a home plagued by alcoholism and abuse
Martha was born to Edward and Martha Kostyra in 1941. In the documentary, Martha described her father as "a dissatisfied, unhappy human being" and said he often started the mornings with a cup of coffee and a glass of red wine. In fact, the homemaker's passion for gardening began as Edward struggled with work and "couldn't support six children," therefore, she began gardening as a means to keep food on the table.
When Martha left home to study at Barnard, she met and began dating Andrew, who was studying law at Yale. The two eventually got engaged, and when Martha told her father the news, he slapped her. "[He] slapped me hard on my face and said, 'No, you're not marrying him. He's a Jew.' I remember getting that slap," she said. "I was not at all surprised because he was a bigot, and he was impulsive. But I said, 'I'm going to get married no matter what you think.'"
Martha had an affair during her marriage to Andrew Stewart
During one portion of the documentary, Martha offered some advice for the ladies.
"Young women, listen to my advice: If you're married and your husband starts to cheat on you, he's a piece of s**t," she said. "Get out of that marriage."
A producer then asks Martha, "Didn't you have an affair early on?," to which she replied, "Yeah, but I don't think Andy ever knew about that."
Martha and Andrew were married from 1961 to 1987, and finalized their divorced 1990. Martha also shared that Andrew cheated on her multiple times.
Martha wasn't excited about becoming a mother
Martha and Andrew welcomed their daughter Alexis in 1965, however, she revealed in the documentary that due to the abusive conditions of her childhood home, becoming a mother in her own right made for much discomfort.
"There was not a lot of affection in our house," Martha said. "How could I be a really great mother if I didn't have the education to be a mother?"
Martha's friend Kathy Tatlock supplemented these anecdotes in the documentary, saying "She took care of Lexi, but she didn't dote on her. She was always a bit chilly."
Alexis herself contributed a voiceover in the documentary, revealing that while she and her mother are now close, the home environment was "uncomfortable" to grow up in.
"I learned to suppress most of my emotions," Alexis said.
Andrew left Martha for one of her employees
Martha recalled Andrew secretly dating Robyn Faircloth, a florist who lived with the couple and worked for them on their Connecticut property.
"It was like I put out a snack for Andy," Martha said. "Andy betrayed me right on our property. Not nice." This was the final straw for Martha, who was heartbroken over the ordeal. The two separated in 1987, however, Martha continued to vie for his attention.
"Dear Andy, I understand you're craving for sex with others. No one will ever care about you like I do nor will ever love you as much," she wrote in a letter to Andrew amid their separation. "Give me another chance, Andy. I'm so sorry about so much. Why does it have to be too late?"
Andrew married Faircloth — who was 21 years younger than him — in 1990 after his and Martha's divorce was finalized. However, he and Faircloth eventually divorced as well. He married his current wife married his current wife Shyla Nelson Stewart in 2016.
Martha felt like a "trophy" in her criminal case
In 2003, Martha was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements in an interview with the FBI.
The indictments took place four years after Martha became the first self-made billionaire woman in America.
The FBI had been looking into Martha's friend Samuel Waksal's company, ImClone, and questioned her about selling her own stocks in the now defunct biopharma company on the same day as Waskal. Martha was later convicted of obstructing justice related to the probe and sentenced to five months in prison.
"I had to go through that to be a trophy for these idiots in the U.S. Attorney's office," said Stewart. "Those prosecutors should have been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high."
Martha spent a night in solitary confinement
During her stint in prison, Martha said she spent a full 24 hours in solitary confinement and was denied food and water after accidentally making physical contact with a passing correctional officer.
She shared a journal entry from that time, in which she wrote,"I am feeling a bit out of touch, a bit alone, a bit solitary. I feel very inconsequential today, as if no one would miss me if I never came back to reality."
Martha felt her talk show was similar to her time in prison
Upon her release from Alderson Federal Prison Camp, Stewart was offered a talk show by Survivor and The Apprentice producer Mark Burnett. She admitted that she was hesitant about doing the talk show, but she needed to bounce back after her release.
"I had to climb out of a f**king hole," said Martha.
However, the esteemed personality admitted that the seven seasons of The Martha Stewart Show were comparable to her time in the slammer.
"Live audience and crummy music and…ugh," Martha said. "That was more like prison than being at Alderson."
Following the Martha documentary, Martha did not like how she was portrayed
While fans are reeling over the documentary, Martha told the New York Times in an interview published on the day of the documentary's release that she didn't like certain aspects of the film.
She said that the documentary made her look "like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden."
She continued, saying the documentary's director R.J. Cutler used the "ugliest angle. And I told him, 'Don't use that angle! That's not the nicest angle. You had three cameras. Use the other angle.'" she recalled. "He would not change that."
Martha said she didn't hate the movie entirely. In fact, she was elated over some of the reactions from young women viewers who had the chance to see the documentary early. "So many girls have already told me — young women — that watching it gave them a strength that they didn't know they had," Martha said. "And that's the thing I like most about the documentary. It really shows a strong woman standing up for herself and living through horror as well as some huge success."
