New Martha Stewart documentary shows fragility beneath the Darth Vader persona

Although my house looks like a crime scene, I’m a sucker for celebrity domestic goddesses. My favourite is Ina Garten, who is warm, round and squishy, like a loaf of freshly baked bread. Yet Ina is also a woman of the world, a former White House employee and Hamptons deli owner, able to whip up a cocktail and configure a platter of appetisers fit for the ambassador’s reception in seconds. She may exude kindly, flour-covered softness, but give her a few martinis and you can bet she’s got stories that would singe your eyebrows. Her contemporary Martha Stewart, on the other hand, is like a cold salmon mousse that you’re not even allowed to look at, let alone scoop a big old piece of bread into and scoff.

She’s a flinty lifestyle machine who is obviously brilliant at creating magnificent tablescapes, geometrically perfect Christmas cookies and lush, Instagrammable gardens, but is also very good at screaming at her staff. 

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In one scene of the fascinating documentary Martha, she berates a kitchen assistant for using the incorrect knife to cut an orange, and I felt my toes curling. I recognise that voice, I thought – it’s everyone I’ve ever met who ever told me I was doing something wrong! Quick! Hide under a cushion! Preferably several attractive scatter cushions that I have lovingly embroidered myself from a pattern in Martha Stewart Living. 

The real Martha Stewart, though, is unrepentant about her exacting attitude. She demands high standards, can’t stand waste and inefficiency and sees herself as a trailblazing feminist and a wise teacher. The list of things she doesn’t like are never ending – ranging from lack of attention to detail to red flowers. If a red flower dares to grow in her garden, it gets decapitated immediately by one of her minions. You can’t help thinking that she would have been a real boon to Nazi Germany – although she might have changed their brand colours to sage green and terracotta, and perhaps introduced a floral arch to the front entrance of the Reichstag. 

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Still, we all know that when a man creates a billion-dollar empire, nobody demands that he’s likeable or nice. Who cares that Martha’s got about as much personal warmth as Darth Vader? Well, everyone, it would seem. Women who aren’t likeable pay a high price, and if you make one mistake, everyone will ecstatically cheer you on the way down, especially if you make your living from peddling perfection. 

Even if you’ve never stuffed an olive in your life, you’ll be vaguely familiar with Martha’s fall from grace, when she was sentenced to six months in prison for insider trading. The documentary argues that she was unfairly made an example of by ambitious prosecutors. And it certainly seems like an inflated charge that could have easily been brushed away by any man in a suit with a decent lawyer. 

The years that followed were what Martha hates most of all: a mess. But you’ve got to hand it to her: she took those lemons and made lemonade. During her incarceration in an open women’s prison, nicknamed Camp Cupcake, she taught the other women gardening and business management, and championed their creative projects.

On her release, she achieved legendary status by befriending Snoop Dogg, and now her empire is booming once again on social media, where she does make up tutorials and tells Gen Z how to make successful champagne fountains. 

Yes, her personality is still as cool as gazpacho, and I would NEVER cut an orange in her presence. But I think she’s been misunderstood. Her attitude to relationships, her obsessive list-making, her need to control every little detail, made me wonder whether she might be neurodivergent. Underneath the cast iron Le Creuset glaze, she seems quite fragile.

You know, I might even invite her to my fantasy celebrity dinner party, along with my best mate Ina. They could both do the cooking, and I’ll sit around scratching my arse. After all, as this documentary proves, nobody’s perfect. 

Martha is streaming on Netflix now. 

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