Martha Stewart, a modern-day queen of etiquette, stuck by the old adage that “honesty is the best policy” when sharing her critiques for a newly-released documentary about her life.
In an interview with the New York Times, Stewart praised the first half of Netflix’s “Martha” while describing the rest as “a bit lazy.” She told the newspaper over the phone that she felt the film spent too long on her time in prison and lacked color.
“The trial and the actual incarceration was less than two years out of an 83-year life,” Stewart said. “I considered it a vacation, to tell you the truth.”
Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and two years of supervised release after being found guilty of lying about a stock sale in her 2004 insider trading trial. In 2017, Stewart described her time in federal lockup as a “horrifying experience” and that “nothing” was good about it.
Among Stewart’s chief complaints is the unflattering way she felt documentarian R.J. Cutler portrayed her. She took issue with his unflattering camera angles, asserting that Cutler chose the “ugliest” ones.
She also felt there was a lack of context to her final scenes, where she was 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,” Stewart said. “And he refused. I hate those last scenes. Hate them.”
It seemed that Stewart wanted the film to include more whimsical anecdotes of her life and carry a lighter tone, even down to the musical score. She apparently told Culter that rap music should be an “essential” part of the documentary, such as the works Dr. Dre or her good friend Snoop Dogg.
“And then he gets some lousy classical score in there, which has nothing to do with me,” she said.
Cutler did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. He told the Times he was proud of the film but isn’t surprised that it was hard for Stewart “to see aspects of it.”
And even with her misgivings, Stewart said many women have already come up to her praising the retrospective on her life.
“And that’s the thing I like most about the documentary,” Stewart said. “It really shows a strong woman standing up for herself and living through horror as well as some huge success.”
