Martha (2024) Movie Script

1
People always talk about
the really big figures
who change things culturally.
Did they create this moment,
or did the moment create them?
Martha's like that.
She made such
an enormous mark on the culture.
She is one of the most
powerful women on the planet.
Martha Stewart!
- Martha Stewart!
- Martha Stewart!
She has remained relevant
for more than 50 years.
I'm Martha Stewart.
I can do whatever I want.
- Martha Stewart!
- Now, let's make that bed.
Ooh!
Smoking on kush and hot pot.
Martha is one
of the greatest teachers ever.
She's the queen.
To this day,
you cannot take your eyes off
Martha Stewart.
If there was ever
the original influencer, it's Martha.
She made the world
we're now living in.
American women
needed to be redirected
from opening cans
of cream of mushroom soup
and pouring it on top
of broccoli and boiled chicken.
Before Martha,
there were a lot of women
who gave advice about homemaking.
And the number one thing
about these women,
they had to be very nice.
I'm Betty Crocker, and I promise you
a perfect cake every time you bake.
And what they were gonna
show you how to do was easy.
A solid cylinder
of mixed goodness.
When Martha came along,
she is saying something
completely different.
If you're having a big crowd
for Thanksgiving this year like we are,
you might wanna make
more than one kind of turkey.
This is one of the most beautiful turkeys.
It's encased in a puff pastry.
She became an aspirational force
to millions of people.
This idea that you could have it all.
Martha Stewart.
She's a self-made billionaire.
She was saying to women,
"Homemaking can be a powerful thing."
I'm always trying to fill a void.
Something that doesn't exist.
Something that people need
and want and don't have.
She wanted to make it possible
for people to have the homes
and surroundings that they wanted,
no matter whether you have money or not.
The high standards
that Martha has set for herself
have become many other people's as well.
And that is the problem
for a lot of women.
It's a fantasy world,
aspiring to a lifestyle
that you can't have.
Homemaker porn, essentially.
People were threatened.
We have very strong
but conflicted feelings
about how a woman should be at home.
"She's an intolerable perfectionist.
She's a control freak." How do you plead?
Um, guilty.
People attack me for being a homemaker,
but, in reality, what am I really doing?
I'm celebrating something
that's been put down for so long.
I think I'm like the modern feminist.
Everyone thought she was perfect,
but it was still something
she was striving for
and couldn't rest until she got it.
She was pursued
by furies of her own creation.
Martha Stewart
was indicted on criminal charges.
Her image is so associated
with perfection,
and this is the antithesis.
She faces years in prison.
Absolutely perfect.
- Perfectly, perfectly perfect.
- Perfect condition.
- Perfectly secure.
- Perfect little pattern.
Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
Picture-perfect.
Mmm. The perfect ending to a perfect meal.
Somewhere along the line,
Martha bought into the idea of perfection.
But the question is not
whether perfection is attainable.
The question is, "At what cost?"
What is it
that you most dislike?
That's a hard question to answer.
I dislike waste.
I dislike inefficiency.
Avoidance.
Impatience.
I dislike people who think
they can do more than they can do.
I dislike not paying attention to details,
being mean just to be mean.
I dislike aprons and housedresses.
I used to dislike the color purple.
A lot. But I don't dislike it so much...
And red. I...
I don't plant very many things red
in my garden, if anything.
Uh, if something pops up red,
it's usually taken out.
So red is another thing
I'm not very fond of.
Okay. Next?
It's October 18th.
We have lots to do in the garden.
I would like to lay the path to
the summerhouse garden from the main road.
I think we should do
rough stones like the other path,
more like cracked ice.
Send.
There's a little saying
that I really like.
If you wanna be happy for a year,
get married.
If you wanna be happy
for a decade, get a dog.
And if you wanna be happy
for the rest of your life, make a garden.
This garden looks pretty good.
I think we should probably do
a little bit of trimming on the boxwood.
New paragraph.
I was maligned for being a perfectionist,
criticized for trying to create
a lifestyle that was unattainable,
which was not the case at all.
What I was really trying
to do was to educate.
There seem to be some dead peonies,
which makes me very unhappy.
Send.
I am a perfectionist.
And it runs in the family.
And it started with my father.
Dad made each of us learn
how to garden.
He could grow anything.
I was the ideal daughter.
I wanted to learn.
He had a lot to teach. And I listened.
I was the one trusted
to iron his linen shirts.
And he had the Harris Tweed jacket
and the turquoise-blue tie
that matched his beautiful blue eyes.
My father was the handsomest father.
He loved me.
And it was very obvious
to everybody that I was his favorite.
He thought I was more like him
than the other children.
- In what way?
- Well, he was a perfectionist.
He got the job done
that he could... that he was set out to do.
Not his work work.
He was... he was a failure in work.
He could've done pretty much
anything he wanted to do,
and he was stuck in a salesman's job.
He sometimes started the day off
with a large glass of coffee and red wine.
So is that an alcoholic? Maybe.
But he never looked like a drunk.
He never stumbled around
and threw things and broke things.
That wasn't my father.
But he was a dissatisfied,
unhappy human being.
He couldn't support six kids.
And we needed food.
So we had gardens.
And we would trade
for goods that we couldn't grow.
He stood over you
like a sergeant.
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 paid the penalty.
We had our whippings.
It was the yardstick.
We dreaded the yardstick.
And at times, it was the end of the belt.
To this day, I despise gardening.
He had lost his job.
No money saved.
Six kids.
And they needed money.
There was a girl across the
street who spent her free time modeling.
She and her mother one day said to me,
"You're pretty enough to be a model.
Would you like to be introduced?"
I started off at $15 an hour,
which was a lot better
than the 50 I was getting babysitting.
Busy, active people, stop!
Now you can odor-proof your body.
Odor-proof...
That was a major event
in Nutley, New Jersey.
Everybody stopped everything
to watch Martha.
But I was not
a super-duper model.
I was never in that class.
But I was certainly successful.
I would give most
of my paycheck to my mother
because they still had
young children at home.
She made sure we always had good food.
She was such a good cook.
I stood by my mother's side
in the kitchen,
learning everything I could.
She was a schoolteacher,
and she had to cook 16 meals a day.
I thought that was pretty fantastic
that she could do all that.
But the cookie-cutter house
and the cookie-cutter life,
that was not for me.
Martha had a scholarship to Barnard School
in New York City, very prestigious.
I really loved college.
I really liked history,
art history, economics.
I was a popular girl on campus.
People knew who I was, a tall,
blonde, pretty girl from New Jersey,
walking around in Bermuda shorts,
looking chic.
I was looking for adventure,
looking for the future.
At Barnard,
there was one woman who was driven
to school in a great big Rolls-Royce.
And we all sort of scratched our heads.
"Who the heck is that?"
She came up to me one day in an art class.
And she said, "I have a brother
who goes to Yale Law School."
"Would you care to have a date with him?"
He picked me up
in his little yellow Mercedes sedan.
I had never been in a Mercedes before.
We went out to dinner.
He was very polite and handsome.
And he had traveled a lot.
It was exciting to meet
a sophisticated young man.
And he had an American Express card,
which was a very big deal in those days.
And he was just intriguing,
playful, and nice.
By the end of dinner, I was madly in love.
Andy Stewart, oh my gosh.
A beam of light.
Andy was so nice,
not at all like my father.
He would send me money for a train ticket,
and I would visit him
every single weekend up at Yale.
I had never slept with anybody
before this.
He was very aggressive.
And I liked it.
He proposed.
It seemed such a natural thing to do.
Fall in love and get married.
But I went home and told my dad,
and my dad slapped me.
And he slapped me hard on my... on my face
and said, "No. You're not marrying him."
"He's a Jew."
I remember getting that slap.
I was not at all surprised,
because he was a bigot.
And he was impulsive.
But I said, "I'm gonna get married
no matter what you think."
With the help of my mother,
I made my wedding dress.
It had many tiny, little
organdy-covered buttons down the back.
It was such a beautiful little dress.
The wedding day was very happy.
Very nice.
It was the beginning of my life.
We decided that we would take
an extended honeymoon to Europe.
This was like a five-month trip.
I kept record of every menu,
every single thing we ate.
It was eye-opening.
The preparation of the food...
I didn't even know that olives tasted
anything other than those green olives
with red pimento in them from a jar.
Nobody was sophisticated
back home in the 1960s.
The architecture...
and especially the gardens I visited...
it did awaken in me a love of cuisine,
a love of travel, a love of discovery.
And I really felt this is the thing
I'd like to spend my life thinking about.
We went across Italy,
ending up in Florence
the night before Easter.
And I had to go to church,
and I went to the cathedral.
Andy was back in the hotel room.
He didn't have any interest
in going to the Duomo with me.
Listening to that
amazing music in the cathedral...
It was a very romantic place,
crowded with tourists,
and met this very handsome guy.
He didn't know I was married.
I was this waif of a girl hanging out
in the cathedral on Easter Eve.
He was emotional. I was emotional.
It's just because
it was an emotional place.
It was unlike anything
I had ever experienced.
An expansive dome so beautiful
and paintings all around you.
It was like nothing
I had ever done before.
And so why not kiss a stranger?
Uh...
Were you being, uh,
you know, what's the word I'm looking for?
Naughty?
Was it naughty,
or was it infidelity?
Neither. It was neither naughty
nor in... in... unfaithful.
It was just emotional, of the moment.
That's how I looked at it.
And it was exciting because,
I mean, it was a very emotional place.
I wish... I wish we could all
experience such an evening.
I was 19 years old.
And I didn't wanna go home.
We got back to New York,
and reality came crashing down.
My daughter, Alexis, was born.
Back then,
everybody was having babies so young.
That was sort of, like,
the style and the habit.
I thought it was a natural thing.
And, uh, it turns out
it's not at all natural to be a mother.
It was hard for her to adapt
to being a mom.
She was happy when Lexi went down
to nap so that she could be on her own.
She took care of Lexi,
but she didn't dote on her.
She was always a little bit chilly.
She's not good at her emotions,
or expressing them, I should say.
That's not who Martha is.
Big Martha, Martha's mother,
she told me that she didn't think
that she hugged Martha enough.
Feelings, we didn't talk about
stuff like that.
That wasn't part of our growing up.
We were loved
sort of obtusely
when we were supposed to be loved.
I mean, there was not a lot
of "affection" in our house.
It was the everyday.
Practical.
How could I be a really great mother
if I didn't have
the education to be a mother?
Martha was hugely ambitious.
She was aiming
for something other than what she was
at that particular moment.
I didn't know
where she was going to end up,
but I knew she was going places.
It was just in every morsel of her being.
My father-in-law
was a stockbroker.
I thought it was
an interesting occupation.
So I decided to try for Wall Street.
Wall Street was not a good one for women.
These boots are made for walkin'...
It had no women clerks,
no women working for the exchange,
no women anything.
One of these days
These boots are gonna walk all over you
I mean,
they didn't have a ladies' room.
Start walkin'
I had a long interview with her,
and she said
she didn't want to make a living
you know, just being a beautiful blonde.
She spoke well,
and her appearance was just perfect,
you know what I mean?
I hired her.
I was the only woman at the firm.
I had to sort of put my arm out like that.
The stuff that went on in the back seat
of the taxis, I'm not gonna talk about.
But they were really smart.
And I learned a lot at that firm.
Martha was really better
than everyone at everything.
Very sleek, socially, with our clients.
They really loved her.
She said my broker
will take me out to lunch.
The broker was Martha Stewart.
That didn't make for a bad lunch.
I was meeting a lot of people,
and that's where I learned how
to behave around billionaires.
And, remember, at that time,
to be a billionaire
was pretty extraordinary.
I started to rake in a lot of money.
She was making a quarter
of a million per year.
Clients were making money hand over fist.
We recommended a stock,
and it went from six to 90 to six.
And all of a sudden,
they were losing money.
It really killed Martha
to be wrong on the market
and lost money for people.
Whatever Martha can control
is gonna come out fine.
It's what she can't control
that is gonna drive her crazy.
I started to burn out
because it was not an easy job.
So I quit Wall Street.
And we moved to Westport, Connecticut...
the furthest commuting town from New York.
Why'd you pick Westport?
Because we found the dream house,
the wreck of Turkey Hill Road
that we had to have...
...and to fix it up, you know?
If I hadn't had Turkey Hill,
I would not be me right now.
But I would've been somebody.
I would've been somebody else.
And I wouldn't just wouldn't have been
Martha Stewart, homemaker.
It was a run-down farmhouse
that had to be completely renovated.
My parents moved from
a beautiful apartment on Riverside Drive,
dragged me to Connecticut.
We moved into this "charming" farmhouse
with a bathtub with no shower,
using the Tupperware
to dunk water to wash your hair with.
The questions
that have been raised in the wake of...
It was during Watergate,
painting the house from top to bottom,
painting it by myself
on a ladder listening to Watergate.
...the burglars who
broke into the headquarters
of the Democratic National Committee
at the Watergate...
We were like the original settlers
in Westport, Connecticut.
1976, chickens in your backyard.
The neighbors called Town Hall going,
"There's a lady over here on Turkey Hill
that's got chickens in her backyard."
It was unheard of.
It was a little country set,
and Martha was playing in it.
I really liked the idea
of fixing up a property,
of expanding a property,
of growing things,
going back to the roots
of Nutley, New Jersey.
The gardens were so beautiful.
She created those gardens
with her bare hands.
They seemed to be having fun
building Turkey Hill Farm.
Those early days
on Turkey Hill Road
made me realize that I really did enjoy
homemaking, homekeeping,
keeping a home.
Andy became the president
of the ultimate
art book publisher in America.
I thought, "Oh my gosh, how exciting."
"We can have all the people
that are writing these books
at our house for dinner."
I was thrilled to entertain.
She hosted so much.
She'd invite all the neighbors.
Thanksgivings and Easters...
The food itself, just delicious.
It occurred to me
that I enjoyed creating
fanciful, lovely,
evocative kinds of entertaining.
Why not start a catering business?
She was a genius.
She went from being a model
to being a stockbroker,
and then, all of a sudden,
she was catering parties for her friends.
I would make plum puddings
for 200 people,
and I would do scones,
and I would do jams and jellies.
Handcrafted. Nothing store-bought.
Everything homemade.
That caught on like wildfire.
The Museum of Modern Art.
The Metropolitan Museum.
A house in Greenwich or in a house
in Westchester or a house in Bedford.
A cocktail party from six to eight
at Sotheby's for 700 people.
We tried to be a little outrageous.
We wanted to catch people's attention.
It wasn't just a vodka bottle.
It was a vodka bottle
sitting in a block of ice.
Big crudits tables,
vegetables and grapes
and fruits and cheeses.
Nothing like that
had ever been done before.
It was movie-set stuff.
Just the vision of those strawberries
just falling out of the basket.
Beautiful.
If you look
at the old Dutch masters
and their great displays
of food and fruits,
all of that did inspire me tremendously.
Martha knows how
to create pleasure and excitement.
She caters parties for such luminaries
as Paul Newman, Beverly Sills...
We captured the attention
of many, many people
and became a million-dollar business.
That was the beginning of Martha Stewart.
Martha had this
successful catering business,
a husband who runs
this amazing publishing company,
the perfect marriage.
Things look fabulous.
But are they?
He was not satisfied at home.
I don't know
how many different girlfriends
he had during this time,
but I think there were quite a few.
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.
And look at him.
It's a piece of shit and get out of it.
Get out of that marriage.
But I couldn't do that,
couldn't walk away.
Didn't you have
an affair early on in the relationship
or when you were a stockbroker?
Uh, yeah, but I don't think
Andy ever knew about that.
- He did say he knew about it.
- He did?
- Yes, you had confessed to him.
- Oh.
He says he didn't stray from the marriage
until you told him
you had already strayed.
Oh, that's not true.
- I don't think.
- But what happened? You had an affair...?
I had a very brief affair
with a very attractive Irish man.
And, um, it was just nothing.
It was nothing
in terms of...
It would never have broken up...
I would never have broken up
a marriage for it.
It was nothing.
It was nothing.
It was like the kiss in the cathedral.
Here were two people who had it all.
But I don't think they ever
found happiness.
Lexi got caught in the middle of it.
She was so confused and so angry herself.
I grew up in a very uncomfortable house.
I've learned to suppress
most of my emotions.
Martha didn't have that great joy
in her marriage and raising a child.
And that was just the missing link.
You'd hear arguments with the staff.
She wanted something done
a particular way.
Very much of a perfectionist.
The strong hand of their father,
that baton was passed to Martha.
People felt abused by her.
She got such wrong ideas about success.
She is a great white shark.
You could get bit.
She would shake people down.
You know, she was ruthless.
In the business world,
that's a great trait for a man.
But, you know, for a woman...
You know, she was a bitch.
You know the story
of how she was discovered?
She was catering a book party for Andy.
It was
quite an extraordinary event.
All the waiters and waitresses
were dressed as fairies.
Another publisher said,
"You should do an entertaining book."
I said to myself,
"Catering is very ephemeral."
You work so hard,
you get a beautiful celebration,
and then it's gone.
But if you write a book that's well-liked,
that is forever.
At first, my publisher wanted it to be
a book that was in black and white
with some pictures and recipes,
more a cookbook than anything else.
The first thing she did
was make it pretty clear
that this was going to be her book.
And if we didn't wanna do it
the way she wanted to do it,
she wasn't interested in working with us.
I wanted it to be an illustrated,
all-color photographs of food and ideas,
a book that anybody could pick up
and learn how to have
an interesting celebration.
"I grew up
in a large family that always had guests."
"I loved the ease with which
my mother added extra places,
a big platter of vegetables,
a special pie,
flowers to the family table
to create a special occasion."
So ambitious.
Entertaining was about so much.
It wasn't just about food.
It was visionary.
I wanted to provide education
and information and inspiration.
Not too expensive, not too lavish.
Just common enough so that the lady
in the diner serving your coffee
could go home
and make the same thing at her house
that my friends in Greenwich
in their big mansions could make.
It was all the same.
Martha tried to show everyday women
that they could bring beauty
to their homes.
I was the audience.
That was the secret.
I was everybody who was reading that book.
And they knew it.
That authenticity was so important.
They knew I was the same person.
I cleaned my own house.
I raised my own child. I had my husband.
I had my garden.
The personal story
meant a lot to the reader.
She was the first woman that saw
the marketability of her personal life.
Martha was the first influencer.
She is Martha Stewart,
a caterer extraordinaire.
I gotta tell you, this book,
I've spent three hours just looking at it.
When it comes to entertaining,
she literally wrote the book.
So would you like to stuff a snow pea?
"Would you like to stuff
a snow pea?"
Would you like to stuff a snow pea?
Martha was getting
a lot of attention.
She was blonde and beautiful.
She was the package.
And Crown was signing her up
for more books,
so she was off and running.
You know, she had one gear, forward.
She signed one of my books,
"Perfectly perfect."
Everything she was gonna do
would be perfectly perfect.
And I think, in a way, it ruined her life.
Because she's not "perfectly perfect."
I just can't get enough
I was spending all that time
doing all that stuff
and not really concentrating on my "life."
It sounds
like you're expressing regret.
Well, what is more important,
a marriage or a career?
- You tell me.
- I don't know.
Andy was extremely busy
in his publishing business,
and when he was around,
it was always strained.
She was critical of him
in terms of what he'd be wearing
or how he said something.
Andy handled her business arrangements.
Over the years,
they were much more
like colleagues than partners in life.
They were in different universes.
And when Martha wanted Andy
to be present in her universe,
he wasn't eager to be there.
There was greater
and greater friction between them.
And then there were rumors floating around
that Andy had some sort
of involvement with the girl
who was doing the flower arrangements
at Turkey Hill Farm.
Martha was picking up on everything
and getting more and more upset.
She would be frantic.
Migraines and sleeplessness.
At one point, she showed me where
she tore her hair out of her own head.
She was mean to her staff.
She had lost control of Andy.
And so she was making everybody pay.
Robyn worked for me.
And she'd lost her apartment
or something, and I said,
"Oh, you can move into the...
into the barn on the lower two acres."
We had a little apartment down there.
And when I was traveling,
Andy started up with her.
It was like I put out a snack for Andy.
Did you confront her?
I did. Sure, I did.
I kicked her out immediately.
You know, "What the hell are you doing?"
Andy betrayed me right on our property.
Not nice.
Martha Stewart is with us today.
She's a contributing editor
of House Beautiful and wedding expert.
- I mean, this woman, you know weddings.
- I think I do. I've seen...
She was promoting the Weddings book.
I remember just thinking
that was a horrible confluence.
It's hard for me,
personally, to talk about it.
Some people revel in this self-pity,
et cetera, et cetera.
I just don't.
I handed over letters
that were very personal.
So guess what?
Take it out of the letters.
"Dearest Andy,
I cannot sleep."
"I cannot eat."
"My skin is worried and many lines
that were not there are now there."
"I am agonizingly jealous
of your other women."
"I can't bear that you use
what we did together on others."
"Dear Andy,
I'm in a really fragile,
breakable state right now."
"I really feel physically ill
because of all this,
as if my brain were about to break."
"Dear Andy,
maybe you are planning to marry her
and keep her with my money
so that she can paint herself
in portraits in the nude."
"It is very titillating, isn't it."
"Maybe she will paint you
in the nude also."
"I'd love to see that painting."
"I am very, very concerned about
my privacy and my professional life."
"I am telling everyone
that you are away for a while."
"That is all."
"Dear Andy, I understand
your craving for sex with others."
"None will care about you like I do."
"None will ever love you as much."
"Give me another chance, Andy."
"I'm so sorry about so much."
"Why does it have to be too late?"
"Dear Andy,
again I feel betrayed and all alone."
"When you tell me
that this is no longer your home,
after all we did here together,
why shouldn't I say
I'm going to burn it down?"
"I have to go to San Francisco
and talk about Weddings
and my wonderful life."
"I hope you are enjoying your freedom."
"And I hope my plane crashes."
"I am sitting on a plane right now
crying, coughing,
feverish, and so miserable
I cannot believe myself."
"I should be vital,
beautiful, sexual, and desirable."
"And here I am, a total wreck."
"I'm 45 years old,
worried and lonely, alone, hopeless."
"The future is a total blur."
Twenty-seven years.
He's the one who wanted the divorce,
not I.
He was throwing me away.
I was 40 years old. I was gorgeous.
You know, I was a desirous woman.
But he was treating me like a castaway.
He treated me really badly.
And, in return,
I guess I treated him badly.
I didn't go run off with people.
He was running off with people.
I always said I was a swan,
and I was... I was...
And like all swans, they are monogamous.
And I thought monogamy was admirable.
I did. I thought it was admirable.
But it turned out that it wasn't...
It didn't save a marriage.
Can we get onto a happier subject?
I have planted every tree you see.
All of these, I've planted.
Several thousand.
Hello.
We use the fallen trees
for supports underneath.
All the trees
are getting put away for the winter.
A garden is a beautiful place for me
because I like to get things done.
No, but see,
don't... don't put this away like this.
This has to be trimmed.
You really clean it
and put some earth here.
Give it a chance
to grow some new stuff, okay?
- Yep. I got ya.
- And this can be trimmed all the way down.
- Yeah.
- It'll grow again.
That's the whole idea
of putting things away,
ready to be put away.
I never look the other way.
Okay, guys.
Fasang, do not break these pots.
Yeah.
Do not break the pots.
I'm gonna go look at the foundation
of the new one. It's good?
I look at a problem,
look at it and try to solve it.
And Entertaining,
Martha Stewart.
- Hello, one, two, three, four, five.
- Hi.
Not yet.
Not yet.
Let's put my... I like this up.
- I can't stand... I don't like it all flat.
- Right.
She was part of a world
where you married a man, and that's it.
And I don't think Martha ever expected
to not be married.
She was embarrassed about it.
Martha doesn't have failure.
That was one of the first times something
was going on that she couldn't fix.
She was worried going on book tour
as her separation became public
was going to be tricky to navigate.
But it turned out
people didn't care at all.
Three, two...
They just wanted
to know how to make cakes.
Women across the country
are lining up
to meet this hostess with the mostest,
this woman who has shrewdly
sold herself to the American public
as the queen of perfection.
After Andy left,
I really lost myself in work,
the ideas for the future,
and, luckily, I had them.
Luckily. I could have just been
a miserable has-been housewife.
But I didn't let that happen to myself,
and I'm so happy I didn't.
And it started with Kmart.
Now Martha Stewart
is bringing her high-class style
to middle-class shoppers at Kmart.
Martha Stewart sheets,
bedding, dishes, linens.
Everything for your home.
Kmart was believed to be so low-end.
But Martha was very prescient
in realizing having a partnership
with a mass-market retailer
would really be amazing.
The Greenwich Garden Club
canceled my appearance
because I had signed with Kmart
and they didn't want anything downscale.
She understood that just because
you don't have a lot of money
doesn't mean you don't have taste.
That was powerful.
If you had never heard of Martha before,
you heard about her now.
Na, na, na, na, na...
We see a lot of you on television
these days in these Kmart commercials.
Now, I think a lot of people
would think that's an odd combination.
- Does it strike you as being odd?
- Not at all.
Everybody who shops at Kmart,
and there's about
77 million people a month shopping there...
Is that right?
Seventy-seven million a month?
Yes, and, uh, they want beautiful things.
And I'm trying to get
really gorgeous things into the store.
Well, what are they doing
in Kmart if they're...?
She's got the look
She's got the look
During this time,
I'd done maybe six books,
and my publisher,
they only wanted a book a year from me.
But I had so much more to say,
and I thought, gosh, how about a magazine?
At the time, there were women's magazines,
but they didn't have the beauty,
the depth of information that I wanted.
That was a huge void.
My first stop was Cond Nast.
I talked to S. I. Newhouse himself,
and he said,
"Well, what are you thinking of
for the name?"
And I said, "Martha Stewart Living."
And he said, "It can't be Martha Stewart."
And I said, "Well, why not?"
And he said, "Well, it's Cond Nast."
"That's our name. Cond Nast."
And so he was a brand protector.
I moved on to this guy, Rupert Murdoch.
And he said, "I'm closing magazines now
because that's not our business."
"I suggest you take it to Time."
Time was very much a man's world.
They did not get it at all.
I said, "Living is a subject
that can be covered over and over again
for years to come."
"Living is limitless."
And they said,
"Well, if you really mean that,
maybe this is a good idea."
We wanted to be
the modern woman's magazine.
Holidays, entertaining, food,
decorating, kids, babies, crafting.
Those had never been put together,
really, in one place before.
We created a beautiful issue,
which sold out.
Thanks to the recession,
the magazine business is in a deep slump.
But in all the gloom,
there's one ray of sunshine,
Martha Stewart Living.
Martha Stewart Living
became an overnight sensation.
I was on the cover of almost every issue.
We became one of the most
successful start-up magazines ever.
Please welcome Martha Stewart.
At that time,
women in huge numbers, they're saying,
"I don't wanna be a housewife."
"I wanna have a job. I wanna have power."
But she realized that a lot
of women in the work world,
they retain a connection to the house.
Martha said you can be
this artist in your own right.
Beauty and perfection
can be a powerful thing.
There I am
in Westport, Connecticut.
I had some friends, a few, of course,
but not many.
My daughter said,
"The place to go, Mother,
as a single woman in the summertime,
is the Hamptons."
So I went to look.
The Realtor asked me,
"What are you looking for?"
I said, "How about
the wreck on the nicest street?"
The contractors all came, said,
"What do you really wanna do?"
I said, "I just wanna make it
into the most beautiful garden
with a beautiful house."
It was so clearly her vision at play.
We worked on Lily Pond Lane
for about a year and a half.
And when we finished,
it was my fiftieth birthday.
So I decided I'd have
a great big fiftieth-birthday party.
It was like this gigantic party.
Like, everybody was there.
People from the business world,
people in the movie business,
the TV business.
The moment she was in that world,
it's just like the pool ball
hits ten other balls,
and it's all happening.
It was the beginning
of the best era of the Hamptons.
She'll always say she's a late bloomer,
but I think she felt a little more free
and empowered and,
"Okay, I have a new life now,
and I'm going to live it."
I think she had more romances
than you're gonna hear about.
And I think she enjoyed those.
Martha did not like
being around men who weren't smart.
I mean, look. She loved Charles Simonyi,
so she loved rich guys,
even if they were weird.
Charles created Word
and Excel at Microsoft.
Total genius.
We started to go everywhere together.
It was a different kind of life.
He had his own jet,
building a boat in Germany,
and I started working
on the boat with him.
I wasn't anxious to go dating
and looking for another husband anywhere.
I just continued working, thinking, doing,
as I am always doing.
Have you had any relationships
where you talk about your feelings?
No, and that's probably why I haven't had
very many personal relationships with men,
for example.
Uh, because I...
...couldn't care less.
I don't know
what the real reason is.
Um...
It doesn't interest me so much to know,
you know,
"Oh, Charles," you know,
"How do you feel this second?"
I don't care, actually.
I do care about,
"Charles, what are you doing?
What are you thinking about?"
So I sort of gravitate towards
people who are doing things all the time.
And I think more
about everything that I'm doing,
things that I'm working on,
things that I'd like to work on,
things that I'd like to accomplish.
That's where I'm best.
The next step was to do television.
But Time was
a very, very conservative company.
They felt that if people saw Martha on TV,
they would not feel like they needed
to buy the magazine.
I always had hoped
that I would be doing television
in conjunction with the magazine.
That was called synergy,
the dirty word...
...in the 1990s.
I was considered crazy.
But it worked.
If you had said before Martha existed,
"Do you want a TV show about someone
who has much more money than you have,
is much better-looking
than you'll ever be,
lives this amazing life, and does all
these things with her very own hands,
they would have said, "Shit, no."
But once you made it, they loved it.
It's a good thing.
It's a good thing. It's a good thing.
She teaches better than anybody.
Not only that you can understand it
but that you wanna do it.
Don't overwork it.
We had a whole generation of young women
whose mothers had worked,
so they didn't know how to do things.
And she felt we needed
a way to show people
exactly how to do it,
step by step.
What we now call DIY,
that was a revolution for America.
Finally, a subject matter
that everyone kind of pooh-poohed
has all of a sudden
become a national craze.
- It is a craze.
- What is this subject?
Living. Living.
Everyday living.
It has always been,
for me, a very serious subject.
Gentlemen, start your engines!
Kmart was going wild.
Everybody was buying everything.
We were making, like, $70 million a year,
straight to the bottom line.
She saw that she could create
an empire for herself.
Martha was able to buy her name back
and her magazine from Time.
She went to Kmart to get the money,
and Kmart advanced her
the money against royalties.
It turned out to be a very good thing,
if I can quote Martha.
All of a sudden,
we owned 100% of everything.
And that was the beginning of Martha, Inc.
The plan was to create a company
that was omnimedia in scope.
It was my idea to make the plan
of the company the solar system.
One person at the center.
It hadn't been done like that before.
What started as a small
home-based catering business in 1976...
- I love that.
- ...has become
Martha Stewart Living Enterprises,
a multimedia corporation
bringing in something
like $200 million a year.
Probably the only one-woman,
one-person conglomerate.
She was like a superstar.
It was Martha Stewart
everywhere you looked.
Having finally freed herself
from Time,
Martha Stewart is already plotting
her next big move, going public.
Going public
is the American dream.
Now, copy this.
Martha Stewart.
Is the pristine princess
really the queen of mean?
America knows her
as the happy little homemaker.
The more you know about this woman,
the less you like her.
In the '90s,
that's when she really
started getting slammed in the press.
"She's mentally unstable.
She's crazy. She's insane."
That was not helpful right before the IPO.
When we were going public,
everything was about Martha.
All of this is hanging on one person,
one person, one person.
I remember hearing from
people in the financial world,
and they said,
"We're staying away from it."
I thought it was
a really sound business plan.
But when we presented this
to various investors,
bankers thought it was
a vulnerable investment
because of one person at the center.
They did not like the idea
of a woman-run company like this.
Didn't like it.
The question of Martha being the brand,
it was the biggest fear
on the part of the banks.
People kept saying,
"What if she gets hit by a bus?"
"The brand would be destroyed."
Her brand was based on reputation
and also, frankly, her credibility.
Well, here's a news flash.
Martha Stewart is not so perfect.
In the "What's fake?" department,
Martha Stewart went on the Today show...
You've been spending
too much time knitting frigging doilies.
And maybe that's why
your husband left you!
I've always been baffled by the degree
of hatred that people have.
I sometimes think it's because
she does something that all of us,
theoretically, could do.
She just does it way better.
It seems to drive people up the walls.
Who has the time for all of this?
For every woman who makes
a complicated gingerbread house,
a million don't even have
the time to bake a cookie.
She sets the standards.
And when people see her home,
it makes you feel like a failure.
Whatever is the opposite
of laid-back is what Martha Stewart is.
The cabinets are being painted on the in...
Don't... You cannot say this.
A touch humorless, perhaps,
but how funny would you be
on four hours' sleep
and a life devoted to details?
No, just tell him to leave
the facades unpainted.
She was a tough boss,
but, you know, like, some of the behavior
that she would be taken to task for
would be applauded
if a man did it in the business world.
That's a clich at this point,
but it doesn't mean it wasn't true.
She was obviously held
to a different standard.
She got under men's hair.
This idea that you could be
a homemaking expert who's a bitch.
Like, that was such a clash of ideas.
Don't crack it.
Someone watching Martha,
or reading Martha,
might be to just be driven up the wall
because they'll never get to that
perfect point of casual, easy perfection.
But they might.
They may not ever make that cake,
but they can dream about it.
Can we get the boom out, please?
She built a multimedia empire.
Now Martha Stewart sets out
to conquer Wall Street.
Did you ever think this was gonna happen
when you first started this business?
Oh, yes, I knew it from day one.
Martha, one more with the gavel.
What a thing to experience,
all the noise and the bell ringing
and the smiles,
because you could watch on the ticker
how the price was going up.
How's it feel to be the chairman
of a publicly-traded company?
I must tell you, we're really excited.
It's, um, a good thing.
Did you ever imagine that your sort
of brand of domesticity
would ever make it so big
that you would bring this company public?
When you have the trust of your audience,
they will come to you
when they need information,
and we're teachers,
and we aim to continue to teach.
Selling at 38 right now.
I would like to make a toast
that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
is a very good thing
and will continue to be
a very good thing for a very long time.
Gael Towey, would you stand up too?
All the women went into the ladies' room,
and Martha's standing there going,
"I'm the wealthiest woman in the world."
...today's move that values
her stock at $1.2 billion.
- Oh, nice.
- Quite a payday.
Good for her.
You couldn't have found somebody
who was happier at that moment in time.
She had achieved all the success
that a small girl from Nutley,
whose father was a salesperson
and whose mother was a teacher...
You issued the stock,
and then how much did you make?
- So it's, like, a billion dollars.
- You're worth a billion dollars?
What does it mean to be the first female
self-made billionaire in American history?
People took me seriously.
I was invited to join
the New York Stock Exchange board.
I was on the board of Revlon.
We had this infusion of resources.
It was just rocket fuel.
We got an office down at Starrett-Lehigh.
That building was awful.
But Martha saw nothing but potential.
It was like being on
an Olympic team with the best of the best.
We were producing more and more magazines.
It started off with Living,
and then we did Weddings,
and then we did Baby,
and then we did Kids,
and then we did Blueprint,
and then we did Whole Living,
and then Everyday Food.
And then there were the TV series.
Nothing we couldn't do.
The rest of the world was starting
to realize her vision.
Joan Didion wrote
a very astute essay in The New Yorker
about a woman like me becoming powerful.
"To her critics,
she seems to represent
a fraud to be exposed,
a wrong to be righted."
"However much she's got,
Martha wants more."
"And she wants it her way
and in her world,
not in the balls-out boys' club realms
of real estate or technology,
but in the delicate land
of doily hearts and wedding cakes."
"This is not a story about a woman
who made the best of traditional skills."
"This is a story
about a woman who did her own IPO."
"This is the 'woman's pluck' story,
the dust bowl story,
the burying-your-child-on-the-trail story,
the I-will-never-go-hungry-again story,
the Mildred Pierce story,
the story about how the sheer nerve
of even professionally
unskilled women can prevail,
show the men."
"The dreams and the fears
into which Martha Stewart taps
are not of 'feminine' domesticity
but of female power,
of the woman who sits down
at the table with the men
and, still in her apron,
walks away with the chips."
These brilliant men,
these brilliant bankers,
couldn't see the real value
in this idea of omnimedia.
They just didn't see it.
But we showed 'em, didn't we?
That was the pinnacle of success.
And it lasted for a period of time,
and then it didn't.
I was on my way to Cabo, Mexico,
traveling with my friend
Mariana Pasternak.
We had a fuel stop in San Antonio, Texas.
I called my office,
as a dutiful CEO of a New York
Stock Exchange company would do.
My assistant said my stockbroker
had called me about ImClone.
ImClone was a biotech company started
by a friend of mine, Sam Waksal.
Dr. Waksal had created
a drug called Erbitux
that had great potential
for curing several diseases.
So I called Peter Bacanovic,
who was my broker.
It was a very short conversation saying,
"The stock's going down.
I think we should sell."
And I said, "Good. Sell."
Continued on my way to Cabo.
Didn't think about it again.
Probably six months later,
the shit hit the fan.
The FBI arrested Sam Waksal
at 6:30 this morning.
Did you commit insider trading?
Samuel Waksal learned
on December 26th of last year,
two days before the public announcement,
that the FDA would not approve Erbitux.
Prosecutors charged Waksal then tipped
two family members.
He is among
the many examples of chief executives
accused of enriching themselves
and their associates
while many shareholders lose a fortune.
At that time,
you had these rich people
playing around with stocks
and decide that the law
doesn't apply to them.
This modern-day
rogues' gallery made millions
while leading their companies
to near financial ruin or worse.
I don't think that there's any word
for it but outrageous.
The Department of Justice
set up a task force
to focus on white-collar crime
because the public confidence
was very quickly eroding
after scandal after scandal.
How can business have any credibility
when these characters are pulling stuff
like you read about almost every day?
So, with ImClone,
the chronology is as follows.
The government saw several people
having unloaded ImClone stock
in advance of the announcement
of the results not going well.
So names come up.
Among those is Martha Stewart.
Martha Stewart.
It came as a surprise
when I got a call from my law firm
that I was being requested
by the U.S. attorney
for an appearance
to question my sale of ImClone.
They got me in a taxi,
and we went downtown.
My lawyers told me,
"Anything that is not clear, you just say,
'I do not remember. I do not recall.'"
I wasn't scared because I hadn't done
anything wrong that I knew about.
My lawyers didn't think
I had done anything wrong.
I did exactly what my lawyers had told me.
Answer everything as truthfully
and as honestly as I could possibly.
And when I didn't remember,
I said I didn't remember.
And I went back to work.
The public did not become aware
of this investigation until June of 2002,
when Sam got arrested.
That's when the circus began.
Also under scrutiny,
Waksal's friend Martha Stewart,
who sold ImClone stock
on the same day Waksal's family sold.
Shares of her company,
Martha Stewart Omnimedia,
sinking 22% since news
of the ImClone sale broke.
The legal team...
I was advised to keep quiet.
Bad advice.
She's lost so much money,
instead of selling her stuff at Kmart,
she may have to
actually start buying stuff there.
It's a company
that exists wholly
to promote the lifestyle
and brand image of the CEO.
So if... if that image is damaged,
uh, the company really suffers.
What a beautiful day
in New York today, isn't it?
Here's how lovely it was today.
Martha Stewart was doing
her insider trading outside.
It was a fact.
Stewart is avoiding cameras,
but that hasn't stopped the questions.
Martha was somebody
who was of interest to the media.
It had to be addressed.
In a statement, Stewart says
she "had no improper information
and that the transaction
was entirely lawful."
Martha is here this morning for
her weekly turn here on The Early Show.
- Martha, it's good to see you.
- Hi. We're gonna make salad, but...
We are. But first, let me ask you
a few things about all this.
You've released a statement saying
that you were not involved
in any insider trading.
But you haven't public... publicly
commented on this.
What... what do you say
about the allegations here?
Well, as you understand, uh,
I'm involved in an investigation
that has very, um, serious implications.
So... uh, and many people are involved
in this whole investigation,
and I'm just not at liberty, at this time,
to make any comments whatsoever.
And I certainly hope that the matter
is resolved, um, in the very near future.
The world was wondering
what went on with the stock sale,
and there was no answer that was good.
I have nothing to say on the matter.
I'm... I'm really not at liberty to say.
And, uh, as I said, I think this will all
be resolved in the very near future.
And I will be exonerated
of any ridiculousness.
I... I know that image is...
is so important for you
and everything that you've created
over the years.
In the midst of all this, the stock price
of the company, um, has dropped.
So the media frenzy that's surrounded this
the last week or so,
how is it for you to be
in the middle of that?
The anchor really pushed her, and...
I wanna focus on my salad.
"I just wanna make my salad."
Right on the air.
So that was not good.
It was instantly in the press.
"Can't take the heat,"
blah-blah-blah.
There was tons of stuff
that fed the stories.
Pictures of her and Sam.
The story was really alive.
There was an enormous amount
of negative tabloid coverage.
Journalists were looking to
make their mark on teardown stories,
and she was exactly the number one target.
It was unbelievable.
It kept going.
That month, that summer, fall,
it never stopped.
Everybody's focus,
especially the government's,
was that Sam had tipped Martha
about the FDA news.
Now, that's a genuine crime.
But it was obvious that she didn't even
speak to him until after she traded.
Sam was in enormous trouble.
Nobody could get away with
what he tried. I just don't understand it.
But in terms of Martha,
you know, he didn't tip her.
And so Martha's lawyers
were very relieved.
You said people from the SEC
and the Justice Department were there.
- Did they ask you about Martha?
- Yes.
A lot?
Yes.
They wanted me to say I told her.
And had I done that,
I wouldn't have gotten in trouble.
I got the sense
that if they could have Martha,
they would be unbelievably happy campers.
So you should know I called my mom.
I said, "You know, Mom,
they want me to say I tipped Martha,
and they'll leave me alone."
She goes, "Tell 'em you tipped Martha."
So I thought that was funny.
But I didn't.
I didn't give Martha Stewart
insider information.
Period.
And, by the way,
so we know...
You know who wanted me to say that?
Jim Comey.
Good afternoon.
We are here this afternoon
to announce the filing of criminal charges
by this office
and civil charges by the SEC
against Martha Stewart
and Peter Bacanovic.
Let me talk for a minute
about what is not in the indictment.
Ms. Stewart and Mr. Bacanovic
have not been charged
with criminal insider trading.
That may seem odd at first glance.
But it is, in my view,
the appropriate treatment of this case.
Peter Bacanovic and Martha Stewart
had not spoken to anyone
in the Waksal family.
And so, what they did was not illegal.
So the government
had to hear back their case.
This criminal case is about lying.
Lying to the FBI,
lying to the SEC,
and lying to investors.
People said,
"How can you be charged with lying
about a crime that you never committed?"
And it was a good question.
She wasn't criminally charged
with insider trading,
but during her interview,
we had the sense that she was not being
truthful about why she sold.
She said she didn't recall being told
that the Waksals were selling,
and that was not why she traded.
But we believed she knew
that Sam Waksal was selling the shares.
Lying to the FBI is a crime
with profound consequences.
Comey loved a touch of theater
and was obviously very ambitious.
He went on to be deputy head of
the Justice Department, head of the FBI.
If these two people had only done
what parents have taught
their children for eons,
even if you're in a tight spot,
lying is not the way out.
"Lying, lying, lying. It's about lying."
Come on.
Ninety-five out of 100 prosecutors
would not bring this case.
Comey was self-righteous,
and he's not afraid
to go places other people wouldn't go.
Martha was a convenient way
to look like they were doing something
to combat corporate wrongdoing,
even though her case had nothing
to do with the corporation she ran.
There are many who believe
Martha Stewart's being singled out
because she's successful,
because she's a woman.
Why Martha Stewart?
Martha Stewart is being prosecuted
not because of who she is
but because of what she did.
I have no idea what they were thinking.
I think it may have been that they were
a bunch of prideful men
who couldn't bear being embarrassed
if they couldn't get her
for insider trading,
and they wanted revenge,
or if they were just a shower
of fucking sanctimonious twats.
She is now being prosecuted
in a very high-profile case
about something that wasn't,
in fact, a crime.
- That's what bothers a lot of people.
- It looks bothersome.
- Why are they going after her?
- Behind the barrier!
A lot of commentators said, at the time,
that she was being made an example of.
The trade that Martha did
that got her into so much trouble
was worth about $45,000,
a very small amount
in the grand scheme of things.
Everybody asked,
"What if she gets hit by a bus?"
Nobody said, "What if she gets indicted
for lying to the feds?"
Nobody said that.
On the CBS Market Watch,
the Martha Stewart scandal
has taken a big toll on her media company.
Down 86% from last year.
Every emerging new detail
that seems to work against her
is met with a rousing cheer
in many quarters.
The press was absolutely after Martha,
and Martha personally, not the company.
The guiltiest pleasure of all,
watching Martha Stewart scurry
into a courthouse under an umbrella.
There was a nastiness
to people's attitudes to Martha.
Why do people love to hate her?
You always wanna see
Little Miss Perfect fail.
You bring out the most
profound emotions in people.
Martha, why do so many people hate you?
It is day one in Martha Stewart's
obstruction of justice trial,
and all of the world is watching.
Trials are all about competing narratives.
That's what they are.
And their narrative
was pretty easy to present.
Fancy Martha got a tip,
and then she lied about it.
In our narrative,
which is a woman famed
for being on top of everything
and a perfectionist
doesn't really remember what happened.
It's very tough.
- Morning.
- How do you feel?
Just great.
She certainly could've pleaded guilty.
And there were discussions
about trying to resolve the case.
But she didn't want to admit
to the fact that she had lied.
You have to get up in court and say,
"I knowingly and intentionally lied
to the government."
I never asked,
"Do you think you were guilty?"
I don't think she thinks she was.
She'd have had a hell of a time
getting up to admit wrongdoing.
Through her body language and demeanor,
she was maintaining her innocence
to the very end.
But as the days passed,
it became more and more obvious
that this was not going well for her.
The trial very quickly devolved into,
"Did she lie when she said the stock sale
had nothing to do with Sam Waksal?"
So the whole question was,
"How are we gonna know
if she told the truth?"
As it turned out,
the person who knew
was Peter Bacanovic's secretary,
Douglas Faneuil.
This star witness
is a baby-faced 28-year-old
who the government is counting on
to prove that Martha Stewart lied
about why she dumped
her shares of ImClone stock two years ago.
Doug Faneuil was the most
important piece of evidence.
He had been directed by Bacanovic
to tell Martha Stewart
about Waksal selling his stock
so that she could act on it.
Faneuil testified
Bacanovic ordered him
to tell Stewart about the Waksal sale.
His testimony had the complete ring
of truth to it,
including the fact
that Martha treated him like shit,
because people knew
that Martha treated underlings like shit.
"I have never ever
been treated more rudely
by a stranger on the telephone."
"She actually hung up on me."
Not only was he telling you
about the events that took place
that were incriminating about Martha,
he was telling you about Martha.
He was telling you
about what she was like.
"She made the most ridiculous sound
I've heard coming from an adult,
kind of like a roaring lion underwater."
We were suddenly getting
this window into the real Martha,
this abrasive bully of a person
that a lot of people
in New York were aware of,
but the public at large wasn't.
Faneuil described
Stewart's phone manner as rude,
confirming she even threatened
to take her account elsewhere
if the telephone hold music
wasn't changed.
The prosecution,
they wanted to make Martha Stewart out
to be a difficult, abrasive person.
They wanted to paint her as the villain,
and they were pretty successful.
Martha Stewart has come across
as petty, as demeaning,
as kind of a bad person.
And, you know, as much as
that shouldn't matter in a case like this,
it does.
That'll get men's attention,
some woman just being rude and imperious
and dismissive of a man.
So this is all about her being
a woman now, Miss Lafferty?
Is that what you're gonna
try to convince me about?
What this is about
is a targeted prosecution
of a person who happens to be a woman
but happens to be a certain kind of woman,
a wildly successful woman,
uh, an arrogant woman.
Our concern is that this is a message
that you... you can't really be a bitch.
It's what...
it's what we're calling a bitch hunt.
We were only there because she was famous
and knew she was in a lot of trouble.
Those factors together sell newspapers.
We all wanted our pound of flesh.
Martha is very concerned
with how she's perceived.
And this was so much press, unrelenting,
and virtually all negative.
It was obscene.
And I had to keep my composure,
keep my head upright and not cry.
Remember? Women in business don't cry?
You don't cry.
As the case went on,
the drumbeat of the evidence
was getting louder and louder and louder,
and it crescendoed
with Mariana Pasternak...
...who was the last nail in the coffin.
This is my best friend.
I was matron of honor at her wedding.
I was the godmother to her children.
Mariana Pasternak was a confidante
of Martha Stewart,
and she was there on vacation with Martha
while this was taking place.
Martha had briefly mentioned to me
that she sold her ImClone stock.
She knew she should not have told me
about that.
She made me a witness.
Good afternoon, Miss Pasternak.
Do you have any recollection
of speaking with Ms. Stewart
on the subject of brokers
while you were in Mexico?
I remember one brief statement
which was,
"Isn't it nice to have brokers
who tell you those things?"
It was like a thunderclap that happened
in the court at that moment.
You know,
that was an absolutely devastating line.
It fed straight into the government's case
that Martha had received this secret tip
from her stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic,
that the Waksal family
was selling shares in ImClone Systems.
And it basically
showed her up to being a liar.
According to her,
Martha Stewart knew
that Sam Waksal was selling
his ImClone stock.
That's one of the crucial issues
in this case.
I truthfully testified,
as my legal obligation was.
That's why I said those words.
And I looked in the courtroom,
and I saw Martha's eyes,
you know, that cold, icy look in her eyes.
I knew our friendship was over.
By the time
Mariana got onto the stand,
she was a damaged human being.
She is frightened.
She was told what to say.
It made me very sad.
She was a human being,
and she was obviously under
an incredible amount
of pressure and strain.
And... and you couldn't help but notice
that she looked wounded.
Leave Martha alone!
Leave her alone!
- Leave Martha alone!
- We were horrified.
To see what was happening
to her was very, very upsetting.
She's a doll.
Leave her alone. Leave Martha alone.
Now, as Stewart's supporters
gather outside
of the courthouse to await her fate,
the jury will be inside
deliberating the facts.
Trial analysts say
the problem for the government is that
however compelling
its witnesses may have been,
it never produced a smoking gun.
The best defense is
the case never should have gone to trial.
For jurors to look at this
and say to themselves,
"Boy, this sure seems
like a selective prosecution."
On the other hand,
if they focus strictly on the question of,
"Do we believe
that she had some sort of tip?"
I think Martha Stewart's in trouble.
You know, you stand, obviously,
when they come in.
It's the tensest moment you can imagine.
Members of the jury,
I have received your verdict,
and I will now read it.
Defendant Martha Stewart...
Guilty, guilty, guilty
on all these counts of whatever.
The New York Post lady was there
just looking so smug.
She had written horrible things
during the entire trial.
She's dead now, thank goodness,
and she doesn't have to...
Nobody has to put up with that crap
that she was writing all the time.
My daughter,
she fainted when they read the verdict.
Poor child.
It was so horrifying and incomprehensible.
And then I woke up and I was,
unfortunately, still there.
Martha Stewart,
now a convicted felon,
left the courthouse to some cheers.
We love Martha! We love Martha!
It was so horrifying to me
that I had to go through that,
to be a trophy for these idiots
in the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Those prosecutors should have been put
in a Cuisinart and turned on high.
I was a trophy.
A prominent woman,
the first billionaire woman in America,
"We got her."
Now I'm being told
that trading has been halted,
uh, on Martha's stock.
Once the jury spoke,
the price plummeted to $10 and change.
Analysts believe that it will go down
further and could hit, uh, $5.
Stewart's TV show
was canceled today
by 18 CBS and UPN stations.
Advertisers have fled
her flagship magazine.
She was one of the strongest brands
that ever existed.
I mean, stronger than Coke,
stronger than McDonald's.
Facing prison time,
Martha Stewart further distanced herself
from the media company she built,
resigning from the board
of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
and stepping down
as Chief Creative Officer.
I was on the top of the world.
I was sitting on the board
of the New York Stock Exchange.
I was sitting on the board
of the Revlon Corporation.
I lost control of my company.
I lost all my board seats.
Absolutely horrific.
There is,
right now, complete panic
going on at Martha Stewart Living.
I think it's basically over
for Martha Stewart Omnimedia.
She's disappointed of her feeling like
her life was wasted.
Everything she did is ignored
over something trivial
that maybe didn't happen.
And a lot of people want to know,
first of all, how are you doing?
I mean, see, I don't wanna
have an interviewer's voice.
Oh, no, we're gonna...
What I'm gonna do is we're gonna try
to do it the whole thing in your voice.
So then maybe it shouldn't be a question.
Maybe you should just talk about...
You should just say, "Talk about this."
Don't a... don't ask me a question.
- Suck in that gut when they do.
- Come on.
You ready?
Nice and sweet.
So this is Easter Sunday, 2004.
And I have, uh, invited
somewhere between 16 and 20 people
for brunch.
So the menu is hard-boiled eggs,
which I already did,
blood orange curd cake
that Alexis is making.
The salmon...
This is one month before sentencing.
I don't know what's gonna happen.
How do you prepare yourself
for what may occur?
Well, you know,
you go to the dentist,
you go to the gynecologist,
and you just make sure that you're in
as best shape as you possibly can
to let your body
and your mind take whatever comes.
- You needed the bone out or no?
- Yes, that's the whole idea.
Here, I'll... I'll... Want me to show you?
The press made me out
to be a person that I'm not.
I don't think I've been the mean
and nasty and horrible person
portrayed in certain publications.
I'm strict and I'm demanding
and I'm all those good things
that make a successful person.
Recently, I critiqued a teacup.
I said, "How's that selling?"
Young man said to me, "Well, not well."
And I said, "Do you know why?"
"Pick up the teacup."
"Can you fit your finger
in the teacup handle?"
He took that as a gross criticism.
But that I said it was held against me.
To critique a teacup handle
for my own company
was considered a bad thing.
I consider it a good thing.
Never use soap on it, okay?
Never.
That would never have gotten
in our catalog before.
And I'm supposed to
pussyfoot around such an idi... nitwit?
What knife are you using
to cut those?
- This one.
- Well, isn't that a stupid knife?
- I don't know.
- Why?
Why would you use
a little knife to cut a big orange?
You know how fast a big knife cuts?
Okay, you don't get that on film, because,
I mean, I don't know what to do anymore.
Okay?
You use a big knife to cut oranges, okay?
But really, you have to
pay attention and be efficient.
Look, so much easier. Okay?
Have you ever visited a prison?
Um, no... no I haven't.
Do you have any idea
what it's like?
Um, no, not really.
Strip searches...
I don't think in a minimum-security prison
there's gonna be strip searches.
- Oh, yes, Martha.
- Maybe. Maybe I'm uninformed.
Maybe you should do research
on what it's like in prison.
I don't wanna sound stupid.
I hardly wanna talk about it.
You can do it? No matter what?
Morning, and you're looking at
a shot outside the federal courthouse
in lower Manhattan right now.
Martha Stewart is
just emerging from the courthouse
after receiving her sentence
from Judge Miriam Cedarbaum.
Five months in prison,
five months of home detention,
two years of probation,
and a fine of $30,000.
When she was sentenced,
it was very emotional.
Save Martha!
So shocking.
Save Martha!
Injustice!
Welcome to Alderson,
the prison town
that will be Martha Stewart's home
for the next five months.
Its nickname
may be Camp Cupcake,
but the Federal Prison Camp
in Alderson, West Virginia, is no picnic.
Prison guards have said
they can't guarantee the famous inmate
won't be harassed.
Are we gonna be able to follow her around
and make sure that no inmate bothers her?
No.
Stewart has been so in control.
How hard is that going to be,
how difficult for Martha Stewart
to give up control?
Well,
uh, it's gonna be terrible.
It's gonna be terrible for Martha Stewart.
"Friday, October 8th."
"Entry 5:55 a.m."
"Pearl earrings okay,
although questioned."
"No contacts allowed. Threw all in box."
"Physical exam, stripped of all clothes."
"Squat, arms out,
cough."
"Embarrassing."
I had to do all that crap
that you see in the movies.
You... you can't even believe
that that's what you're going through.
"Taken to room J11,
second floor."
"My room contains
an old double-decker bedstead,
metal spring, and metal frame."
"The springs are very saggy
and thus an unhealthy bed set."
"I would actually prefer the top."
"But over 62 years old,
and you automatically
are given a lower bunk."
"4:00 a.m., wake up."
"5:00 a.m., shower, shampoo."
"7:00 a.m., 'coffee.'"
"What worries me
is the very poor quality of the food
and the unavailability of fresh anything,
as there are many starches and many carbs,
many fat foods."
"No pure anything."
We had the worst coffee imaginable.
I wasn't a coffee drinker anyway,
but, boy, that coffee was terrible.
And the milk was ter...
Everything was terrible.
"Visit to library."
"Watched Grand Canyon,
Reader's Digest Series."
"One has to use this time
to learn something new every day."
"Putting me here is a joke."
"And everyone seems to know that."
"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."
"When I realized,
from the big silver keychain,
that they were guards,
I lightly brushed the chain."
"Later, I was called in to be told never,
ever to touch a guard
without expecting severe reprimand."
"Of course I apologized,
but the incident was so minor
when it occurred
that I did not think about it
for the rest of the day."
I was dragged into solitary
for touching an officer.
No food or water for a day.
This was Camp Cupcake, remember?
That was the nickname.
Camp Cupcake.
It was not a cupcake.
I went almost every weekend.
I'd get there the night before
and get up at about four in the morning
and take some giant blankets
because you had to get on line
out of your car in order to get a table.
I watched her walk in
in prison-issued sweats and eyeglasses.
And I had never, ever seen
Martha in eyeglasses before.
There was some embarrassment that she had,
especially with somebody like me
who she'd known for so long.
And there were people there
that were looking to do something to her.
They wanted to hurt her.
Late at night,
walking home in the dark,
you could've been jumped.
People were jumped, beat, beaten.
Um, stuff like that happened.
I was warned.
But I was not protected.
"Another day."
"I visited the greenhouses."
"There's no fertilizers,
no pots, no seeds, et cetera."
"There is a small garden designed
and planted by an inmate
who is here for a long time."
"She too has no resources."
"I gave her some of my gardening books,
and she was very grateful."
"Prison does nothing to reform,
to rehabilitate, to educate,
to make people feel better,
or to induce people
to go on to better things."
"Charles Simonyi.
First of all, how are you?"
"I have not gotten an email
or even a note from you for so long."
"I'd love to hear from you."
Why'd your boyfriend
only visit you once?
I don't think he liked
hanging out with somebody in jail.
He was out on his boat,
floating around the world.
That was distressing to me.
"The days are
quite indistinguishable one from another."
"And 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."
You wrote about wondering if...
if you didn't return,
would anyone miss you?
Oh.
Hmm.
I had to keep my self-esteem
and my conviction
that I was a good person.
I mean, it was a pretty terrible time.
Listen, here's this girl from a family
of eight in Nutley, New Jersey,
living modestly, who gets a good idea,
builds it into something really fine,
and profits from it.
That's basically my story.
And then... then falls in a hole.
And that hole,
I had to climb out of a fucking hole.
"Rose at 6:00 a.m.,
showered, dressed,
touched up the upstairs bathroom,
my week's job."
"I rushed over to the chapel
where the Muslim women
had asked me to be one of five speakers
to a good gathering of interesting souls
who want so much to better themselves
and improve their situations."
"I encouraged them to be entrepreneurial
if they had a good,
unique, and clear idea,
one that would help others,
an idea that many needed or wanted."
"The same things
I've been saying for many years
that still resonate and make sense."
"And I know the girls
all took something away with them
from my remarks."
I was asked to help
with business plans.
It was just interesting to hear
the hopes and dreams of these women.
I mean,
at first she was a little bit bossy.
She was used to being the boss.
But it didn't take her long to realize
that we were all in this boat together.
"Susan Spry picked dandelions,
sorrel, wild onions, and garlic,
and gave me half her harvest."
"She has been here for 12 years.
Smart. A gardener in training."
"She is so happy to have
someone now to talk to about gardening
and picking and health
and vegetables with."
"I am looking forward to a feast."
Martha tried to make life pleasant.
She said to me, "I wanna have dinner.
We'll have cucumber sandwiches."
I thought, "Cucumber sandwiches?
What is a cucumber sandwich?"
"I dunno
what a cucumber sandwich is."
She was congenial with everyone.
She was definitely wanting to be a part
of everyone's life there.
"Time is passing quickly,
and soon I will return
to the world to which I belong."
"There is much to discuss,
think about, plan."
"When I get out in March,
I want many things ready
to get right to work."
Good evening.
Although Martha Stewart's term
doesn't officially end here until Sunday,
the thinking around here
is that she could be out
as early as tomorrow morning,
just in time for spring and just in time
for the next chapter of Martha, Inc.
"Prison."
"What was it really like?"
"Was I frightened?"
"Was I worried? Was I bored?"
"I had time for the very first
time in many years to contemplate,
to not worry,
to get rid of the stress of three years."
"New friends."
"New ideas germinating."
"Ability, through it all,
to be productive."
"My return to my life
coincides with the advent of spring
and all that is fresh and new."
We did become close.
We became good friends.
We helped each other
through a very difficult time.
I do believe that... that Martha
had a profound effect on me.
"And I wish,
from the bottom of my heart,
that I could help every one
of these women find a better life
for them, their kids,
and their families."
Martha Stewart's five months
in a federal prison have come to an end.
There she is, Martha Stewart.
How do you feel? How do you feel?
We picked her up,
and my first words to her were,
"What the fuck are you wearing?"
In prison,
I found the best craftspeople.
This beautiful poncho was gifted
to me by one of the inmates,
and it looked really great
leaving the prison.
My boyfriend, Charles,
sent his plane to pick me up.
I was very happy
to be getting out of there.
To thunderous applause
here in Manhattan today,
Martha Stewart returned to work
after more than a few days off.
She rallied and thanked the troops
at Martha Stewart Omnimedia.
I love all of you
from the bottom of my heart.
And I'm really glad to be home.
She had lived before that being worried
about what people thought of her.
And then the worst thing
that could possibly happen happened.
And she survived it.
She'd been set free
by going to prison.
I am free.
No ankle bracelet.
Mark Burnett,
the creator of The Apprentice,
proposed a daily show, The Martha Show.
And I was excited about that,
because yes, of course I wanna do that.
Do you think you're back?
I hope that I have reemerged as a teacher,
as a purveyor of great information.
We are going to mix up the rub,
and you're going to rub it into the meat.
Wow.
Okay.
Mark Burnett wanted a talk show
with variety guests,
and I really wanted
my old format of how-to.
She was at a vulnerable moment right then.
Had Martha not gone to prison,
she wouldn't have done
the deal with Mark Burnett.
She lost control.
And the result wasn't what she
or the audiences came to expect.
It just felt forced.
I thought I could teach you
something today.
And now, do you get to cook a lot
at home or not?
I...
I cannot imagine Martha wanting
to spend her time
with celebrities who were not expert
at whatever it is they were doing.
Those damn TV shows
were a grade of malice.
People gravitated to Martha Stewart
not because she was celebrity adjacent
or because she was a celebrity.
It was because of what she stood for.
And the daytime show,
that wasn't authentic to Martha.
Mark Burnett missed the point
of Martha Stewart.
Live audience and crummy music and... Ugh.
That was more like prison
than being at Alderson.
Just shows when she controls everything,
it works more than
if she lets someone else control.
Martha wanted to do so many things.
But she wasn't allowed to be a CEO
because of the conviction.
Stewart is charging
full steam ahead
to try to save her company.
This year, they posted a $35 million loss.
The renegotiation of
the Kmart contract was pitiful.
And the deals that we were being offered
weren't as lucrative.
When you're not making the money
that you need to make,
there is a lot of confusion.
And the relationship to authenticity
was harder and harder to hold on to.
You can't do everything perfectly.
In the 2000s,
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
increasingly became a very struggling
and shrinking company.
Her social and cultural relevance
just declined.
Once you took Martha out of the CEO seat,
things were not gonna work as well.
Martha didn't have the control
to bring the company back.
It was a publicly traded company.
There were things that Martha
simply had to get out of the way on
and had absolutely no authority on.
Very hard thing for Martha to accept.
I was much more agile
prior to prison.
And my life became a little less exciting.
And I think also,
it affected my relationship with Charles.
We had this elaborate trip planned.
We were visiting the president of Iceland
and we were in bed,
and he said, "You know, Martha,
I'm going to get married."
He said, "I'm gonna get married to Lisa."
I said, "Lisa who?"
I mean, he hadn't told me a word.
"And, by the way, her parents
don't want me to ever speak to you again."
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?
What a stupid thing to do
to someone that you actually cared about.
So, second "divorce."
The Wall Street Journal
is reporting this exclusively
that Martha Stewart is close
to selling her empire,
called Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia,
to a retail licensing company...
...sequential licenses
on a number of brands,
including items in
Jessica Simpson's collection
and Linens 'n Things.
That was a devastating moment
because it marked the end of an era.
There are moments in time
that are inflection points.
As I look back on that, I think,
Jesus, how that fucked up everything.
She'd have this company that now would be
worth tens of billions of dollars.
It would've been huge.
The whole world would've been different.
Imagine.
My company was founded by me,
based on all my ideas and my creativity
and my inner thoughts, put it that way.
And no longer.
Being owned by somebody else
is not the same as having
your own company at all.
Ugh.
How much money?
Did I lose?
Personally, oh, I'm sure...
$500 million?
No, probably more than $1 billion,
of course.
- So...
- More than $1 billion?
Yes, and...
Enough. Let's get on with...
with the future.
By that time,
if you wanna believe in mojo,
I think my mojo was damaged.
I wasn't as adept as I had been.
Something slowed me down.
But I have two mottos.
One is, "Learn something new every day."
And the second one is,
"When you're through changing,
you're through."
Change that garden if you don't like it.
Rip it out, and you start all over again.
Justin!
Justin Bieber, he really was sort of
at the lowest point of his life.
What'd you say?
- You heard.
- I'll beat the fuck out of you.
And so his manager and Justin
both thought the Comedy Central Roast
would be an opportunity
for Justin to kind of get out
in front of this train wreck
that was happening all around him.
So, stakes were high.
Nothing's off limits.
It's a roast. You hit everywhere.
Justin's manager called me
one day and he goes,
"I got the greatest thing ever."
"I got Martha Stewart."
Martha, for us right here!
Martha's a legend,
and she's bringing in her own experience,
having been in prison.
And that was also
the trajectory that Justin was on.
It was like an intervention.
At that point, Martha had been
off the air for a few years.
And, culturally,
she had become pretty irrelevant.
What was your reaction
when they asked you
to be here for the Bieber roast?
Cool. Cool.
It just felt like
it came out of left field.
It really was like, what?
My publicist said,
"This is a little bit out
of your milieu, Martha."
And my daughter said, "Okay, Mom,
yeah, sure, go out and do Comedy Central."
She said, "Have you ever watched
a Comedy Central Roast?"
And I said, "Well, I... I think so."
I hadn't watched anything.
Hey, Martha!
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Kevin Hart.
And welcome to the Comedy Central roast
of Justin Bieber.
Yeah!
We're about to give this boy
a ass whupping that he deserves. We are.
We are!
For all the Black people that are confused
about that old white woman on the couch,
that's Martha Stewart.
Yeah, right there.
That's Martha Stewart right there.
Martha Stewart had her shirt off
in my dressing room.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
Don't get the wrong idea.
She just wanted me to titty fuck her!
Yeah!
I'm just trying to loosen y'all up.
I'm sorry.
Alexis said,
"You know they roast you too?"
And I didn't pay any attention to that.
Martha, it's nice to see you, uh,
interacting with Black people
for the first time since prison.
That's really nice.
Martha is so old,
her first period was the Renaissance.
The real surprise to all of us
was what everybody else
was saying about her.
That was not something
we had been warned about.
All these rappers onstage,
and Martha Stewart
has done the most jail time.
Everything that transpires in a roast
is in the pursuit, of course, of a laugh,
but also to get to some sort of truth.
Martha Stewart, everybody.
First of all, thank you, Kevin Hart.
It's really great to be here...
Oh, there you are.
Sitting and listening to you yell
your jokes over the last hour
is the hardest time I've ever done.
As we all know,
Kevin is one of the biggest movie stars
in the business right now,
and he deserves it.
He's struggled for years.
When he finally got
his first big paycheck,
he spent $150,000 on a watch.
I forget that term, uh, for that.
It's not African American rich.
It'll come to me.
You would never know
that Snoop Dogg is 43 now,
which is three times
as long as actual dogs live
and twice as long as most of his friends.
You expected her to come up
and do something soft.
But she went the other way.
I do a lot of gardening,
but you are without a doubt
the dirtiest used-up ho I have ever seen.
It shocked the audience.
How could Martha Stewart be that funny?
Let's get to the reason I'm here tonight,
which is to give Justin Bieber some tips
to use when he inevitably
ends up in prison.
I've been in lockup,
and you wouldn't last a week,
so pay attention.
The first thing you'll need is a shank.
I made mine out of a pintail comb
and a pack of gum.
I'll show you how later.
It's so simple.
I found Bubblicious works best,
and it's so much fun to say.
You see, when I did my stretch,
all the hood rats on my cell block
wanted to break off
a piece of Martha Stewart's ass,
so I decided some bitch needed to get got.
I walked into the chow hall,
picked out the biggest bull dyke,
and I stuck her.
From then on, prison was easier
than making blueberry scones.
She was the star of that roast.
It was a masterstroke.
It was brilliant in so many ways,
because it was Martha
reclaiming her identity.
Whoo!
And it really made waves.
It catapulted her into a younger audience
who said, "She's one of us."
I sat next to Snoop
for seven hours.
And he was smoking away,
blunt after blunt,
and I was just getting higher
and higher sitting there.
We just so happened
to be sitting side by side,
and my secondhand smoke,
you know, created an idea
that maybe we should hang out
and talk about some things.
In the beginning, it was more about
me telling her I like what she do,
and how she get down.
And I felt like she'd be an upgrade for me
just to be in her presence.
And it spawned an adventure.
We've put together
a kind of funny, quirky,
entertaining dinner-party show
where we actually cook.
Melding cultures is a good thing.
That is such an exquisite pairing
because of everything that she represents,
and he just seems like the polar opposite.
It was just a hit.
- Work on 'em, Martha.
- Yeah.
I like the way you're spinning
that sugar round them balls. That's nice.
It fucked me up when I see you
with Martha Stewart.
'Cause I'm like,
yo, man, I grew up off Snoop.
When me and Martha got a chance
to hang out,
we discovered that we love the same things
and we have the same beliefs in life.
We love to love and we love to teach.
Pretty good.
I have said this,
and I will say it again.
If you're not following Martha Stewart
on social media,
you're truly missing out.
Fresh out the clink
Cooking up Martha Stewart
She embraced social media
in a way that most people
in their seventies
did not know how to embrace.
Gravy with your mama in the kitchen
Martha Stewart
I picked this up earlier today.
I keep a cougar, Martha Stewart
The culture found her again.
And she's still the Martha that we knew
from decades ago.
Make hay when the sun shines.
Her brand endured because there was
something there that was genuine.
She's a hustler, and she's shrewd as hell.
And action.
BIC EZ Reach lighters,
perfect for lighting up.
All your celebrations.
The hardest thing to do
is to retain cultural relevance
as an older woman,
and she's done it.
And now she's reinvented herself
as the sexy grandmother.
- That's called a thirst trap.
- I heard that.
Introducing
this year's cover model,
Martha Stewart.
She's the oldest
Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.
A hundred billion impressions.
Do not try to pigeonhole
Martha Stewart.
She is the mother of reinvention.
The definitive American woman
of our time.
There are just
a handful of people
who have literally changed
the way we live in our culture,
what we buy, what we think about,
and she is one of them.
Martha created a world,
a world of lushness and beauty.
Her specialty
was good taste and creativity.
It's missing.
And I think we were a sadder world.
She was preposterously perfect,
and that comes with some loneliness,
especially if you're a woman.
It's automatic.
All along the way,
there were people who were doubters,
the haters, and the people
who really wanted to bring her down.
Part of the remarkable aspects
of her story is that she has triumphed
over so much of that.
By being more accepting
of the things that she could not control,
it made her more relevant to the world.
She quit being the goddess,
and she became one of us,
one of the women who had it rough
and came out and said,
"I'm going forward."
Just checking to make sure everything
has water and is growing nicely.
I worry about all my seedlings.
"The cultural meaning
of Martha Stewart's success
lies deep in the success itself...
which is why even her troubles
and strivings are part of the message,
not detrimental
but integral to the brand."
"She has branded herself
not as Superwoman
but as Everywoman."
I have always looked for voids.
What doesn't exist? What needs to exist?
What can I do to help fill that void?
You see a... a field,
and you turn that field
into a fantastic garden.
You see a flower that shouldn't be there,
you put something
in its place that belongs.
I don't wanna put up with imperfection.
Although, I've learned as one gets older,
imperfections are a little bit more okay
than they were
when I was a little younger.
I think, uh, I think imperfection is...
is something that you can deal with.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Oh yeah, there's something about you
Beautiful, I just want you to know
You're my favorite girl
Oh yeah, there's something about you
Beautiful, I just want you to know
You're my favorite girl
Oh yeah, there's something about you
I know you gon' lose it
This new Snoop shit
Come on, baby boo
You gots to get into it
Don't fool with the player
With the cool whip
Yeah, yeah
You know I'm always on that cool shit
Walk to it, do it how you do it
Have a glass
Let me put you in the mood
Little cutie looking like a student
Long hair with your big, fat booty
Back in the days
You was a girl I went to school with
Had to tell your moms and sister
To cool it
The girl wanna do it
I just might do it
Hit her up with some pimp-pimp fluid
Mami don't worry, I won't abuse it
Hurry up and finish
So we can watch Clueless
I laugh at these bitches
When they ask who do this
But everybody know
Who girl that you is
Beautiful, I just want you to know
That you're my favorite girl
See, I just want you to know
That you are really special
Oh yeah, there's something about you
Snoop Dogg clothing
That's what I'm groomed in
You got my pictures on the wall
In your room and
Girls be complaining
You keep me booming
But girls like that
Wanna listen to Pat Boone
You's a college girl
But that don't stop you from doin'
Come and see the Dogg
In the hood near you and
You don't ask why I roll with a crew
And twist up my fingers
And wear dark blue
And on the East side
That's the crew I choose
Nothing I do is new to you
I smack up the world
If they rude to you
'Cause, baby girl, you so beautiful
Beautiful, I just want you to know
You're my favorite girl
See, I just want you to know
That you are really special