Martha Stewart on Her Netflix Doc and What She Wants to Focus on in Her Next Autobiographical Project
By Trey Williams
June 4, 2025
“What does it mean to be happy anyway?” filmmaker R.J. Cutler asks The Hollywood Reporter, referring to the subject of his latest documentary, Martha Stewart.
Stewart — who tells THR, “I think I’m 83 years old; every article that I read says that I’m 83 years old, so I must be” — has lived an exceptional life punctuated by a brand of perfection that’s attainable if you dare to put in enough care and effort. Her life and pursuit of perfection is highlighted and interrogated in Cutler’s doc Martha.
The documentary debuted in October on Netflix to much zeitgeisty fanfare and fuss, with a central question at its core: Has the queen of homemaking found happiness in the perfection she peddled? Was it in a sumptuous meringue tartlet? The perfect doily-ladened dinner table? Maybe it was in the billion-dollar media empire she sacrificed to build, or perhaps, as Stewart says early in the film, she found happiness in the manicured serenity of her garden.
“I’m proud of the fact that I think I’ve influenced the business world to open doors to women in business,” she says. “My journey’s been very interesting. I can pretty much do what I want to do every day now; I don’t really have people telling me I have to do this and I have to do that. My job is a self-made job.”
Martha tracks Stewart’s life from modest beginnings in Nutley, New Jersey, where her family grew their own food, through a youthful modeling career, a stint as a Wall Street stockbroker, starting her lauded catering business and encapsulating the idea of aspirational American womanhood.
It was that idea that attracted Cutler to directing the documentary, he says. Through the process, in which Stewart gave Cutler access to her diaries and intimate letters, she got more personal than she’s ever been. What Cutler found was a woman who refused to be knocked down without getting up, he says, a woman who didn’t take no for an answer, who only looked forward.
“This is a woman who turned lemons into lemonade, and because it’s Martha Stewart, it’s the best lemonade you’ve ever had,” Cutler says.
Martha is the first of more unveilings about her life to come, Stewart says. Her project with Cutler was a personal vehicle — can the woman striving for perfection actually reach it? — but whether it’s another documentary, or the autobiography she said she’s working on, Stewart wants to focus more on the business that made her the first female self-made billionaire in the U.S.
“This story is about equality, about women being able to stand up for themselves and do what they want to do,” Stewart says. “It’s about a search for balance and not being able to find it. Balance is very hard to find when you’re a hardworking woman.”
