Netflix's new documentary, “Martha,” offers an unvarnished view of Martha Stewart, the woman who earned the nickname the “doyenne of domesticity” early in her career and is now considered the “original influencer.”
The Netflix (NFLX) documentary introduces Martha Helen Kostrya in the 1960s as a very beautiful and very scrappy blond from a troubled New Jersey family. The two-hour film painstakingly covers her rise and fall — and now her renaissance, thanks to her own business savvy and some very strategic alliances, including a celebrated relationship with Snoop Dogg.
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Along the way, the now 83-year-old Stewart worked as a stockbroker, a caterer, founder of a publishing company — and became the first self-made female billionaire in the U.S.
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Then, she was convicted of the crime of lying to the FBI about a stock trade and was tabloid fodder for years. But prison was just one stop for one of the most resilient businesswomen ever to set foot in an American boardroom.
Martha Stewart was one of the first female CEOs to take a company public
After working as a stockbroker for several years, and by all accounts, a very successful one, Martha Stewart left New York City for Connecticut, where she started a catering and party/wedding planning business.
That business spawned the idea for a book, which in turn became the publishing powerhouse Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO), founded in 1997. MSLO was an umbrella company for several media and merchandising ventures linked to Stewart’s personal brand.
The company went public via an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange on October 19, 1999. The stock opened at $18 a share, but by the end of trading, it was $38 a share, making Stewart an instant billionaire.
At one point, her net worth was an estimated $1.9 billion.
"People took me seriously," she says in the documentary. "I was invited to join the NYSE board, the board of Revlon."
Her experience as a stockbroker and member of the NYSE board did not help her when she was implicated in an insider trading scheme for selling shares in ImClone Systems, a biopharmaceutical company she owned shares in and whose founder she was friends with. The company's CEO, Dr. Sam Waksal, says in the documentary, "I didn't give Martha Stewart insider information. Period."
At the time of her trial and conviction, many people believed she was singled out because she was a woman. Prosecutors were unsuccessful in making the insider trading accusation stick, so they found something else, and she was convicted of lying to the FBI.
Martha Stewart’s company lost most of its value after she went to jail
Stewart was sentenced to five months in federal prison. During the trial and while she was serving her sentence, the value of her company plummeted. Shortly after her conviction, earnings dropped 86%, and the stock price plummeted to around $2 from a high of nearly $40; the company is no longer on the NYSE and has been privately held since 2015.
In the Netflix documentary, she says, "I lost a billion dollars."
After her conviction and as part of an agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Martha Stewart was banned from serving in any role that would allow her to prepare, audit, or disclose the financial results of a public company until August 2011.
"She was a tough boss," says John Cuti, one of Stewart's attorneys, in the documentary. "Some of the behaviors she was taken to task for would be applauded if it were a man."
Following the release of the documentary, many people on social networks, including Reddit, came to Stewart's defense about how she was treated during and after her trial.
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Martha Stewart tending to her chickens.
Martha Stewart is friends with Justin Bieber and has a business relationship with Snoop Dogg
In 2003, a few years after her release from prison, Stewart was invited to participate in a roast of Justin Bieber, who at age 21 was himself facing jail time and uncertainty about his career.
The hosts of the roast, and the Comedy Central audience, expected a demur older woman, but Stewart played way against type and roasted Bieber, Snoop Dogg, Kevin Hart, and others.
She was viciously funny, and her performance was a big hit. It introduced her to a whole new generation (or two), and she has since managed to rebuild her career to the point that her net worth is now a reported $400 million.
Snoop Dogg says in the Netflix documentary that Martha Stewart is one of the greatest teachers of all time. It's a two-way street.
In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, when asked what she learned from the rapper who is 30 years her junior, Stewart says, “I’ve learned how to negotiate even better than ever. We do a lot of work together, and I wait for him to negotiate the contract, then I go and follow him.”
And in a recent New York Times review of the documentary, the writer Madison Malone Kircher described Martha Stewart succinctly: “Real influence for me is always about how much money you can compel people to spend. The ability to get swathes of people to change the way they act, eat or dress."
"She did that and then some. I think she has earned the title of 'original influencer.' Though I don’t know that she’d like that title. Influencers are a dime a dozen — there’s only one Martha.”
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Stewart is reportedly not pleased with the way she is portrayed in the Netflix documentary but will have total control over how her story is told when she publishes the autobiography she is currently working on; there is no publication date.
As of April 2019, Marquee Brands LLC is the parent company of MSLO, and Martha Stewart is the chief creative officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
In the same recent Wall Street Journal interview, Stewart said of retirement: “It’s not at all appealing in any way.”
The documentary closes with two of Stewart's mottos: "Learn something new every day" and "When you're through changing, you're through."
Martha Stewart did not reply to TheStreet's request for comment.
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