Martha Stewart isn't a fan of the movie that was made about her.

Let's talk Martha and a run-in with my ultimate parasocial pal.

Nov 04, 2024

Author Taffy Brodesser-Akner is in London this week. Following the release of her second novel Long Island Compromise, Taffy was interviewed at the Southbank Centre by Georgia Pritchett, a British screenwriter known for her work on Succession and Veep.

Taffy told us about adapting her first novel Fleishman Is in Trouble for TV and what she talks about on a group chat with Claire Danes and the rest of the famous Fleishman cast (answer: their inability to digest feta cheese). She has to be the most engaging, funny and well-spoken author I have heard interviewed because she knows how to tell a good story. I highly recommend reading Long Island Compromise if you haven’t already (you can read my review here).

One audience member broke the unwritten rule of book events by starting his question with *“I haven’t read any of your work or seen the TV show but…”*

It was on our way out of the book event, though, that I had my favourite celebrity run-in so far.

Caroline O’Donoghue (author of The Rachel Incident and host of Sentimental Garbage) walked past me. I was in shock and before I could think, I blurted out: “HI! HOW ARE YOU!?”, as if we’d been friends for years. Even her husband said “Do you two know each other?” I then had to sit down for a few minutes. Turns out parasocial relationships are REAL. Anyway, hi Caroline, big fan, sorry for accidentally thinking we are mates but I assure you we could be!

📺 Martha

Available on Netflix now.

Martha Stewart is synonymous with homemaking, but how many of us really know how she became Martha Stewart? And didn’t she go to jail at one point? And why do I always see her with Snoop Dogg?

In Martha, director R.J. Cutler (The September Issue) fills in those blanks. We see her go from a stockbroker, to a local caterer, to a cookbook author, to a daytime television host, to becoming the world’s first self-made female billionaire. It is an impressive story.

Martha’s feedback on this shot: *[R.J. Cutler] had three cameras on me. And he chooses to use the ugliest angle. And I told him, ‘Don’t use that angle! That’s not the nicest angle.’*

Cutler has put together a half-film, half-documentary. Strangely, Martha is the only talking head we actually see because the other interviewees (her friends, daughter, ex-colleagues) are voiceover-only. Cutler also uses some questionable illustrations for scenes that have no archival footage, like when Martha went to jail for 150 days.

The best scenes show the 83-year-old wandering the grounds of her 153-acre property barking orders at gardeners while wielding her secateurs to trim back plants for the winter.

So, what did we learn from the film? No-one speaks their truth quite like Martha Stewart. She’s blunt, she’s bossy and she doesn’t suffer fools. Each time Cutler tries to drill down too far into Martha’s feelings, she closes up like a Venus flytrap.

Guess who has been the film’s main critic? Martha Stewart. Here are some of the (frankly incredible) quotes she gave to the New York Times when asked for her thoughts:

“Those last scenes with me looking like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden? Boy, I told him to get rid of those. And he refused. I hate those last scenes. Hate them.”
[On her conviction and incarceration] “It was not that important. The trial and the actual incarceration was less than two years out of an 83-year life. I considered it a vacation, to tell you the truth.”

Worth checking out.

Currently…

🕺 Listening to: From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough. Lisa Marie and Riley are the daughter and granddaughter of Elvis Presley. This is a good one to listen to on Spotify or Audible because it is only 5 hours and 40 minutes long and is narrated by Julia Roberts.

🇺🇸 Glued to: US election podcasts. Your best bet for a good summary of the next few days are: Pod Save America, The Daily and The Rest is Politics US.

🎤 Obsessed with: this season of Saturday Night Live (available to watch on Binge in Australia), particularly this weekend where Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris met Kamala Harris.

Coming up in November:

November 13 - Season 2 of Bad Sisters on Apple TV+.
November 14 - Gladiator II is released in Australia.
November 14 - Say Nothing (the series based on the Patrick Radden Keefe book) on Disney+.
November 17 - the co-creator of Yellowstone is releasing a new show called Landman on Paramount+ starring Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore and Jon Hamm.
November 21 - Wicked is released in Australia.
November 21 - Cruel Intentions is released on Amazon Prime Video. Expect some hype around this TV version of the 1999 movie - “bed-hopping and betrayals among a group of rich young men and women”.