Why Martha Stewart bashed ‘Martha,’ a documentary about her

Martha Stewart is bashing “Martha,” the R.J. Cutler-directed Netflix documentary about her life.
According to Stewart, Cutler didn’t flatter her or emphasize topics, such as her grandchildren, that she felt were essential to a documentary on her life, per The New York Times.
“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,” Stewart told the Times.
“I had ruptured my Achilles’ tendon. I had to have this hideous operation. And so I was limping a little. But again, he doesn’t even mention why — that I can live through that and still work seven days a week.”
Cutler has defended the documentary.
“I am really proud of this film, and I admire Martha’s courage in entrusting me to make it,” he told The New York Times. “I’m not surprised that it’s hard for her to see aspects of it.”
He continued, “It’s a movie, not a Wikipedia page. … It’s the story of an incredibly interesting human being who is complicated and visionary and brilliant.”
Cutler is behind several celebrity documentary films, including “Elton John: Never Too Late,” “Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry” and “The World According to Dick Cheney,” per IMDB.
Critics have been praising the documentary for its raw look into Stewart’s past and present life.
“This is simply a riveting, candid and surprisingly warts-and-all look at the life and times of Stewart,” applauded Deadline. “This is a complicated portrait of a complicated personality but one we get to understand in ways I never thought possible.”
“The ‘doyenne of domesticity’ proves a blunt and at times frustratingly opaque yet always compelling subject in a new documentary,” wrote The Guardian.
Still, Stewart had several criticisms about how “Martha” turned out. Here are a few aspects of the documentary that Stewart panned.
Stewart was unhappy with the camera angles Cutler used because she felt they were unflattering.
“He had three cameras on me. And he chooses to use the ugliest angle,” Stewart told The New York Times. “And I told him, ‘Don’t use that angle! That’s not the nicest angle. You had three cameras. Use the other angle.’ He would not change that.”
She wasn’t happy with the music, either.
Stewart says she told Cutler, “An essential part of the film is that you play rap music.” She suggested Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg or Fredwreck to score it.
“And then gets some lousy classical score in there, which has nothing to do with me,” Stewart told the Times.
There wasn’t enough attention on her “modern home magazine” and her grandchildren weren’t given any camera time, Stewart argued.
“My magazine, my Martha Stewart magazine, which you might say is traditional, was the most modern home magazine ever created. We had avant-garde photography. Nobody ever showed puff pastry the way I showed it. Or the glossaries of the apples and the chrysanthemums,” Stewart told the Times. “And we prided ourselves so much on all of that modernism. And he didn’t get any of that.”
She also complained that her “utterly fantastic” grandchildren weren’t featured enough — nor her love of traveling.
“My daughter was very against the children being included. But I could have talked about them, and I did,” Stewart told the outlet. “I’ve taken them to the most unusual places in the world, and they’re only 12 and 13. My love of travel wasn’t mentioned. My trip up Kilimanjaro wasn’t mentioned!”