Martha Stewart discusses ‘painful’ Me Too movement and accused men she knows

Martha Stewart has admitted that she has complicated feelings about the Me Too movement because she knows so many of the famous men who’ve been accused.

The 79-year-old mogul is featured in the March issue of Harper’s Bazaar, and candidly shared her thoughts on men who’ve been ‘set aside’ by accusations of sexual abuse, harassment, and impropriety — insisting that some of them aren’t true villains, they just have bad personalities.

‘Some were certainly guilty of a lot of what was accused. But some were — it’s just their awful personalities,’ she said.

‘It has been really painful for me,’ she went on. ‘I’ve known almost every single one of the famous guys that has been accused and set aside.

‘I am not going to mention their names, but I know those people very, very well, and, you know, the man just talks about sex during dinner. That doesn’t mean anything to me.’

Part of the Me Too movement is calling out not just sexual abuse but sexual harassment — which includes inappropriate comments someone with an ‘awful personality’ might make that creates a hostile or uncomfortable environment.

Martha has plenty of history being around these kinds of men. Before taking up a career in catering that eventually turned into her Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia empire, Martha spent her teenage years modeling professionally and her 20s working as a stockbroker on Wall Street.

‘We were the real thing. You saw the movie Wall Street? I lived it. I mean, every man on Wall Street was trying to get you,’ she said.

‘Every man was trying to touch you in the cab. We had martinis for lunch… [I] was a modest girl. I did not f*** around, if you want to use that word.’ 

That being said, she also didn’t let men’s behavior dictate how she chose to dress. 

‘Do you remember hot pants?’ she said, adding that she two velvet pairs that she would wear with a tight sweater and a belt.

‘[Little, tiny short shorts] where you see plenty of leg and a little bit of your butt,’ she went on. ‘And I looked great in them. We would sit with our feet up on our desks, and I had high-heeled shoes on or boots. And that’s what we wore to work.’

Martha has previously detailed an incident of sexual harassment from her teen modeling days.

Speaking to People in 2017, she recalled an uncomfortable modeling audition she wen on when she was just 16.

‘I was asked to wear a bikini under my clothes. I thought, “Oh, maybe we’re doing a beach commercial or something,”‘ she said.

‘So I go into the room and there’s a table with all men sitting around it and it’s an advertisement agency … They said, “Now you can take your clothes off,” and I said, “Oh, is this where are we doing the commercial? Are we wearing bikinis in the commercial?” 

‘They said, “No, but as long as you’re here we might as well see what you look like.” I thought that was harassment of the first order,’ she said.

While Martha doesn’t reprise her hot pants look for Harper’s Bazaar, she does model several glamorous outfits including a Giambattista Valli gown, a Gucci dress, aand a Balmain LBD — as well as an oversized suit paired with converse.

In the interview, she also opened up once again about the five months she spent at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia in 2005 after being convicted of insider trading.

‘I knew I was strong going in and I was certainly stronger coming out,’ she said. ‘It was a very serious happening in my life. I take it very seriously. 

‘I’m not bitter about it, but…My daughter knows all the problems that resulted because of that. There’s a lot.’

It also resulted in her biggest regret, was that she didn’t host SNL when she was invited. 

‘My only big regret that I can talk about is that Saturday Night Live asked me to host,’ she said. ‘My probation officer wouldn’t give me the time. That really pissed me off, because I would have loved to have hosted Saturday Night Live. I’d like that on my résumé.’ 

Martha also took the opportunity to clear up a misconception: She does not, in fact, smoke pot.

Fans have come to assume that she does with her Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Party Challenge cohost, but Martha insisted that’s not the case. 

‘What do they call it? A contact high? That’s the extent of my getting high with Snoop, is secondhand smoke, which is pretty serious, by the way,’ she said.

Martha spoke about her friendship with Snoop back in November.

‘I learn a lot from my friend Snoop, just about his whole world,’ she told People magazine. ‘Rap had always interested me. That kind of poetry really resonates with me. I listen to the words, although some of them might be pretty hard to take.’ 

In that same interview, Martha discussed several of the high highs and some low lows in her life, admitting that one of her more painful experiences was divorcing her ex-husband Andrew Stewart in 1990. 

The two married when Martha was just 19 and share a daughter, Alexis, who is now 55.

‘Getting divorced was a terrible thing for me, because we were the first to divorce in my family. And that we haven’t spoken since the divorce is even more painful,’ she said.

Going away to Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia was another struggle — but, she says, ‘I got through it.’

‘I learned how to crochet. I still have the gorgeous crocheted poncho [that I wore leaving prison]. It’s in the attic,’ she said. Martha has since worn it on her show, and the pattern is available online.

‘And I reupped my ceramics there. I had done a lot of ceramics as a child, and we had this fabulous ceramics studio in West Virginia, and I made an entire crèche scene. That’s my best memory.’  

Martha also discussed her modeling days under Ford Models, saying she was an ‘all-American girl’ and ‘so skinny and so perfect for modeling.’

She did some work with TV commercials, and at 16 was playing married parts in ads.

But though she found success and knew she could ‘pose for pictures,’ Martha said she didn’t think she had sex appeal.

‘I was not sexy, and I was not provocative. That feeling never came. It still hasn’t come,’ she said.

Though she can remember thinking of herself as ‘more ‘beautiful than Ali MacGraw,’ she didn’t have what the actress had: ‘I didn’t know how to lure the photographers into my bed. Everybody was sleeping with everybody at the time, and I never did any of that.’