‘Martha’ director R.J. Cutler on the ‘great privilege’ of telling Martha Stewart’s story — even if she didn’t always want him to

Acclaimed filmmaker R.J. Cutler wasn’t always planning to make a movie about Martha Stewart. Then, she came to dinner. 

“She basically crashed the dinner, and we sat and talked all night long about her life story,” Cutler tells Gold Derby. During their initial conversation, Cutler says he was surprised that Stewart grew up in “modest means” in suburban New Jersey, raised by first-generation American parents. 

“Her background was counter-intuitive to what I might have thought it would be,” Cutler says, noting that his initial expectation was that Stewart came from a privileged upbringing. What the filmmaker realized, he says, is that Stewart herself stood as an avatar for American womanhood in the latter part of the 20th century and into the 21st century. 

“She’s this kind of visionary figure who has had such an incredible impact on our world, but she’s also somebody who’s had to be a fighter and a survivor and and somebody who whose life story is, in many ways, defined by the fact that she’s a woman, but also defined by the fact that she’s such a significant visionary,” Cutler says. “So all of this made it clear to me that there was a great film there.”

That Stewart expressed doubt about telling her story only enhanced Cutler’s opinion. “This is a person who had never been to therapy, but whose life was so full of fodder for the therapeutic and analytical minds,” Cutler says. “She’s just really an amazing subject. What a great privilege to have told her story and been trusted by her to tell her story.”

Martha debuted on Netflix last year after premiering at the Telluride Film Festival. There, Cutler and Stewart participated in a post-screening chat that was politely barbed, with Stewart ribbing Cutler for issues she had with the film. However, in later interviews, any pretense of civil disagreement had worn off. Speaking to the New York Times in October, Stewart criticized everything from the film’s musical score to Cutler’s choice of camera angles. “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.”

Those opinions, however, put Stewart in the minority. The film was an unequivocal success for Netflix — Cutler says more than 30 million people watched the movie on the streaming service — and received positive reviews from critics (89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (94 percent audience score). 

“It’s not the first time I've been in this situation,” Cutler says when asked about making documentaries about subjects with a specific view of their brand. The two-time Emmy Award winner and Peabody Award winner has directed movies about several culture icons from the 20th and 21 centuries, including Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (The September Issue), former Vice President Dick Cheney (The World According to Dick Cheney), the late comedian John Belushi (Belushi), and Gen Z icon Billie Eilish (Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry).

“If Anna Wintour were making a movie about Anna Wintour, it would have been completely different than the movie I made about Adam Wintour,” Cutler says. “If Billie Eilish were making a movie about Billie Eilish, it would be completely different than the movie I made about Billie Eilish. Why wouldn’t it be? So, of course, the same is true for Martha Stewart. If Martha Stewart were making a movie about Martha Stewart, it would be completely different. But the great privilege of the work that I get to do is that people are trusting me to tell their story. And we agree, very early in the process, that I’ll have final cut. So it’s not a mystery. We understand that is the dynamic. So, as I say, I think it’s a great privilege, but it also takes enormous courage from the person allowing me to tell the story. It can’t be easy. But, for me, it makes the importance of truthfulness much more at a premium.”

Like Cutler’s other work, Martha is entertaining and illuminating about its subject. The film tracks Stewart’s life from her early days as a college student in New York to her massive success in the 1980s and 1990s, her 2004 prison sentence for obstruction of justice, and her reinvention as a social media star. Cutler spent months researching the film and uses incredible archive footage and several interviews with figures in Stewart’s life to tell the story. However, the only person shown speaking on screen during the 115-minute running time is Stewart.

“I don’t want to take for granted that we’re going to do talking-head interviews, because why take that for granted?” Cutler says. “I am also not always compelled by talking-head interviews. There are no talking-head interviews in The Godfather. That’s a flip thing to say, I’m making a point, which is that you don’t need a talking head interview to create a compelling piece of narrative cinema.”

Cutler says the decision only to show Stewart onscreen came from his desire to have the film and the audience live within Stewart’s experience. “She’s the central narrator in this film and a very complicated narrator. Because, in many ways, she’s an unreliable narrator, and that’s a delicious character,” Cutler adds. 

At 83, Stewart has done about everything a person can do. She became the first self-made female billionaire in the country. Her ability to forecast trends before the public makes her akin to Steve Jobs, but for the home-living space. As Martha posits, the argument could be made that she’s the original influencer. However, one thing she has never done is successfully speak to a therapist.

“She said she went to therapy once, and 10 minutes into the session, she got up, walked out, and on her way out the door, said, ‘Don’t send me a bill,’” Cutler recalls. “That’s so Martha.”

Still, it’s hard to watch Martha without feeling like Cutler is her unofficial therapist during their interviews.

“She’s not looking back, she’s looking forward and and in a way, I think, that’s why she was drawn to have a filmmaker tell her story, because she knows she has an extraordinary life story to tell, but she was never going to do it herself,” Cutler says. “She’s seeing the future, and she has her whole life. She revolutionized retail; she saw ‘synergy’ long before anybody even used the term. But she wasn't somebody who was looking forward to being interviewed. She used to say to me, ‘R.J. Cutler, I’ve never done a day in therapy in my life, and R.J. Cutler thinks he’s gonna put me in the chair. Good luck to you.’”

Cutler says he spoke to Stewart several times over Zoom during his preproduction period and eventually sat down with her for 40 hours over five days, with a “break for a lovely lunch prepared by Martha.” Of course.

“She still was, to some degree, kicking and screaming the whole time. But you know what? That’s part of it. Kicking and screaming is part of who that character was. Kicking and screaming makes it feel so satisfying when she opens up and reveals herself,” Cutler says of Stewart. “There are so many things that we learn, I think, from this film, about how people reveal themselves. Sometimes they reveal themselves by revealing themselves. Sometimes they reveal themselves by hiding themselves. Sometimes they reveal themselves by telling the truth. Sometimes they reveal themselves by not telling the truth, by saying something deceptive or destructive. And so much can come from someone as rich and complex and in the moment and as available as Martha Stewart was.”

Martha is eligible for Emmy consideration this year. The movie is streaming on Netflix.