6 huge bombshells from Netflix’s 'Martha' documentary

01 of 06 Stewart's father slapped her when he discovered she was engaged While studying at Barnard College in Manhattan, Stewart was set up on a date with Andrew Stewart, a Yale law student and the brother of her well-heeled classmate. "He was very polite and handsome. And he had traveled a lot," she recalled of her first impression during a dinner date. "It was exciting to meet a sophisticated young man. And he had an American Express card, which was a very big deal in those days," she added. "By the end of dinner, I was madly in love."

The two courted briefly before Andrew proposed. "It seemed such a natural thing to do," Stewart says in the doc. "Fall in love, get married." But her father had different feelings about the romance. "I went home and told my dad, and my dad slapped me," she recalls. "He slapped me hard on my face, and said, 'No, you're not marrying him. He's a Jew.'"

"I remember getting that slap," Stewart says solemnly, adding she "was not at all surprised" by her father's reaction "because he was a bigot, and he was impulsive."

But Stewart defied her father's hatred. "I said, 'I'm going to get married no matter what you think.'" Her mother helped her craft a handmade wedding dress, and she and Andrew wed in 1961. "The wedding day was very happy," she says. "It was the beginning of my life."

of 06 Stewart kissed a stranger on her honeymoon Martha and Andrew embarked upon a five-month extended honeymoon across Europe. The two found themselves in Florence, Italy, the night before Easter and Stewart felt she "had to go to church." Andrew stayed behind in the hotel room while she trekked to a cathedral. "He didn't have any interest in going to the Duomo with me," she says.

Stewart was enamored by her visit. "Listening to that amazing music in the cathedral, it was a very romantic place crowded with tourists," she recalls. One person in particular caught her eye — a man similarly exploring the cathedral alone.

"I met this very handsome guy. He didn't know I was married. I was this waif of a girl hanging out in the cathedral on Easter Eve. He was emotional, I was emotional. It was just because it was an emotional place. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced... It was like nothing I had ever done before. And so why not kiss a stranger?" she asks.

To Stewart, the kiss meant nothing, and she never encountered the man or spoke to him again following their encounter. Reflecting on the incident now, she calls it "neither naughty nor unfaithful. It was just emotional, of the moment. That's how I looked at it," she explained. "I wish we could all experience such an evening."

of 06 Stewart found that being a mother was "not at all natural" to her Once the newlyweds returned from their extended honeymoon, "reality came crashing down." In the documentary, Stewart's friend Kathy Tatlock describes the couple's union as more like a business partnership than a romantic one.

As Andrew worked at his successful publishing company, Stewart became pregnant with her only child, Alexis "Lexi" Stewart, born in 1965.

"Back then, everybody was having babies so young. That was sort of the style and the habit," Stewart explains. "I thought it was a natural thing, and it turns out it's not at all natural to be a mother."

It was no secret to Stewart's loved ones that she struggled with the transition to parenthood. "It was hard for her to adapt to being a mom," Tatlock observes. "She was happy when Lexi went down to nap so that she could be on her own. She took care of Lexi, but she didn't dote on her. She was always a little bit chilly."

Tatlock added that Stewart "didn't have that great joy in her marriage and in raising a child," explaining that she instead found fulfillment through her professional pursuits.

"Here were two people who had it all," Tatlock said of Martha and Andrew, "but I don't think they ever found happiness. Lexi got caught in the middle of it," she continued. "She was so confused and so angry herself."

"I grew up in a very uncomfortable house. I've learned to suppress most of my emotions," Alexis tells Cutler flatly and emotionlessly.

But Stewart laid some of the blame at the feet of her own mother, who according to Tatlock rarely hugged her daughter. "We were loved sort of obtusely when we were supposed to be loved," Stewart said of her childhood. "There was not a lot of 'affection' in our house... How could I be a really great mother if I didn't have the education to be a mother?"

of 06 Stewart admitted to being unfaithful to her first husband Despite finding their dream home in Westport, Conn., and throwing extravagant, publication-ready parties courtesy of Stewarts's catering company, the couple's marriage was hardly ideal. "[Andrew] was not satisfied at home," she recalls. "I don't know how many different girlfriends he had during this time, but I think there were quite a few."

An offscreen interviewer interjects: "Didn't you have an affair early on in the relationship?"

"Oh, yeah," Stewart blithely replies, "but I don't think Andy knew about that." Yet the interviewer reveals that she did "confess" her infidelity to Andrew, a fact that surprises Stewart. Andrew recalled the deceit in his own interview with the crew. "He says he didn't stray from the marriage until you told him you had already strayed," the interviewer clarifies.

"Oh, that's not true," Stewart says. "I don't think..." she trails off.

When pressed about her infidelity, Stewart explains that she "had a very brief affair with a very attractive Irish man." But she contends that she "would have never broken up a marriage for it. It was nothing."

Then, after a long pause, Stewart adds, "It was like the kiss in the cathedral."

of 06 Alexis fainted when her mother was found guilty of insider trading In 2003, Stewart was involved in an insider trading scandal and indicted on nine counts .

The trouble began in 2001 after she sold several shares of ImClone Systems stock shortly before its value plummeted. In 2004, she was found guilty on three charges: conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators. Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison with two years probation and a $30,000 fine.

"My daughter, she fainted when they read the verdict. Poor child," Stewart says over an animated scene of Alexis in the courthouse. "It was so horrifying and incomprehensible," Alexis recalls in the doc. "And then I woke up, and I was unfortunately still there."

Despite their historically fractured relationship, Alexis trekked to West Virginia "almost every weekend" to visit her mother in prison. "I'd get there the night before and then get up at about 4 in the morning and take some giant blankets because you had to get on line, out of your car, in order to get a [visiting] table," Alexis recalls.

Stewart didn't mince words when dissecting her conviction 20 years later. "It was so horrifying to me that I had to go through that to be a trophy for these idiots in the U.S. Attorney's Office," she reflects. "Those prosecutors should've been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high."

Stewart turned her ire to one writer from The New York Post who she said had "written horrible things [about me] during the entire trial" and was "just looking so smug" when the guilty verdict was read. "She's dead now, thank goodness," Stewart says unsparingly.

of 06 Stewart was sent to solitary confinement for touching a prison guard Alderson Federal Prison Camp is a minimum-security facility nicknamed "Camp Cupcake" for its easy-going approach to incarceration. There is no fence or border surrounding the property, and the documentary explains it's treated more as a boarding school-type environment with shared chores rather than a proper prison. Guards are unarmed and wear inconspicuous street clothing as opposed to uniforms.

At the time of Stewart's stay, the camp allowed prisoners to wander freely amongst the grounds during the day.

Despite the relatively easygoing conditions, Alderson was hardly a safe place. Prior to Stewart entering the prison, officials explicitly stated that they could do nothing to ensure the high-profile inmate's safety. "Late at night, walking home in the dark, you could've been jumped," she explains. "People were jumped...beaten. Stuff like that happened [to others]. I was warned. But I was not protected."

Stewart recalls one rather bizarre circumstance indicative of Alderson's unusual approach to incarceration. One particularly temperate and lovely morning, according to Stewart, she was strolling the grounds admiring the foliage (San Quentin Alderson is not) when she saw "two very well-dressed ladies" and complemented their outfits.

After realizing the two women were guards due to the "big silver key chain" they were wearing, Stewart absent-mindedly touched one of the chains in admiration.

In her prison diary, Stewart recounted the unexpectedly extreme fallout. She was called into the warden's office and "told to never, ever touch a guard without expecting severe reprimand," she wrote. "Of course, I apologized, but the incident was so minor when it occurred that I did not think about it for the rest of the day."

Nonetheless, the prison staff saw fit to punish Stewart in the harshest manner. "I was dragged into solitary for 'touching an officer,'" she says. "No food or water for a day. This was Camp Cupcake, remember? That was the nickname. Camp Cupcake. It was not a cupcake."

Near the end of the film, Stewart reflects on the time surrounding her conviction and incarceration. "The press made me out to be a person that I'm not," she says, choosing her words carefully. "I don't think I've been the mean and nasty and horrible person portrayed in certain publications. I'm strict and I'm demanding and I'm all those good things that make a successful person," she says.

Earlier in the documentary, the interviewer asks Stewart what she dislikes. In addition to inefficiency, impatience, and the color red, she says, "I dislike being mean just to be mean." Stewart then considers for a moment the powerful men who use their power to shamelessly abuse and bully those around them in the name of success without achieving nearly as much as she has.

Martha is streaming on Netflix.