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The juicy details come from "Martha," a new Netflix film released on Wednesday, Oct. 30 focusing on the homemaking icon's life and career.
During the film, Stewart, now age 83, touches on extramarital affairs undertaken by both her and her ex-husband, publisher Andy Stewart, who she was married to from 1961 to 1990. This includes one instance in which she kissed a "very handsome guy" at the Duomo in Florence, Italy while on her European honeymoon with Stewart, who was at their hotel at the time, People reported.
"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’s just because it was an emotional place. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced," Stewart says of the encounter in the documentary.
She also goes over a short affair she had with a "very attractive Irish man" while working as a stockbroker in the 1960s, according to People.
"I would never have broken up a marriage for it," Stewart says in the documentary.
As for her ex-husband, he told the film's producers that didn't begin having affairs until Stewart had. Still, Stewart still seems to hold some grudges:
"I don’t know how many different girlfriends he had during this time, but I think there were quite a few...Young women, listen to my advice, if you’re married and your husband starts to cheat on you, he’s a piece of s---. Get out of that marriage," she says during the documentary, People reported.
According to Stewart, her ex-husband even had one affair with a woman doing flower arrangements at the couple's Fairfield County home in Westport. She had been staying in an apartment in a barn on their property, and Andy Stewart began a relationship with her while Stewart was away, according to People.
"I kicked her out immediately," Stewart says in the film, adding, "You know, 'What the hell are you doing?' Andy betrayed me, right on our property. Not nice."
Stewart says in the end, it was her husband who wanted to divorce after 29 years together.
"He was throwing me away. I was 40 years old. I was gorgeous. You know, I was a desirous woman. But he was treating me like a castaway. He treated me really badly. And in return, I guess I treated him badly," she says, according to People.
Click here to read the full report by People.
The couple lived together in their Westport home, which is now sold. Stewart now lives in the Northern Westchester hamlet of Katonah and has also lived on Long Island, in East Hampton.
Since the documentary was finished, Stewart has expressed displeasure in how it came out, calling it "lazy," and "not the story that makes me, me," according to OK Magazine.
In a new report by The New York Times, Stewart's criticism hones in on some particular scenes:
"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," she said, continuing, "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."
She also says the film's director, R.J. Cutler, used "very little" of her archives despite having "total access," Stewart said.
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