Martha Stewart Vs. Everyone: A Look At The Lifestyle Guru's Biggest Feuds

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Martha Stewart didn't revolutionize the lifestyle arena by being sheepish. She may be the Queen of Homemaking, but she won the title by getting out there and aggressively pursuing her goals. And that persona has created friction with some of her counterparts, landing her in hot water over the years. Not being one to back down, Stewart has become involved in quite a few public feuds. The reasons behind the beefs are varied, ranging from public misunderstandings to business decisions and personal (and legal) matters. But one thing seems clear: Stewart has never been one to let anything stand in her way.

Even Stewart's only daughter, Alexis, whom she's actually pretty close with nowadays, has criticized her mother's early ambitions and rigidity. "Martha was not interested in being kid-friendly. And these houses were definitely not kid-friendly," she penned in her 2011 memoir, "Whateverland: Learning to Live Here." Other examples of the lifestyle icon's no-nonsense attitude abound. But plenty of celebs who found themselves on the other side of it embraced it. One example is Stewart's feud with "Queer Eye" star Antoni Porowski, which actually led to a light-hearted friendship after she called him out for failing to tag her on social media pictures that featured her stable (via Comments By Celebs).

Similarly, viewers thought Stewart had beef with Drew Barrymore after she shoved the talk show host for playfully touching her arm in 2024. But they cleared the air a year later. "Oh, I just don't like to be petted on television," Stewart said in 2025 (via the Independent). Barrymore took note. "Understood, Martha. I won't pet you again," she laughed. But in many other circumstances, Stewart proved she wasn't afraid to get into public feuds.

Martha Stewart has never been a fan of Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand Goop, questioning the Oscar-winning actor's authenticity from the get-go. "I haven't eaten at Gwyneth's house, and I've never seen how she lives. But if she is authentic, all the better. I mean, I certainly hope she is," she said on Bloomberg TV in 2013 (via HuffPost). She added that she had a right to have an opinion because, well, she's Martha Stewart. "She wants to be a lifestyle arbiter. Fine. Good. I think I started this whole category of lifestyle," she added.

Stewart didn't stop there. A few months later, she not-so-subtly accused Paltrow of trying to replace her. "She just needs to be quiet. She's a movie star. If she were confident in her acting, she wouldn't be trying to be Martha Stewart," she told Net-a-Porter in 2014 (via Page Six). In response, Paltrow adopted a cheeky tone while celebrating the lifestyle guru's preoccupation with her brand. "No one has ever said anything bad about me before, so I'm shocked and devastated. I'll try to recover," she joked at a Fortune event before adding: "If I'm really honest, I'm so psyched that she sees us as competition, I really am."

The two women continued to spar in the aftermath, with Stewart making fun of Paltrow's infamous "conscious uncoupling" divorce from Coldplay's Chris Martin by promoting "conscious coupling" during Thanksgiving in the November 2014 issue of Martha Stewart Living (via HuffPost). Shortly after, Paltrow released a "jailbird cake" recipe in a seeming reference to Stewart's criminal conviction and subsequent prison sentence (via Us Weekly). Who had the last laugh here? We'll let you be the judge. 

The aughts saw a boom in the popularity of cooking shows, launching the careers of a host of celebrity chefs. Rachael Ray is among them. But Martha Stewart didn't see her counterpart as an equal. In fact, Stewart once questioned Ray's cooking skills, arguing that she was overselling her skillset thanks to her amiable TV persona. "She's more of an entertainer than she is, with her bubbly personality, than she is a teacher, like me. That's not what she's professing to be," she said on ABC's "Nightline" in 2009.

Stewart also criticized Ray for releasing a cookbook that she interpreted to be just an update of previous recipes. "That's not good enough for me. I mean, I really want to write a book that is a unique and lasting thing," she added. However, Ray chose to approach her feud with Stewart with grace. Instead of engaging, she highlighted Stewart's ubiquitous place in the lifestyle world. "Her skill set is far beyond mine. That's simply the reality of it," she told Us Weekly.

Ray emphasized, though, that she never intended to mislead anyone, clarifying that her goal had always been to help busy folks squeeze in a delicious meal in their fast-paced days. "That doesn't mean that what I do isn't important too," she added. Shortly after, Stewart issued a sort of mea culpa to her fellow TV personality. "I truly believe that Rachael has done a terrific job bringing people, many people who would ... never have even stepped into the kitchen or made a dish, to cook," she said on a cooking segment with Emeril Lagasse (via ABC News). Perhaps Ray's choice to kill with kindness had the desired effect.

Once upon a time, Martha Stewart and Ina Garten were pretty good friends. The two met in the '90s, when the former visited Garten's specialty food store, Barefoot Contessa, in East Hampton. Later, Stewart put Garten in touch with a book editor, helping launch her media career. But their friendship fizzled in the aughts, though they have given conflicting versions as to why. In her 2024 memoir "Be Ready When the Luck Happens," Garten claimed they lost touch after Stewart left Long Island around 2000. But Stewart offers a different take.

In a 2024 appearance on "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen" shortly after the memoir's publication, Stewart claimed that her prison stint following her 2004 stock sale-related federal conviction caused her former friend to stop talking to her. While she set the record straight, she implied she didn't care either way. "She can write whatever she wants," she said, nonchalantly. However, she didn't hide how she felt. "I found that extremely distressing and extremely unfriendly," she told The New Yorker that same year.

Two years earlier, signs that there was animosity between the former friends arose when Stewart shaded Garten over her COVID-19 pandemic advice to "drink more large cosmos" to handle the stress. "I do not agree about taking to drink to cope with things like the pandemic. To me that's not charming," Stewart told People in January 2022. Garten didn't respond to the diss. And she continues to maintain that there was no clear rupture in the friendship, insisting that they simply grew apart after Stewart moved. "We're friendly, we're not — there's no antipathy," she told The New York Times in August 2026.

In October 2026, Martha Stewart sparked a double backlash during Halloween. Firstly, she made the poor decision to dress up like a homeless person for the holiday, drawing criticism for her insensitivity. Stewart agreed that she was in the wrong. But instead of simply apologizing and acknowledging her mistake, she drew another wave of criticism after she shifted the blame onto Craig Melvin, whom she often collaborates with on the "Today" show. The NBC News anchor was not happy. 

Let's backtrack a bit. The whole mess started during a "Today" special in which she shared some of her favorite holiday desserts. While decorating a cheesecake with cobwebs, Melvin — dressed as Stewart's good friend Snoop Dogg — accidentally spilled chocolate ganache on her white clothes, a matching U.S. flag-themed costume that paid homage to her and Dogg's partnership at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. So, when the homeless fiasco happened, she used the incident to justify her choices.

Speaking at the CrossCountry Mortgage Sales Rally in Orlando, Florida, she blamed Melvin for ruining her official costume. "What's his name on 'The Today Show,' Craig who played Snoop on 'The Today Show' on Friday, he spilled chocolate all over my sweater, which I was gonna wear on Halloween night," she told the crowd (via The Daily Beast). Melvin didn't think it was funny. "Why was I dragged into it?" he asked her on the "Today" show. Stewart took full accountability this time. "It was a joke that I said I blamed you. It was stupid," she said, clarifying that she never intended to wear the Olympics costume on actual Halloween. "I don't blame you at all," she said.

One of Martha Stewart's oldest friends, Norma Collier, was also her first business partner. In the mid-'70s, Martha and Collier — who had met through their modeling work in the '60s — opened a catering business together, "An Uncatered Affair." But that was the beginning of the end of their friendship. According to Collier, she overheard Martha telling her then-husband, Andrew Stewart, about booking clients without her knowledge and pocketing the profit. "I heard her saying to Andy: 'I deserve to keep more because I work harder and I'm more talented,'" Collier told New York magazine in 1991.

Less than a year after they started their catering company, Collier walked away. Martha offered a different version of their fallout. In her view, she had been pouring way more into the business than her partner because Collier's husband was unwilling to let her dedicate a lot of time to it. "In those days, catering was very déclassé," she said. Collier denied that, although she admitted she wanted to continue to prioritize her marriage and two children alongside the business. "I think she was resentful that I wasn't willing to work 128 hours a week," Collier said.

But she doesn't believe that gave Martha the right to go behind her back. Time only heightened Collier's feelings about the experience. "She's a sociopath and a horrible woman, and I never want to encounter her again or think about her as long as I live," she told author Christopher Byron for his 2002 book, "Martha Inc." (via Inc.). Collier died in 2021 at the age of 82.