Martha Stewart clarifies which journalist she's glad is dead following awkward mixup

Stewart's clarification comes after New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser shot back at the lifestyle mogul

By Joy Saha

Staff Writer

Published November 19, 2024 4:30PM (EST)

Martha Stewart attends the WSJ Magazine 2023 Innovator Awards at Museum of Modern Art on November 01, 2023 in New York City. (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
Martha Stewart attends the WSJ Magazine 2023 Innovator Awards at Museum of Modern Art on November 01, 2023 in New York City. (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

In her Netflix documentary “Martha,” Martha Stewart famously said she was glad that one journalist — who covered her insider trading scandal in a rather scathing manner — had kicked the bucket. “The New York Post lady was there just looking so smug,” the lifestyle mogul said in the documentary. “She had written horrible things during the entire trial. She’s dead now, thank goodness, and nobody has to put up with that c**p she was writing all the time.”

In the wake of Stewart’s comments, New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser shot back at Stewart, writing in an article, “I’m alive, b***h!”

Turns out, Stewart wasn’t celebrating the demise of Peyser. Stewart recently told CNBC that she was actually celebrating the death of Constance Hays, a business reporter at The New York Times.

Stewart called Hays “an equally divisive and dangerous journalist at The New York Times.” Hays died from cancer at the age of 44 in 2005, just one year after covering Stewart’s bombshell trial.

“That was a little bit of sloppy fact-checking on the part of my team on the documentary,” Stewart said.

“I’m sorry for her family, but I did not like Constance Hays. I did not like what she did to me every day. It was horrible and not very accurate and not very true and not very nice,” she added.

Stewart, who refrained from naming names in her documentary, said she had “no idea” why Peyser assumed Stewart was dissing her. Despite the awkward mixup, Stewart still clapped back at Peyser on Tuesday.

“Andrea Peyser wrote the same c**p that she always writes, but I wasn’t talking about her,” Stewart said. “She needs to get off her high horse and not think that I was thinking about her for the last 15 years.”

Stewart’s clarification comes after this week's "Saturday Night Live" episode, in which host Charli XCX described Stewart’s squabble as “brat.”    

“When Martha gets mad about an old magazine article and she says that she’s glad the journalist who wrote it is dead, that is brat,” the pop star said. “And then last Friday, when that exact journalist responded and said, ‘Hey, I’m alive b***h,’ that is extremely brat.”


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