‘My only big regret’: Martha Stewart says jail term meant she had to cancel SNL hosting role

‘I knew I was strong going in and I was certainly stronger coming out’

Martha Stewart has opened up about her 2004 stint in prison in a new interview.

“I knew I was strong going in and I was certainly stronger coming out,” the homemaking icon told Harper's Bazaar. “It was a very serious happening in my life. I take it very seriously,” she says. “I’m not bitter about it, but … . My daughter knows all the problems that resulted because of that. There’s a lot.”

The experience also bonded her to an unlikely ally, rap legend Snoop Dogg, who had spent time in lockdown himself in the early 1990s.

“Yes, that [conviction] helped because people knew how crazy and unfair … all of that was,” she said on CBS’s Sunday Morning in a 2017 joint interview with the rapper. “And in Snoop’s world, it gave me the street cred I was lacking.”

In 2019, Snoop commended Stewart for not “snitching” on anyone in exchange for a lighter sentence during her trial, and contrasted her experience with that of SoundCloud rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine, who gave prosecutors the names of his fellow gang members for a shorter sentence.

About Martha, Snoop wrote on Instagram: “As we watch Tekashi 69 (or whatever his name is) snitch on EVERYBODY, I invite you all to remember Martha Stewart snitched on NOT ONE soul during her trial. Baby girl kept it 10 toes down and ate that prison sentence by herself, like the true baddie she is.” He concluded, captioning, “That’s my M.F. Home girl … solid as a rocc.”

“My only big regret," Stewart continued in the interview with Harper’s, “is that Saturday Night Live asked me to host. My probation officer wouldn’t give me the time. That really pissed me off, because I would have loved to have hosted Saturday Night Live. I’d like that on my résumé.”

In 2004, Martha Stewart served five months in a correctional facility on charges related to insider trading.