Forget the hand-made wreaths - now Martha Stewart hangs with Snoop Dogg and makes weed jokes, writes Maura Judkis.
Here are some of the things Martha Stewart has done on her new show with Snoop Dogg: She has worn a blinged-out cheese grater on a chain around her neck.
She has drunk out of what can be described only as a pimp cup. She has taste-tested a stoner recipe for a pizza omelet. She has name-dropped Escoffier. She has not flinched when Rick Ross said to her audience: “I wanna make some noise for Martha because baby got back.”
When did Stewart go from being America’s most earnest homemaker, ready at a moment’s notice to spray-paint silk flowers and shape them into elaborate wreaths, to being America’s coolest grandma, who makes weed jokes and hangs out with Wiz Khalifa? After she went to prison, of course, but not right after. The cultivation of New Martha, of Hip-Hop Martha, of Martha the Queen of Dank Memes, took time.
And it has culminated in Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, her cooking-show-meets-stoner-buddy-comedy that enters its second season on BET (Dstv channel 129).
“I’m a very strait-laced person,” Stewart said. “I don’t smoke, I hardly drink. It’s kind of an odd combination right from the get-go.” Respectfully: Is Steward all that strait-laced anymore?
It’s the perception that she is strait-laced that makes it funny just hearing her say the names of her guests, often hip hop artists: “We had Lil Yachty. Do you know him?” This is, after all, the same woman who wrote an extensive blog post about bathing her donkeys: Billie, Rufus and Clive.
It’s the same woman who, in a roast of Justin Bieber, delivered a withering monologue calling comedian Natasha Leggero “the dirtiest used-up ho I have ever seen” and gave Bieber tips for when he “inevitably” goes to prison. If you ever slept on a set of Stewart’s floral print sheets, you’d be surprised to hear her joke about them, which was: 1. Unprintable, and 2. Directed toward the rapper Ludacris. Her show with Snoop is a particular cultural exchange between two people of seemingly disparate backgrounds, which is a thing America could use more of these days, frankly.
Stewart tries on a grill, shotguns a beer and glugs out of a 1.2 litre bottle of malt liquor this season. Snoop, meanwhile, has learnt about lobster thermidor and croquembouche. “She’s taught me how to have better food etiquette, how to be more professional in the kitchen,” Snoop said.
A post shared by Martha Stewart (@marthastewart48) on Oct 16, 2017 at 5:05pm PDT
Snoop is, unsurprisingly, high for every episode. “He comes on to the set pretty high, and leaves pretty high,” said Stewart, laughing, but he’s “not incompetent or incoherent at all. That’s the way he lives.” “Sometimes I may smoke one blunt, sometimes I may smoke 100 blunts,” Snoop said. “It depends on what’s necessary for me to do what I’m doing.” And then he has some cocktails, because many episodes kick off with Stewart demonstrating a drink recipe. “Every episode I was drunk. Every one,” Snoop said.
“The lines become that much more easier, the flow becomes natural. It’s more relaxing. You’re not doing a job, you’re just having fun.” Stewart is having fun, too. She seems cannily aware of her role as the comedic straight man, the person who can send Jamie Foxx into peals of laughter by sucking on a helium balloon, as she does during season two’s Birthday Party episode, while misquoting Migos’s Bad and Boujee:
“Rain drop. Drop top. Smoking on kush in hot box.” Stewart was once so earnest that her daughter, Alexis, hosted a show poking loving fun of her mother. Ana Gasteyer’s Saturday Night Live impressions of her were of a woman with a quiet rage within. People didn’t know Stewart was funny - much less that she could go toe-to-toe with some of the filthiest comedians.