85-Year-Old Martha Stewart Admits Her Grandson Was Right About Her Halloween Costume

Martha Stewart has spent more than four decades telling America how to do Halloween right, from the pumpkins to the place cards. This year, at 85, she sat down on NBC’s Today and admitted she had gotten it badly wrong, and that one person in her own family had tried to tell her so before the rest of the country did.

The apology came on Friday, November 6, after a week of backlash over a costume photo, a deleted Instagram post and a joke that pulled Today co-anchor Craig Melvin into the mess. Stewart, who was born August 3, 1941, in Jersey City, New Jersey, did not dodge it. But the most revealing moment of the interview was what she said about the first person who saw the picture.

What Was Martha Stewart’s Halloween Costume?

Stewart dressed as a person experiencing homelessness, in torn clothes with makeup made to look like dirt, holding a sign that read “I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!” The photo appeared in an Instagram carousel that doubled as an ad for her QVC candle line, under the caption “My QVC candles are perfect for Halloween!!!” according to Today. The reaction was fast and harsh, and the post came down.

Her first response did not help much. In a November 1 statement, Stewart said she was “distressed” that the costume had offended people and that it “was intended to bring more awareness” to homelessness, which she called one of the country’s greatest challenges, Today and Fox News reported. A second Instagram message went further. “I know many people are suffering economically,” she wrote. “Wearing a costume like I did was insensitive and not funny. I am very sorry. – Martha.” That post was later deleted as well.

Why Did Craig Melvin Get Dragged Into It?

The story took a stranger turn a few days later. Speaking at a CrossCountry Mortgage sales rally, in footage obtained by TMZ, Stewart joked that the trouble started with “what’s his name on the Today show” who “spilled chocolate all over my sweater.” That was a real accident. During the show’s Halloween special on October 30, Melvin, dressed as Snoop Dogg, had spilled chocolate on Stewart’s white sweater.

The Snoop Dogg costume was a fitting detail, since Stewart and the rapper became one of television’s unlikeliest friendships on VH1’s Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party. When she came on Today to face Melvin, she explained, “I didn’t have a costume because you had spilled some chocolate on my white sweater.” She insisted the line about him had been a joke, and she called it “stupid.” Melvin, for his part, kept it light. “But I did apologize for spilling the chocolate,” he told her, and he made clear there was no connection between the spill and what she wore.

By the end of the segment, Stewart was talking to the audience at home rather than to Melvin. “But I made a mistake. I mean, I was stupid. Yeah. What else can I say? What else can I say? I’m so sorry,” she said, as quoted by Fox News. Her advice to anyone watching was simple: “Pay closer attention to social issues.”

The explanation shifted once more after the interview. Speaking to TMZ later that day, Stewart again said the costume had been intended to bring awareness to homelessness. Asked about the different versions she had given over the course of the week, she summed it up this way: “It’s a complicated story, my dear.”

Martha Has Faced The Public Before

Readers who have followed her since the 1980s know Stewart is no stranger to a very public reckoning. She was a model and then a Wall Street stockbroker before her catering business led to Entertaining in 1982, the book that turned her into a household name. Two decades later she was convicted in the ImClone stock case and served five months at the federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia, before coming home in March 2005 and returning to television that fall with The Martha Stewart Show.

That comeback has lasted twenty years. In her eighties, she has become an unexpected social media star, and her playful posts are a big part of the reason. Our readers saw that side of her just last month, when she teased fans with a cheeky birthday post at 85. It is also the reason this costume landed so hard. A woman known for getting every detail right had posted something nearly everyone agreed was wrong, and the person who saw it coming was much closer to home.

What Did Her Grandson Tell Her?

On Today, Stewart revealed that before the picture ever went public, she had asked for a second opinion. “He saw the picture first because I sent it to him and I said, ‘What do you think?'” she explained. The answer from her grandson came back in two words: “tone-deaf.”

“According to my grandson, I was tone-deaf,” Stewart said, as reported by Fox News. She did not name him on air, and she didn’t need to. It was the most human moment of the whole week. A famous grandmother had asked her grandson for an honest opinion and gone ahead anyway, and now she was admitting on national television that he was right.

Stewart will be back on Today next week for the show’s All-Star Thanksgiving segment, Today reported. If she runs her next holiday idea past her grandson first, nobody would blame her for listening this time.