Whatevs, Ma: Anti-Martha Builds Empire

Whatever, Martha!, in which Alexis Stewart and a pal riff over episodes of her mother’s TV shows, is the opening of the latest chapter in the pair’s unusual relationship, Andrew Goldman writes in New York. Alexis, 42, is surprisingly vulgar for being raised by a domestic diva. “My media training began was when I was 22,” she says, “and some C-U-N-T named Candace Bushnell came to interview me about my mother.”

Alexis Stewart admits she’s still working through—with “therapists. Plural.”—personal issues having to do with her childhood, and though she’s quick to rip into mom, she’s equally quick to defend the woman whose multimillion-dollar empire she stands to inherit. “I have to wonder,” Goldman concludes, “if perhaps it’s true what some say around the office, that what comes out of Alexis’s mouth dwells unspoken in Martha’s head, that Alexis is Martha’s id, free at last.” (More Alexis Stewart stories.)