Snoop Dogg stepped in to defend best friend Martha Stewart from recent claims made by Ina Garten.
“Have you read Ina Garten’s memoir yet?” Andy Cohen asked Stewart, 83, during the Sunday, October 20, episode of Watch What Happens Live. Stewart made it clear that she read “parts” of the book, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, which was released earlier this month.
“You read the parts about yourself?” Cohen, 56, clarified. “What was your take?”
Stewart responded, “She can write whatever she wants.”
Stewart was the WWHL bartender on Sunday night to celebrate Snoop’s 53rd birthday. The rapper was a guest on Cohen’s show alongside Seth Meyers.
“I didn’t read the book, what does it say?” Snoop asked. Cohen replied, “Ina said that they fell out because she moved to Connecticut.”
Stewart chimed in, telling Cohen that was “not true.” Snoop said that Stewart does not “fall out with people,” sticking up for his longtime friend.
Stewart explained that “after I went to jail,” she felt the friendship with Garten, 76, started to unravel. (Stewart spent five months in jail being found guilty on charges of conspiracy to obstruct and of making false statements to federal investigators in 2004. The lifestyle mogul has continued to maintain her innocence.)
“That’s when I stepped in,” Snoop joked of their friendship. Cohen added, “When one friend goes out the door, another friend comes in the door.”
Stewart previously addressed the status of her friendship with Garten in an interview with The New Yorker published last month. Garten claimed in the profile that she and Stewart drifted when they were no longer living near each other. Stewart felt differently.
“When I was sent off to Alderson Prison, she stopped talking to me,” Stewart told the publication. “I found that extremely distressing and extremely unfriendly.”
Garten “firmly” denied the claims. Stewart’s longtime publicist, Susan Magrino, made it clear that there is “no feud” between them. Magrino also said that Stewart is “not bitter at all” about what went down with Garten.
Stewart was a big part of launching Garten’s career. The pair met in East Hampton before starting up a friendship.
“My desk was right in front of the cheese case, and we just ended up in a conversation,” Garten recalled during a 2017 interview. “We ended up actually doing benefits together where it was at her house, and I was the caterer, and we became friends after that.”
Garten also praised Stewart for her role as a trailblazer in the cooking space.
“I think she did something really important, which is that she took something that wasn’t valued, which is home arts, and raised it to a level that people were proud to do it and that completely changed the landscape,” she said. “I then took it in my own direction, which is that I’m not a trained professional chef, cooking is really hard for me — here I am 40 years in the food business, it’s still hard for me.”