Martha Stewart Apologizes: ‘I Really Screwed Up’

Update — November 4, 2026: Now She Is Blaming the Chocolate The apology tour took a turn on Tuesday. Speaking on stage at the CrossCountry Mortgage Sales Rally in Orlando on November 3, Martha Stewart offered a new explanation for the costume, and this one points at the “Today” show: co-anchor Craig Melvin spilled chocolate all over the sweater she had planned to wear on Halloween night. USA Today reports her telling the crowd: “He spilled chocolate all over my sweater, which I was going to wear on Halloween night. I looked at myself. I said, ‘You really look hungry and homeless.’ So I wrote a sign that said ‘I’m hungry,’ and boy, did that go off.”

It is a different note from Sunday’s apology — “insensitive and not funny. I am very sorry” — and it is keeping the story alive into a second week of headlines, with critics noting the costume explanation keeps changing while the backlash has not.

The queen of Halloween deleted the photo, said the costume was meant to raise awareness — then came back hours later with the words nobody expected: “insensitive and not funny. I am very sorry.”

Martha Stewart built a second empire on Halloween. Which is what made Saturday’s post land so hard: the 85-year-old lifestyle mogul shared — and quickly deleted — a photo of herself dressed as a homeless person, wearing torn jeans, a cream cardigan and a black knit cap, her face smudged with dirt, holding a handwritten cardboard sign reading “I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!” while her two dogs sat at her feet. The image was part of an Instagram carousel promoting her QVC candles, captioned “My QVC candles are perfect for Halloween!!!” Screenshots outran the delete button, with TMZ and Page Six among the outlets resharing the photo as the backlash built.

Her first response, a statement to People on Sunday, November 1, framed the costume as awareness-raising: it was “intended to bring more awareness to the very serious subject of homelessness,” she said she was “distressed” that it had offended people, and she pointed to the significant time and effort she has spent supporting charities that combat homelessness. Critics were not satisfied — pointing to her estimated $400 million fortune, and to the more than 745,000 people who experienced homelessness in the United States on a single night in January 2025, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Then Stewart did something celebrities rarely do. Hours later, she posted a second statement to Instagram and dropped the defense entirely: “It’s hard to admit when you’ve really screwed up. My earlier statement didn’t go far enough. I know many people are suffering economically. Wearing a costume like I did was insensitive and not funny. I am very sorry.”

The 247 Take — The first statement was crisis management; the second one was accountability, and the internet can tell the difference. Stewart’s Halloween misstep will fade — but that rare, unhedged second apology is the part people will remember, because almost nobody with her platform ever issues one.

Sources: USA Today; People; CNN

Martha Stewart Apologizes: ‘I Really Screwed Up’

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