Danielle Farina 
In New Jersey, the highest honor you can bestow upon a celebrity is naming a Garden State Parkway service area after them. The second-highest honor, maybe, is a biopic. The GSP will remain without a Martha Stewart rest stop (for now), but the certified Jersey legend is getting silver-screen treatment with a new movie called Good Thing, which depicts her life, career, and legacy. Born in Jersey City and raised in Nutley, Martha’s story as a businesswoman, television personality, author, and lifestyle maven starts right here in the Garden State. Cate Blanchett is slated to portray Martha in the film. Keep reading to learn more about Good Thing, the new movie depicting the life and legacy of New Jersey native, Martha Stewart.
Martha Stewart Gets Biopic Treatment
Per Variety, Cate Blanchett is confirmed to star in an upcoming Martha Stewart biopic called Good Thing. The title refers to Martha’s popular catch phrase, “It’s a good thing.” Director Janicza Bravo is at the helm of the project, with Blanchett cited as a producer.
Earlier in April, Martha all but prophesied the movie, sharing with Variety in a red carpet interview that “she was ‘hearing rumors’ that something was already in the works…” according to MarthaStewart.com. Beyond the film’s leading lady, Martha seems in the dark about the rest of the details.
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This news comes after the success of Martha, the nearly two-hour 2024 Netflix documentary that recounted Martha’s life through a sit-down interview and narratives from people close to her. The documentary travels through the many iterations of her life: her humble beginnings in New Jersey, her teenage modeling career, her time as a student in NYC, her brief stint on Wall Street, her catering business, her author era, the rise and fall and rise again of her media company, her time in prison, and post-prison.
The Montclair Girl said of the movie in 2024: “No matter who Martha was at any given point in the story — or who she is now at 83 years old — there’s an underlying sentiment that she is first and foremost ‘a girl from New Jersey,’ and that this identifier made way for the ones that would follow.”
It’s unclear what portion of Martha’s life Good Thing will focus on and if her New Jersey upbringing will play a major role in the story. But given how much the media mogul has referenced her roots — “here’s this girl from a family of eight in Nutley, New Jersey, living modestly, who gets a good idea, builds it into something really fine” — we’re feeling pretty confident that our great state will at least get a shout-out.
Martha’s New Jersey Roots
On August 3, 1941, Martha Helen Kostyra was born in Jersey City at Margaret Hague Hospital. The daughter of Edward “Eddie” Kostyra and Martha Ruszkowski Kostyra, Martha is the second of six siblings: Laura Plimpton, Frank Kostyra, Kathryn Evans, George Christiansen, and Eric Scott.
Per previous reporting from our team at The Hoboken Girl, Martha’s grandparents emigrated from Poland to Jersey City in the 1920s. For the first few years of Martha’s life, her family called Jersey City Heights home, on the second floor of an apartment on Stagg Street. In 2018, she visited her former family residence and shared it on Instagram.
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When Martha was three years old, her family swapped city living for the suburbs and moved to Nutley, New Jersey, where she spent most of her adolescence. The family lived at 86 Elm Place, which was up for sale in 2023, per MarthaStewart.com.
Eventually, Martha left New Jersey to study on scholarship at Barnard College in New York City. She never returned to Garden State as a resident, but she “always remembered [her] youth with great fondness,” she recalled during her induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in October 2019.
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Good Thing, the new Martha Stewart biopic, is in the early stages of planning with no set release date. Of course, we’ll keep you updated as details unfold.
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