As I drove by Martha Stewarts house tonight, there was a shadowy figure next to her stone wall along Turkey Hill Road South.
As I got closer, my headlights picked up a deer carefully eyeing me as I went by. There was no sign of Ms. Stewart.
Nevertheless, Ms. Stewart has been metaphorically caught in the media headlights for months now ever since the insider trading scandal emerged over her sale of shares of ImClone.
And now it’s about to get worse, thanks to NBC and Cybill Shepherd.
NBC is rushing to finish shooting of a made-for-television movie about Ms. Stewart, starring Ms. Shepherd. The Stewart Westport home plays a central role in the scenes being shot in a studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
A story on the MSNBC site says, The care taken in casting extends to nearly every other aspect of the production, especially the decoration for the set of Stewart’s famed Turkey Hill estate in Westport, Conn.
Many fans know the interior of her home as well as they know their own. So the set decorator spent an estimated $100,000 renting and buying antiques to fill the rooms.
The details range from the green Jadeite dinnerware in the cupboards of Stewarts television kitchen to an inexpensive replica of a $40,000 high-back double Queen Anne chair from the 1700s.
Not being as familiar as some with the intricacies of either her kitchen or her home (I was there once for a garden party tour sponsored by the Westport Historical Society), Im not sure whether NBC is duplicating Turkey Hill Road South or her made-for-television kitchen at her studio on Newtown Turnpike just over the town line in Norwalk.
In any case, it will be interesting to see if they attempt to duplicate any Westport exteriors in Nova Scotia as well.
If nothing else, the movie will remind millions of viewers that Westport is still StewartҒs home despite her now infamous New York Times Sunday Magazine article almost three years ago headlined ֓Martha Stewart Leaving.
The NBC project, set for May screening, is based on the biography Martha, Inc. by New York Post business columnist Christopher Byron, who lives in Weston.
