“Snoop, I want you to grate these nuts.”
“You want me to break deez nuts?”
“No, I want you to grate them.”
“Oh, grate deez nuts?”
Welcome to Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, a brand-new cooking show on VH1 that combines the personalities of lifestyle expert Martha Stewart and rap icon Snoop Dogg.
The above exchange between the 70-something entrepreneur and the prolific hip-hop elder statesman at the end of the show’s extended trailer not only references the popular skit on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic (1992), but also demonstrates how much Stewart has willingly broken out of the prim and proper world of luxury living that’s she’s famous for.
Everybody knows Stewart did a short bid in federal prison from 2004 to 2005. Yet predictions that her image would be ruined forever never came true. Sure, there were jokes at her expense, but she ultimately came out looking cooler than a cucumber. No matter what you think of her, Martha Stewart is still going strong. A college-educated former model, and a onetime small business owner turned multimedia giant, she’s one of the most successful women this country has ever seen.
Snoop, of course, needs no introduction. Not here and not at the ritzy Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, where he waltzes in unannounced for a quick press conference less than two weeks before the show’s debut. He’s in a jovial mood. When Martha, accompanied by her entourage, glides in a few minutes later, it’s apparent that Snoop genuinely enjoys Stewart’s company.
“People are seeing we have a great chemistry,” Snoop says. “Our teams work together to make sure that [everything we do on the show is] natural and organic.”
Seniors and rappers go way back to the days of Larry “Bud” Melman chillin’ with Run-DMC in the “King of Rock” music video. Snoop and Martha also go back. They first met in 2008 when Stewart taught the rapper how to make her mother’s mashed potatoes on her previous TV program. Soon, they were back at it, only this time they were cooking up brownies with “special” ingredients.
“People loved that show,” says Stewart. “Actually, I’ve gotten more emails about those brownies [than anything else].” A seed of an idea was born.
In yet another surreal Chronic-related moment come to life, the dynamic duo appeared on the $100,000 Pyramid together this past summer. But it was the odd couple’s participation in the raunchy Justin Beiber roast last year that proved that Stewart could hang outside her comfort zone.
“My CEO was not the happiest person when I announced I was going on there,” says Stewart. “But I went anyway because I have a motto that says: ‘When you’re done changing you’re through.’ That was a hard thing for me to do. I had never watched a roast before, so I had no idea how brutal it was.”
“Martha was one of the top three [speakers] that killed it that night,” says Snoop. “Everybody was shocked. When we went backstage, all the comedians—”
“They were kinda silent,” Martha cuts in, causing everyone in the room to laugh.
Since then, Martha has been on a roll. On an episode of Ellen that aired the same day as this interview, she admitted to having sexted before. (It wasn’t the first time.)
“What I didn’t like is that Ellen questioned that, thinking that I was just an old-fashioned grandma,” Martha says with faux anger, keeping everyone laughing.
Snoop eggs her on good-naturedly: “Let her know.”
Although Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party is packed with guests like Seth Rogen, Wiz Khalifa, 50 Cent, Rick Ross, DJ Khaled, Kathy Griffin, Jamie Chung, and a gang of others, it’ll probably be off-the-cuff remarks between the hosts that will keep people coming back for more.
While they might seem to come from very different backgrounds—Stewart had never heard of Funyuns until Snoop mentioned it as a favorite snack to eat while stoned—both Stewart and Snoop are actually from humble beginnings, she hailing from Nutley, N.J., and he from Long Beach, Calif.
“I grew up in a working-class town where there was [only] one black family,” says Martha, who was encouraged by her parents to invite over the family’s child for lunch. “I knew where he lived and it was not a nice place. He was sick for a while, and I remember taking food over there [that] my mother sent. It was that kind of place, full of immigrants that cooked their countries’ food. I learned a lot from all the neighbors and all the different foods.”
“I don’t think there’s much difference between the way she was raised and the way I was raised,” says Snoop, who’d like to see all of us try a little harder. Doing their part, the pair recently partnered with the Echo & Rig Butcher and Steakhouse Vegas to give away Thanksgiving dinners in honor of their show. “The world that we live in now … I think that people need to learn to love people. [Doing this show], it’s not just business… it’s a love-love situation.”