Martha Stewart Deletes Halloween Photo of Herself Begging for Food

Martha Stewart posted a Halloween photo of herself in tattered clothes, dirt smeared across her face, holding up a sign that read "I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!" Then she deleted it. Several Instagram users had already grabbed screenshots.

The image was part of an Instagram carousel promoting candles Stewart sells on QVC. The caption read: "My QVC candles are perfect for Halloween!!!"

The screenshots moved to Reddit, where users piled on, calling the costume "out of touch," "offensive" and "gross." TMZ put Stewart's net worth at an estimated $400 million. Her representative had not responded to TMZ's request for comment as of Nov. 1.

What the deleted photo actually showed

Descriptions of the picture line up on the main points and split on the small ones. One account describes Stewart in tattered clothing with dirt on her face, holding the sign on a clipboard. Another describes her standing outside her home with two of her dogs, in what looks like deliberately distressed clothing, holding a cardboard sign asking for food. Every version agrees on the words on the sign.

The Reddit user who first flagged the post said comments on the Instagram carousel were turned off, and that the photo disappeared shortly after people started reacting to it. There is no independent confirmation of who removed it or why.

It was attached to a candle ad

The costume was not the point of the post. According to a commenter in the same Reddit thread, the photo was added to the end of an existing promotional post rather than published on its own as a Halloween announcement. So the sequence, as described, was candles, candles, candles, then a woman in rags holding a sign that says she is hungry.

That detail did a lot of the damage. A standalone Halloween picture is a costume choice. A costume tacked onto a sales carousel reads to a lot of people as using the image to move product, which is most of what the Reddit comments were about.

What nobody has confirmed

The original Reddit poster said straight out that they could not establish whether the image was AI-generated or whether Stewart's account had been accessed by someone else. That caveat has mostly been stripped out as the screenshots traveled.

Stewart has not publicly explained the picture. It is unclear whether she personally selected and uploaded it, whether someone running her social accounts added it, or whether it was digitally generated, and there is no verified explanation of what character or concept was intended. The backlash has been aimed at the assumption that she picked the costume deliberately. That assumption has not been confirmed.

The criticism keeps coming back to the money

Commenters argued that homelessness is not a costume concept and that hunger is not a bit. The sharpest responses focused on the gap between a lifestyle mogul with a nine-figure fortune and the subject of the photo, framing it as a real hardship turned into entertainment.

The screenshots then jumped from Reddit to celebrity gossip forums, where longtime Stewart watchers folded it into older complaints about her. Several posters said they expected real consequences. Others said the whole thing fit a pattern they had been describing for years.

Stewart is 85. She has spent decades building Halloween into a signature part of her brand, which is exactly why the picture landed the way it did.

Two days earlier she was on the Today plaza

Stewart's confirmed Halloween appearance this year happened Friday, Oct. 30, on Today, during the show's Halloween broadcast celebrating NBC's 100th anniversary. She came as herself at the Olympics: a white outfit with an American flag shirt.

Craig Melvin showed up dressed as Snoop Dogg. Stewart greeted him with "Hello, Snoop!" and he answered, "What's cookin', Martha?" She called the real Snoop Dogg her "BFF." Melvin told her, "You are the gin to my juice," and Stewart replied, "For shizzle."

Then came the ganache. During a segment where Stewart showed Melvin, Savannah Guthrie and Carson Daly how to decorate a cheesecake with a spiderweb design, Melvin spotted the piping bag under the dessert and reached for it. The bag spilled as he tried to hand it over, dumping chocolate on Stewart's white pants.

"Snoop!" she scolded. Melvin covered his mouth and said, "I'm so sorry, Martha." Daly joked, "Good thing you're best friends." Stewart's response: "Real Snoop would never do that." Melvin came back with "No, for shizzle," and Stewart laughed and repeated it.

Later in the show, Melvin apologized again. "I just feel so bad that I destroyed your $3000 pants," he said. Stewart waved it off: "Don't worry about it, they wash." When the hosts gathered onstage, she pointed out the stain, and Melvin noticed one on her shoe too. "And the shoes," he said. The $3,000 pants became the running joke of the morning.

Eighty hours of work goes into one wig

The Today Halloween show runs four hours and takes a small army. Jodi Mancuso, head hair designer for "Saturday Night Live," builds the wigs. She has been on that beat for more than 25 years and has nine Emmys.

Nothing comes out of a box. The average wig takes around 80 hours of work, Mancuso said, though her team compresses it. "We can do it in 40 hours for 'SNL' because we don't have 80 hours," she said, laughing. "It's quite intense."

Melvin's Snoop Dogg hair took the most time of this year's builds. Carson Daly's Ella Langley look was tricky because of the color. Dylan Dreyer's "I Dream of Jeannie" wig was heavier than it looked once the hat went on. Savannah Guthrie got a replica "Rachel" haircut for her Rachel Green costume. Laura Jarrett went as Simone Biles and did a floor routine, and Biles herself commented on the reveal in all caps: "PERFECT."

Her costume history is the opposite of low effort

Stewart usually goes big, working with professional stylists, photographers and costume designers. Past looks include a Queen Elizabeth I-inspired ensemble, a sorceress costume and a ghostly equestrienne look built around a black riding-inspired outfit and a top hat. She has also played a character called "Motha," in a platinum-blonde wig and elaborate feathered eyelashes, for a Halloween special.

On Oct. 31, 2026, she published a Halloween retrospective revisiting several favorites and describing the holiday as one of her favorite occasions. That post went up the same weekend the candle carousel appeared and disappeared.

She was not the only one catching heat

"Mormon Wives" star McCall DaPron was slammed over JFK assassination Halloween costumes, a separate flap running the same weekend.

Elsewhere, the complaint was effort, not subject matter. A roundup of the worst costumes of 2026 knocked Sexyy Red for dressing as Katt Williams in an oversized suit and a cheap wig. Justine Skye turned up at Kendall Jenner's party as a glam version of Dipsy the green Teletubby, and fans found the mix of kids' TV and nightclub wear confusing. GloRilla went as Ciara in her "Like You" era with NBA star Brandon Ingram as Bow Wow, and critics said it read as everyday streetwear. Tinashe dressed as the sleep aid melatonin and had to explain it in her caption.

Where it stands

The photo is gone from Stewart's Instagram. The screenshots are not going anywhere, and neither is the caption about the candles, which is the part people keep posting alongside the image.

No statement has come from Stewart, and no explanation has come from anyone on her team about who uploaded the picture, who took it down, or what it was supposed to be. Until one does, the only hard facts are a deleted slide in a candle ad, a sign reading "I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!" and a very large pile of saved screenshots.