Watch Out for the Prison-Hardened Martha

The last time I saw Susan Lyne, she was laughing at David Hasselhoff’s jokes. She’s a giver that way. It was at the reading for my ABC sitcom pilot last April, and when Hasselhoff was introduced, the “Baywatch” star did indeed mime swimming. Hasselhoff, also, is a giver.

As the network president, Lyne listened to the cast read my script, gave some notes, told everyone that she loved the show and rushed off to a very important network meeting at which she was fired. Throughout my dealings with her at ABC, Lyne not only seemed really smart but also really nice.

So when I read last month that she had taken the job as CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, I could not stand idly by.

My first job out of college was working for Martha as the writer for her new television show. As soon as I was hired, Martha took me out to lunch at an expensive restaurant in Westport, Conn., where she told me she wanted to make her show hip and funny like David Letterman. I misunderstood this to think she meant she wanted her show to be hip and funny like David Letterman.

Over the next two months, Martha would alternate from being charming to scaring the bejesus out of me: telling me she didn’t get faxes that I later found out she did indeed receive; yelling at a woman who fell down her basement stairs because of the hospital booties we were forced to wear over our shoes to protect her floors; insisting we air a cat-washing segment, which never saw the light of day because PETA would have reacted as if it were snuff porn.

Crueler yet to a young man trying to be funny, she sometimes called me “Chevy.” Josh is a mistake name. Chevy is not a mistake name.

I figured it would actually be worse for Lyne, because Martha would be hardened from prison. And if Lyne thought ABC was capricious for firing her right before the debut of her network-saving hits -- “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” -- Martha, I knew, would be worse.

Six weeks into my job, Martha fired me as the writer for her show in order to replace me with a more qualified individual. Unfortunately, she hadn’t asked that more qualified individual if she wanted the job, so 18 hours later I was offered my job back -- which I happily took. I too am a giver. Then I got fired for real 10 months later.

Sure, Lyne is a good fit for Martha’s empire -- having been a magazine editor at Premiere, run a television network and chosen paint colors for her walls. And, like Martha, she’s smart, charming and pretty. But unlike Martha, she’s not completely nuts. This is a woman so power mad that she went with a super-villain company name: Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Even Lex Luthor only went with LexCorp.

When I called Lyne to warn her, she seemed well aware of this. I knew this because she used euphemisms like “Martha is a huge life force” and “she’s got more energy than anyone I’ve ever met” and “she’s a perfectionist.” She might as well have just said she’s “eccentric” or “talks to invisible gnomes.”

Lyne, remaining upbeat, wasn’t understanding my warnings. So I told her about the time we were shooting a jam-making segment. When we finished taping, Martha insisted on staying at the table to finish every jar of jam -- even though we were running out of daylight, paying the crew overtime and ready to shoot the next homemaking tip.

“I love that,” Lyne said. “I love the fact that she wasn’t just doing it for television. That she wanted to make jam.”

I had forgotten that this was a woman who had dealt with Regis. Clean of guilt, I wished Lyne luck. And to my surprise, she suggested that I “come home” and work for Martha. I turned her down. I keep my pride by getting fired only twice per job.

Hollywood hasn’t toughened me up yet.