The wholesome history of Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart’s friendship

There have been some odd couples over the years - Milo and Otis, Mulder and Scully and soft serve ice cream and French fries.

But one of the most incongruous pairings since Guerlain convinced people to pay $244 for a skincare product called “watery oil” (ummm…?) has to be Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart.

The two lit up the internet over the weekend when Snoop, full name Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, and Stewart attended an Olympics dressage event in France in matching regalia, both looking incredibly sharp in their equestrian gear.

The snootiest of blue-blood country clubs would’ve been impressed by their get-up, even though Snoop confessed he’s never been on a horse because he’s scared of them.

For anyone not familiar with this unlikely friendship, the sight might have raised eyebrows, but the rapper, 52, and TV personality, 83, have been good mates for years.

The two first met on Stewart’s cooking show in 2008 when she invited him to be a guest, and Snoop obliged and later commented that rappers were not usually asked to be involved in daytime TV.

He returned the following year and together they whipped up a batch of brownies – but minus Snoop’s preferred special ingredient although there were plenty of wink-wink references to his love of marijuana.

They exchanged online messages over the years but it wasn’t until 2015 when both took part in Comedy Central’s roast of Justin Bieber did the relationship really take off.

He later recalled to NBC, “She sat next to me and she stole the show, she was the funniest roaster that night and in that moment, I knew I wanted to be with this lady for the rest of my life.”

Stewart has joked about getting “contact high” just being near Snoop while he said he appreciated being “contact rich” from her presence.

They teamed up on American game show $100,000 Pyramid where their success relied on having the kind of shorthand you only have with your friends, guest hosted an episode of The Ellen Show and she wrote the foreword to his cooking book.

They’ve hosted the Puppy Bowl (surely a bigger than the Super Bowl), baked cookies together over Zoom and he was the first guest on her podcast.

Obviously their strange but perfect alchemy caught the attention of executives because the two had their own series in 2016, Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party.

It ran for three seasons on American channel VH1 and involved them inviting celebrity guests including Kathy Griffin, Ice Cube, Seth Rogen and DJ Khaled around for food, drinks and camera-time.

In theory, the two should have clashing energies but they’re both a bit cheeky and irreverent and the chemistry is really natural. Stewart once joked on Ellen that one of them is “straight-up gangster and the other is Snoop Dogg”, a sly dig at the five months she spent in prison for insider trading.

The show was nominated for an Emmy, and they followed it up with a competition cook-off series. Unfortunately, full episodes aren’t streamable in Australia but you can find clips on YouTube.

Snoop put it perfectly when he told NBC in 2021 that Stewart was “the big sister I never had. Being able to correct me, to teach me, to show me how to be better, give me something better to aspire to be. We need that in life and this is what I didn’t have.”

Of their surprising friendship, he added, “People can get along, people can work together, people can love each other, no matter where they come from or how they were brought up.”

Snoop is in Paris as a special correspondent for American broadcaster NBC. He ran a leg of the torch relay from Saint Denis to the Stade de France and has been seen cheering on American competitors such as Simone Biles at the gymnastics, Coco Gauff at the tennis and Kelly Cheng at the volleyball.