Sean “Diddy” Combs is firing back at Netflix and 50 Cent over their upcoming documentary, claiming the project’s never-before-seen footage of the music mogul in the days leading up to his September 2024 arrest was “stolen” and “never authorized for release.”
In a trailer released on the eve of the Tuesday, Dec. 2 premiere of Sean Combs: The Reckoning, Combs is seen in a Manhattan hotel room strategizing with his attorneys on a conference call. “We have to find somebody that’ll work with us,” an anxious Combs stressed, bouncing his knee. “That has dealt in the dirtiest of dirty business. We’re losing!”
The footage was filmed on September 10, 2024 — just six days before plainclothes officials arrested Combs in that hotel’s lobby on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to engage in prostitution. (Combs was acquitted of the more serious charges in July, following an eight-week trial. He’s currently serving a 50-month prison sentence after being found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.)
At the time, Combs was considering making his own documentary, according to the New York Times, and even had discussions with Netflix about the project, but the parties ultimately couldn’t agree on how much creative control Combs would have.
Seeing that very footage now included in what Combs’ spokesperson Juda Engelmayer has described as a “shameful hit piece” has resulted in Combs’ team blasting Netflix for showing “little respect for Mr. Combs’s legal rights and artistic integrity,” Engelmayer tells Rolling Stone in a statement. He also said these “private moments, including conversations with his lawyers that were plainly not intended for public viewing.”
“Mr. Combs has been amassing footage for decades, since he was 19 years old, to tell his own story, in his own way,” Engelmayer adds. “It is fundamentally unfair, not to mention illegal, for Netflix to misappropriate that work. Netflix is obviously desperate to sensationalize any and every minute of Mr. Combs’ life, without regard to the truth, so that it can capitalize on a never-ending media frenzy.”
Engelmayer also took issue with 50 Cent, real name Curtis Jackson, being an executive producer for the four-episode project. The two men have long been rivals, and Jackson has openly revelled in and joked about Combs’ downfall on social media. Engelmayer said Jackson “has a personal vendetta against Mr. Combs and has made a career of slandering and defaming him.”
Sean Combs: The Reckoning will include interviews with several men and women who have floated in and out of Combs’ orbit during the Bad Boy founder’s rise to fame, including former artists Aubrey O’Day, Mark Curry, and Kalenna Harper; early sexual assault accuser Joi Dickerson-Neal; former employee Capricorn Clark, and two jurors who acquitted Combs on sex trafficking charges.
“This isn’t just about the story of Sean Combs or the story of Cassie, or the story of any of the victims, or the allegations against him, or the trial,” documentary director Alexandria Stapleton said in a press release. “Ultimately, this story is a mirror [reflecting us] as the public, and what we are saying when we put our celebrities on such a high pedestal. I hope [this documentary] is a wake-up call for how we idolize people, and to understand that everybody is a human being.”
