As Sean Combs awaited his expected arrest on sex-trafficking charges in September 2024, he asked a videographer to capture what would ultimately become his last days of freedom for some time.
While staying at the Park Hyatt hotel in Manhattan, Mr. Combs was filmed visiting a restaurant in Harlem and talking strategy with his lawyers as his troubles multiplied and the shadow of the impending federal case grew closer.
Now, in a stunning twist, that footage arranged by Mr. Combs has ended up in the hands of a documentary team run by his longtime rival, 50 Cent. “Good Morning America” reported on Monday that it will be included in a four-part series released by Netflix on Tuesday that is slated to detail grievances and abuse allegations against Mr. Combs across decades.
50 Cent — like Mr. Combs, a New York rapper turned branding mogul — has seized numerous opportunities to comment on, and often mock, Mr. Combs’s legal crises over the past two years, as Mr. Combs has faced a federal prosecution and more than 50 civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual abuse. But the release of the series, called “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” marks an escalation in what was once a low-stakes beef between two hip-hop luminaries.
Mr. Combs has denied sexually assaulting anyone. In a statement on Monday, his spokesman Juda Engelmayer said that the music mogul’s legal team was “deeply concerned” that the series would use footage that it characterized as unauthorized, including “private moments, pre-indictment material from an unfinished project, and conversations involving legal strategy.”
“None of this was obtained from Sean Combs or his team, and its inclusion raises very serious questions about how this material was accessed and why Netflix chose to use it,” the statement said, adding that Mr. Combs’s legal team had been in touch with Netflix.
50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, appeared with Alexandria Stapleton, the director of the series, on “Good Morning America,” where they discussed their goals for the project, and their surprise that Mr. Combs had filmed himself during those days. In the broadcast interview, they did not address how they ended up with Mr. Combs’s footage.
“Listen to me,” Mr. Combs is seen saying into a cellphone in a hotel room, “I am going to let you professionals look at the situation and come back to me with a solution.” He adds: “Y’all are not working together the right way. We’re losing.” In another scene, Mr. Combs shakes hands with a fan and is then seen in a car announcing that he needs “some hand sanitizer” and a bath because he’s been “in the streets amongst the people.”
Mr. Combs’s original plans for the footage is unclear, as is how it ended up with the filmmakers. Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the 2024 footage.
Asked on “Good Morning America” if his involvement in the series stemmed from the pair’s longstanding tension, Mr. Jackson said, “It’s not personal.” He suggested he had a loftier intention: “If I didn’t say anything,” Mr. Jackson said, the world might have thought “hip-hop is fine with his behaviors. There’s no one else being vocal.”
Any public displays of their rivalry has largely been one-sided. Mr. Jackson teased Mr. Combs for years, releasing a diss track in 2006, needling him about his music and his liquor brand, and poking fun at him in interviews. Years ago, Mr. Combs dismissed that there was any real animosity between the two, but that was before Mr. Jackson became one of the most vocal commentators on his downfall.
The statement from Mr. Combs’s spokesman called it “troubling” that Netflix had handed creative authority over the series to Mr. Jackson, describing him as a “longtime public adversary.”
Mr. Combs, known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, was ultimately convicted at trial of prostitution-related offenses but acquitted of sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges that could have put him in prison for life. He was sentenced to more than four years in prison, and the series arrives as he settles in at a federal prison in New Jersey and mounts an appeal of his conviction.
Mr. Combs has been known to ask videographers to get behind-the-scenes footage of his life, once using such video in a self-produced 2017 documentary about his rise as a successful hip-hop producer. The recent footage captures him in the middle of a growing crisis that has radically reshaped his legacy.
At his lawyers’ advice, Mr. Combs had flown to New York and offered to turn himself in to show his willingness to cooperate. Days later, Mr. Combs was arrested in the lobby of the Park Hyatt, and the case against him burst into public view.
Prosecutors accused him of sex trafficking women by coercing them into meticulously directed sexual performances with male escorts, using copious amounts of baby oil and party drugs to keep the encounters going for days. Mr. Combs’s lawyers asserted from the beginning of the case that the encounters were entirely consensual, and the jury did not find that the women were coerced.
Inside Mr. Combs’s hotel room after his arrest, federal agents recovered two bags of pink powder that tested positive for ketamine and MDMA.
Mr. Jackson announced plans to produce the documentary not long after a bombshell lawsuit from Mr. Combs’s former longtime girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, was filed and quickly settled for $20 million in November 2023. The suit, which alleged brutal physical abuse and sexual coercion, set off a deluge of misconduct suits against Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, would ultimately become the prosecution’s star witness.
Mr. Jackson’s production company has said that proceeds from the documentary will go to “victims of sexual assault and rape.”
Mr. Jackson has also been accused by two women of sexual misconduct, one in a since-deleted social media post and another in court proceedings. The details of the allegations made in court papers were ordered sealed by a judge overseeing a years-old bankruptcy filing by Mr. Jackson. He has denied the allegations made by both of the women in court papers.
The Netflix series is the third high-profile documentary released about Mr. Combs this year. The mogul’s lawyers have said that filmmakers are “rushing to cash in on the media circus surrounding Mr. Combs,” and he has sued Peacock in response to one of them.
The new series presents interviews with two jurors, identified only by the numbers they were assigned at court, who decided Mr. Combs’s verdict. Juror 75 described Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura as “two people in love,” and Juror 160 said, “domestic violence wasn’t one of the charges.”
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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