Netflix defended its documentary a day after Sean “Diddy” Combs’ rep designated it “a shameful hit piece.” Sean Combs: The Reckoning debuted December 2 on the streaming platform. Predictably, it’s being watched by countless people.
Included in the documentary are interviews with Diddy’s former collaborators and peers. Diddy is serving a 50-month prison sentence after his conviction on two charges of transportation to engage in prostitution.
Diddy’s team claimed Netflix’s documentary was “illegal”
Netflix defended the docuseries on December 2, saying, “The claims being made about Sean Combs: The Reckoning are false. The project has no ties to any past conversations between Sean Combs and Netflix,” according to Us Weekly. “The footage of Combs leading up to his indictment and arrest were legally obtained. This is not a hit piece or an act of retribution. Curtis Jackson [50 Cent] is an executive producer but does not have creative control. No one was paid to participate.”
Trouble between the two hip hop artists first arose when 50 Cent intervened in Diddy’s contract dispute with Bad Boy artist Mason ‘Mase’ Durell Betha, who wanted out of his Bad Boy deal. 50 Cent offered to pay the balance of his contract and then sign him to his G-Unit label.
According to series director Alexandria Stapleton, the footage was obtained legally, and she has the rights. “We moved heaven and earth to keep the filmmaker’s identity confidential,” she says. “One thing about Sean Combs is that he’s always filming himself, and it’s been an obsession throughout the decades.”
Diddy gathered footage “since he was 19 to tell his own story, in his own way. It is fundamentally unfair, and illegal, for Netflix to misappropriate that work,” says the rep’s statement, which included a cease and desist letter addressed to Netflix.
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