We’re only beginning to feel the vast consequences of American voters returning a twice-impeached, 34-count felon to the most influential leadership position on the planet. Academics and analysts are still sorting through the how and why of Donald Trump’s election victory, but much of it boils down to fame worship.
Enough viewers believe the myth “The Apprentice” perpetuated about Trump to give rise to a movement that took over one of America’s two major political parties. Its senators and congressmen enable his grifting and normalize his morally reprehensible and outright dangerous decrees. Those who disagree with him are afraid to publicize their objections.
“The Fall of Diddy” presents Combs as an extreme example of America’s tendency to allow inflated perceptions of wealth and power to blind us to justice.
The entertainment industry that normalized Sean “Diddy” Combs operates similarly. Investigation Discovery’s four-part docuseries “The Fall of Diddy” is the latest to prove that, starting with one of the first times Combs’ name appears in the New York Times.
In 1991, Combs was the main promoter of the first annual (and only) Celebrity Charity Basketball Game held at the City College of New York; the other was legendary rapper Heavy D. Inadequate planning and security led to a stampede that killed nine people. Such a tragedy would have ended most people’s careers, but it only made Combs’ star rise higher.
Two years later, R&B impresario Clive Davis handed him a label to run, and soon Bad Boy Records dominated radio airplay. Combs made superstars out of Usher, Mary J. Blige, Biggie Smalls, Faith Evans – and himself, by appearing in their videos.
The 47th president is an extraordinary figure in history, but in the ever-expanding disgraced celebrity true crime genre, his type is commonplace. Naturally, he makes a cameo appearance in “The Fall of Diddy,” by way of archival footage.
Trump and Sean “Diddy” Combs are fellow New Yorkers. One was born into wealth and political connections, and the other had real talent and the instinct to get into hip-hop on the ground floor and mold it for the masses. Combs is one of the earliest hip-hop moguls to wed the culture to high fashion and luxury goods. Trump embraced performers like Combs as a means of giving his brand street cred, and Combs flaunted their alleged friendship as proof of his membership in an elite social tier.
“The Fall of Diddy” doesn’t spend much time with this link, but it’s a contextualizing one. Its four episodes present Combs as an extreme example of America’s tendency to allow inflated perceptions of wealth and power to blind us to justice.
“Sean Combs has been the figure more associated with death, tragedy and brokenness than any mogul,” says Reverend Conrad Tillard in the first episode.
The filmmakers behind “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” collaborated with Rolling Stone films to make “The Fall of Diddy,” which arrives a little more than a week after “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy.” Both inevitably cover some of the same ground, with the Peacock documentary taking a different approach to the circumstances surrounding Combs’ relationship with the late Kim Porter, with whom he has three children.
After its cold open, “The Fall of Diddy” leaps out of the gate with Danyel Smith’s damning account. Vibe Magazine’s first woman editor-in-chief was among several prominent people in entertainment whose life he threatened. Combs said he would see her “dead in the trunk of a car” because she didn’t show him the photos chosen for a 1997 dual cover profile, per the magazine’s editorial policy.
That threat is alarming, but the way Smith still wears her trauma is devastating. Two years later, Combs assaulted Interscope Records executive Steve Stoute in his offices.
Combs is in federal custody and awaiting trial at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. His trial is expected to commence on May 5, 2025. In response to producers’ questions, his legal team conveyed this message that runs at the end of each episode: “Mr. Combs has full confidence in the facts and integrity of the judicial process. In court the truth will prevail: that the accusations against Mr. Combs are pure fiction.”
The Fall Of Diddy (Courtesy of Investigation Discovery)
His accusers number in the dozens and the nature of his alleged crimes isn’t limited to allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Combs is believed to have maintained his empire on a structure of physical violence and psychological menace from which nobody was immune.
Sustaining verbal disparagement was accepted as part of working in his orbit, and fellow employees downplayed the extent to which people like Jourdan Cha’Taun, who worked as Combs’ personal chef between 2007 and 2010, suffered while working for him.
But even those unlucky enough to cross his path on the wrong day may be contending with aftershocks. The first episode ends with DeWitt Gilmore recounting his claim that Combs instigated a car chase in 1996 that ended with a member of his entourage shooting at him and a friend. The fear in his expression is unmistakable.
Combs is believed to have maintained his empire on a structure of physical violence and psychological menace from which nobody was immune.
The docuseries follows Rolling Stone’s expansive report from May 2024, featuring its investigative journalist Cheyenne Roundtree as one of more than 30 interview subjects providing their perspectives on Combs’ influence globally and personally. It’s preceded by examples of a number of other powerful entertainers wielding their fame as cover for violent predations to fool you into thinking there’s little in this you haven’t already seen elsewhere. That’s not entirely wrong. Aspects of the allegations against Combs paint him as R. Kelly, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Cosby rolled into one.
Somehow his crimes are more egregious because all the while he spearheaded partnerships with spirits, starred in movies and TV shows and received career achievement awards.
Despite all he amassed, though, Combs couldn’t keep his violence in check. His childhood friend Tim Patterson offers some insight into how Combs grew up, which explains a few things but excuses nothing. Even his relationship with Porter is tainted by knowing that while he was supposedly with her he was also publicly dating Jennifer Lopez.
The most bone-chilling of the claims against Combs, beginning with the civil suit Casandra Ventura filed against him in 2023, spell out horrific sexual abuse and alleged rape and coercion. Ventura, known as Cassie, settled with Combs the day after the filing went public, but the details of the lawsuit provided the feds with a clue trail to pursue criminal charges.
After May 2024, when CNN aired security camera footage from 2016 of Combs beating Ventura in a hotel hallway, the floodgates opened. Combs took to social media to fake an apology, alleging such behavior was behind him.
Kat Pasion’s account of her time dating him in 2019 contradicts this. Pasion’s interview in “The Fall of Diddy” marks the first time she’s gone public with her accusations. Understandably, she refuses to go into specifics about the worst of what she alleges occurred, beyond saying it was not consensual.
By that point, Thalia Graves has gone into enough detail about the circumstances surrounding Combs’ alleged drugging, sadistic rape and threats in 2001 to render subsequent descriptions of reported assaults unnecessary. When Pasion calls Combs a demon, we believe her.
Employees were shown his darkest face, but the public saw glimpses of it too, as D. Woods, a member of Danity Kane, breaks down in her first time going public with her experiences. Danity Kane was part of the all-female pop group featured in Combs’ MTV reality show “Making the Band 3,” and was fired, along with fellow member Aubrey O’Day, in a 2008 episode. That was presented as entertainment, along with Combs relentlessly body-shaming Woods. She believes Combs cut them from the band because neither would give in to his intimidations on and off camera.
After Combs’ arrest and indictment on racketeering and sex trafficking charges, O’Day went public to accuse him of grooming her and other band members. While she doesn’t appear in “The Fall of Diddy,” Woods bolsters those claims and hints her former bandmate may have saved some inflammatory and crude communications Combs sent to her.
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Many more of us would be excused for forgetting the other reports of assaults Combs was associated with. Such dramas were written off as part of rap culture, and beating the legal system was painted as a virtue. When Combs was acquitted of firing his gun and injuring two people in a nightclub in 1999, his profile rose even higher; the woman who took a bullet to her face, Natania Griffin, received death threats for testifying he was the one who shot her.
But the broader argument of “The Fall of Diddy” is that the private monstrosities become everybody’s problem, and they’re fed by our collective refusal to hold them accountable. Before Combs escaped responsibility for the deadly tragedy at City College, a former classmate of his at Harvard, whose identity is kept hidden, recalls watching from her dorm room window as he beat a woman he was dating in the courtyard.
That person expresses guilt and helplessness at not doing more than yelling from her window for him to stop. Others were nearby too, the subject says, and did nothing.
The broader argument of “The Fall of Diddy” is that the private monstrosities become everybody’s problem, and they’re fed by our collective refusal to hold them accountable.
Listening to these stories leads a person to wonder what it’s like to have witnessed up close the savage side of a person who would go on to become one of the most famous and wealthy men on the planet, and hold onto that terror for decades.
The audience may feel some version of that in reverse, realizing the part we unwittingly played in glossing over Combs’ sins by upholding his celebrity. Millions were awed by his award show performances, bought his albums, flaunted his fashions and allowed all that to distract us from the warning signs that seeped into plain view and were ignored.
We helped sustain the billion-dollar illusion that ultimately protected one monster who, after decades’ worth of brutality going unchecked, may finally face accountability for his actions. That won’t save our democracy, but it may grant us a better understanding of how America got here. All it takes to be an American great is confidence, a lust for money, a veneer of glamour, and enough people to stay silent about the crimes that would make that story into a lie.
“The Fall of Diddy” airs in two parts beginning at 9 p.m. Monday, January 27 and continuing at 9 p.m. Tuesday, January 28 on Investigation Discovery.
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