Original subtitles

When did you think, "I'm in a cult"?

The moment the cat stuff started happening.

I want the world to know...

Desperate people do desperate things.

I believe those ashes are human.

But I believe they are not my human.

I definitely think it goes with my dress.

I didn't even call Sean to tell him I was doing this.

I don't want the public's perception to be swayed

as if this is a payoff or if this is a favor.

This is just brotherly love.

So, there was one day me and Sean went up to my mom's house.

My parents used to love to play blackjack.

And everybody's sitting at the table playing cards

and they see us come in.

And at that time we had the germ of fame.

I had a record or two on the radio.

They say "Y'all play a hand of cards with us.

"Y'all got all the money."

Sean didn't know how to play blackjack.

We played one hand of cards with him.

Cards is being dealt.

Sean doesn't know to turn his card over and only reveal one.

So he had both of his cards turned up,

and he wasn't hiding them.

And people laughed.

"Boy, you better hide your cards.

Don't be showing your cards."

And he looked at me like "Yo, what I got?"

And I said, "You're good.

Don't even worry about it. You're gonna win."

And he said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "You're gonna win. Don't worry.

You got 20. It takes 21 to win."

He says, "For real?"

He says, "It's guaranteed that I win?"

I said, "It ain't guaranteed, but shit, it's damn near guaranteed."

He said, "I want it to be guaranteed I win.

Give me another card."

Everybody at the table looked at him like, "Boy, are you crazy?"

Dealer deals the card, and it's an ace.

Twenty one.

The whole table went ham.

My God. Who is this boy?

He took all the money off the table,

put it in his pocket, and we left.

Everybody's yelling for him to come back.

He said, "No, I won."

Who does that?

That's Sean.

All or nothing.

That's it.

That's who he is.

Sean Combs. You can never count him out.

It's like the life of a cat.

Nine?

Shit.

I think that what has happened in Puffy's life

is the byproduct of extreme good fortune,

and that extreme good fortune can also be a paradox of power.

It's a yin and a yang.

In order to get all the goodies,

you've got to have this confidence

that you can get all the goodies.

And so Puffy created a cult of personality.

After the nightclub shooting,

when he was acquitted, he went into PR overdrive,

Who said we had to have one name?

He rebranded himself as P. Diddy.

He wanted to put a clear divider

between who he was and where he's going.

You know, I don't really just play by the rules.

I create my own rules.

Puff wanted to get rid of this image of him as a thug.

He's changing his name.

But is he a changed man?

Puffy knew how the media worked,

and he knew how important it was to maintain an image.

I have a big announcement to make today.

I will run the New York City Marathon

to raise money and awareness for three charities.

We start to see Sean Combs

engage in these kind of stunts.

In the 2004 election, he starts to talk about this Vote or Die campaign.

This election is life or death.

Now we're going to make voting cool.

He's now mingling with future President Obama

at the time when Obama's career was on the rise.

I just want to say how much I appreciate Puff Daddy

for doing the kinds of work that he's doing

because he doesn't have to do this.

Sean Combs shows up in a Broadway production

that's revisiting A Raisin in the Sun,

one of the first plays by a Black woman produced on Broadway.

Sean P. Diddy Combs is winning over audiences on Broadway.

Combs found a way to rise again.

Is there anything this man can't do?

He was seen, to many people in the media, as a safe person of color.

At the time, reality TV was exploding.

There were all these competition reality shows

with mega moguls and different aspects of culture.

And there were contestants vying to be able to have it on their resume.

They worked for Trump,

they worked for Paris Hilton, they worked for Diddy.

I was the director, director of photography and co-executive producer

of I Want to Work for Diddy on VH1.

To live the dream, you have to work for it.

I Want to Work for Diddy.

I was quite blown away

that I was actually directing this guy

and telling this guy what to do.

I think to work for a narcissist, you have to become one,

and I think that's what the show's success was.

Exposing the narcissist in Diddy.

The last episode of I Want to Work for Diddy starts at The London hotel.

The brand spanking new never slept in presidential suite.

I was planning to go up and talk to Sean and block it out with him

before we started. My AD is with me,

and I knock on the door, I come in,

and to the right is this pretty grandiose staircase.

So I'm standing there a good five minutes.

He comes down, he's got a robe on, it's open.

He's got nothing on. He's just naked.

Like it was nothing.

He knew I was there. He knew we were waiting.

There was a moment where it's like, "Wow."

I guess somebody at that level can really, truly do,

and say whatever they want to do and say, period.

From the outside, he was this mogul.

He was this guy who, you know, could make your dreams come true.

But then, there was the other side.

It might not be so safe.

I have not shared my story in a public way.

In a very truthful, uncensored way.

I was one of five girls in Danity Kane

on Making the Band 3.

The premise of the show was Diddy was gonna find the next superstar group.

Our first album was number one on the Billboard charts.

First week out, we beat Christina Aguilera and OutKast.

It was our first single showstopper.

Like I love the fact that fans still listen to Danity Kane.

It takes a lot for me to allow you to have your experience

and not taint it.

And still

understand what my experience was.

And, um, it was not a good experience.

You know, hearing some of those songs,

bring up...

awful memories.

I see myself standing in those dark, scary predatory spaces,

and hearing somebody say some of the most degrading things to me,

and at the age of 20 and 21,

having to figure out how to navigate

and not let that person break me down.

I remember one time where he had the cameras there

while we were, like, trying on clothes, so he could watch us.

He's going to point this little camera at us for Diddy,

so he can judge our appearance.

I called it like Jedi mind tricks.

This happened so early on.

He was going one by one by one,

just like critiquing our style.

And when he got to me, It wasn't about the clothes.

What's your stomach looking like?

Are you still a little thick?

And I was like, "Well, you know,

next to these skinny girls, I'm always gonna look thick."

I'm working out. I'm running.

I always feel thick next to these skinny chicks.

Puff was just saying, "You look like, you know, you one cheeseburger away.

You know that. You know that, right?

You know that you one cheeseburger away,"

like he wanted me to agree with him.

You're like a burger away.

And it was like, like I just, I had to just take it.

Grit my teeth and let him say what he wanted to say.

I remember feeling like Diddy was this tough love boss.

But looking at Making the Band through today's lens

makes it clear that the body shaming,

verbal abuse, intimidation was rampant.

He was singling out different ones of us, especially Aubrey.

Aubrey always stuck out as one of the stars.

One of the fan favorites.

He had an aggressive, intimidating way with her.

I remember one scene where he was like, "What do you have to say?"

Aubrey, you ain't got nothing to say?

You've got such a big mouth when I'm going.

What you got to say? Say it now.

The way Puff and Aubrey went back and forth was very uncomfortable

to witness, to watch.

He was the hardest person that you can work for,

and it was torture.

And not the work part of it, but the other stuff.

I remember her sharing with me...

that he has sent her a lot of very inappropriate pictures.

I saw a lot of things that he would email her.

Very sexual in nature.

Very... just like,

overtly like pornographic,

like, things that he wanted to do to her.

She was just kind of like, "What do I do?"

I remember telling her, "Girl, put that in a folder.

Send it to your mama.

Save that."

Aubrey and I decided to go to New York for Fashion Week.

Aubrey came into my hotel room and told me

that she ran into Puff in person,

and he had pulled her in close,

and he said, "Now you're hot enough that I can you.

I can you now."

It was like a moment of shock.

A moment of... your stomach turning.

A moment of just like...

We're definitely in over our heads.

And then all of a sudden it was this mandatory meeting that needed to happen.

We thought we were "off".

We thought we had finished filming.

It was just like...

What in the entire?

So what do you think is gonna happen tomorrow?

Yeah, we just walked into the lion's den.

We get to the Bad Boy Offices.

We're in the conference room.

It was very Donald Trump Apprentice style.

The vision that I had for the group,

this ain't the vision that I'm on.

You know what I'm saying?

The whole group of Danity Kane sitting at the table

when Puff was saying to Aubrey she was promiscuous,

saying that he didn't like her image and her body.

I don't like what she does to the brand

when she's wilding out there being overly raunchy, promiscuous.

Puff fired Aubrey.

I don't want you in the group no more.

And then he turned to me and said, "Get out."

You can go too.

I believe that he fired Aubrey...

One, because she did not succumb to his advances.

Two, because he wanted her to feel powerless

and question her worth.

I feel like that's probably the same reason

why he probably got rid of me, too.

At the time,

the press was really very much against the girls of Danity Kane,

making it seem like they were the problem.

There is a real sense of fear surrounding Diddy.

If you go through a timeline of his history,

there is that kind of sprinkle or a trail of violence,

of aggression, of intimidation,

that has popped up throughout the years.

But it always kind of was explained away

because Diddy is so big and has so much power.

By 2007, Diddy's wealth just starts rapidly multiplying.

Sean Combs is one of the most influential beacons

in luxury culture today.

He then lands a huge partnership with Diageo.

I am proud to announce a groundbreaking strategic alliance

between myself and CIROC Vodka.

He becomes synonymous with this brand,

and he transcends everything that he had been before.

This would prove to be so lucrative for Diddy.

He later expands to tequila with DeLeon.

Over the course of their relationship,

Diageo paid Combs a billion dollars.

I am the American dream. This is Black history.

He continued to expand his brand.

He got into media with REVOLT TV.

I am the former managing editor

and global news anchor for REVOLT TV.

Hey everyone, and welcome to the show.

I'm Mara S. Campo.

It was the only place I've ever worked

where I felt like I could show up 100% as my authentic self.

There was one experience that I actually found to be quite funny,

where I had a bottle of Casamigos

that I had to leave in my office.

When I got back to my office, the bottle was in the trash.

They said if Puffy had come in and seen a bottle of Casamigos,

meaning something that was not DeLeon, he would have gone ballistic.

To be successful in business, you have to take your brands very, very seriously.

And clearly he did that.

What's going on? Just sending you some love.

We're on set. We're working hard.

We know y'all working hard.

Love.

My experience in the Diddyverse was actually quite positive,

although I did not directly work for him.

But what we've heard from those who have worked with him

is that he used the same fear and intimidation and coercion tactics

in the workplace as he did with his enemies.

I was Puff's personal chef.

Since the news broke about Puff, it brought everything back.

I've been quiet for 17, 18 years,

and because of it being brought back,

I went into a trunk that I have in my house

that actually had my journal entries from around that time,

and I read over them.

And there's a lot of things that I forgot or buried.

I started working for Puff in the summer of 2007.

I am Sean Combs' personal chef.

I was in my early 20s, and I'm just like, you know, I'm excited.

His level of success, his level of power, and his reach.

Who wouldn't want to be associated with him?

Puff was the top.

- Hey, Chef. - Yeah.

Mr. Combs would like to see.

What do we got for dessert?

Fruit.

I was definitely intimidated.

I have some of my journal entries here.

Puff would notoriously berate you, embarrass you, belittle you.

I was having constant anxiety attacks and heart palpitations.

I was diagnosed with stress induced alopecia.

My hair started to fall out.

And then I saw a cardiologist

who said that my body couldn't handle the stress levels.

He said to me, "If you keep this job any longer than a year,

you'll be dead."

When I discussed what was going on

with a few other people that worked, it was kind of like a joke.

It was like, "yeah, well, you're official now. Welcome."

You know, you're not really official

until you have some sort of breakdown around here.

I think his expectation of others

was how he operated within his own life.

He really is a "can't stop, won't stop. No sleep."

That is really how he operates.

But there's also a lot of drugs being used.

I saw lots of different pills.

I know that there was like ecstasy, definitely alcohol.

So I kind of was like, "He's just tripping because he's coming down."

Like I'm not paying him any attention.

But there was a specific time Puff comes downstairs and he's yelling,

"I'm so tired of hearing about you and your attitude,

"and all you've got to do is cook the food."

Me and him are like face to face like this,

and he's just like, he does like this to my forehead,

and he's just like, you know, like,

and I'm telling him like, "Don't touch me,"

and now tears are coming down my eyes.

And he's like, "You're crying, you're crying

and there's kids starving in Africa,

and you over here crying?

And all you got to do is cook food?"

He was just getting madder and madder.

And so I walk away and I'm opening up the refrigerator.

And I remember him saying, "Yeah, you're crazy."

And then I just remembered slamming the door

and being like, "Yeah, that's right. I'm crazy.

And you know what else? I quit."

Me saying that I quit like, enraged him more,

because he's like, "You can't quit on me.

You can't quit on me."

And I just remember turning around and saying, " you."

And when I turned around and I said that to him,

he used all of his force,

and he just shoved me, like he pushed me.

And I went flying outside of the doorway

and I ended up on my elbows and my butt.

I'm telling the office, I'm gonna sue this mother."

They understood that I was upset,

but they're like, "If you sue him, your career is over.

You will be blackballed.

He does have the power to do that, and he will do that."

Puff scared me.

So I kept quiet about things that I knew

because I was afraid that something might happen to me.

I've seen Diddy in incidents

with multiple women with violence.

One time, I remember telling him,

"Yo, I think you got a problem."

He looked at me and he was like,

"I ain't got no mother problem."

So he said, "Sometimes you just gotta

let these hoes know who the boss is."

From 2006 to 2012,

nobody else spent more time with Puff than I did.

I was his everyday bodyguard.

It meant so much to me to get with Diddy

because of who I was and what I've been through.

I was incarcerated for a little while,

so to me, that was a stepping up.

One of the reasons that I got with Puff

was because he was a older guy,

so I felt like it's just a matter of time before he simmers down.

But he was still waking me up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning

talking about, "Yo, we getting ready to go to the club?"

And I remember lots of drugs.

When he was on drugs,

it enabled him to stay up for two or three days at a time.

At that time, you had different people that Diddy did respect,

telling him, You need help."

And when that didn't happen, I seen a spiral and the spiral was going down.

There was a time he had a fight in Miami,

and when we was running out the door,

he seemed to think it was funny.

He looked at me and he told me, he said, "I got time, Bonds."

I said, "What you got time for?"

He said, "I got enough money for one more big fight

that I could pay the people off."

In my mind, I was like, "Yo, this dude is crazy."

Who wants to get into a fight to have to pay somebody?

Diddy, he always wanted you to agree with what he said,

and if you don't agree with what he said,

he had his way of getting rid of you.

Coming home from jail,

I couldn't move on to nothing better.

And so I was even willing to turn a blind eye to some of the bad things

because Diddy would always say,

"You should be thankful for being here."

He was just a master manipulator.

So when I look at him now, I say, the respect that I had for him,

the way that I looked up to him when I first started,

it's all gone because I know it's a facade.

I like to value my success on not the monetary aspect.

It's how many lives I could touch and change and help to give a chance to.

Diddy did such a good job of presenting himself.

And so I, like most of the world,

did not fully realize the extent of the darkness.

Lil Rod is the first man that has come forward

with some of these allegations of sexual assault.

There are a lot of things that stood out in Lil Rod's lawsuit.

"Mr. Jones witnessed, experienced, and endured many things

that went far beyond his role as a producer on The Love Album."

When I started working with Puffy,

I was very, very excited. For me,

I had already won just to be sitting in a room with him.

It didn't get any better than that.

But knowing everything that I know now, I would never work for Puffy.

My name is Rodney Jones Junior, also known as Lil Rod.

Off The Grid for Sean Combs.

Working with Puff, you never know who you're dealing with.

So some days he would walk in

and be one of the coolest guys.

And then some days he walked in and he's just being a thug.

I remember one time he was asking me

how much was I going to charge him

for working on his album.

Before I knew it, he was up in my face.

He's like, "Yo, you don't charge me no money.

I'm Puff Daddy.

I'll eat your face off."

I never got paid as a producer for The Love Album still to this day.

Puff making threats, that's who he is.

A bully in a suit.

Puffy crossed the line so many times.

We were at Puffy's Los Angeles house, working in the studio.

He says, "I want to work in my bathroom.

Everybody bring everything."

So we break down the studio,

get the instruments and go to his bathroom as usual.

And he strips himself in front of us

and jumps right into the shower.

But he's looking directly at me.

You know what I mean?

I found myself getting a pat on my butt.

It felt uncomfortable, and still feels uncomfortable.

I was very unsure what to think and how to feel.

It's not something that I ever want to happen again.

I did at some point raise this issue to one of the chief of staff

and she would tell me,

"that's just his way of showing he likes you or loves you.

You should just downplay it like it's nothing."

And it just happened over and over.

Working with him, there was a lot of abuse that came with it.

No.

There's so much more that he did.

Puffy would require us to go to the club

and bring back multiple choices of women

for himself and whoever he deemed necessary to have fun with.

So more than often, we did spend a lot of our time going to the strip clubs

to get sex workers to bring back to the house.

You'll see girls come at the Miami house.

That happened quite often.

Lots of women, lots of partying,

lots of drugs, lots of alcohol.

I even found myself a couple of times

waking up next to some of the sex workers.

And you know, it felt like it just went from zero to 10, like quickly.

I feel like I was for sure drugged.

I feel like the drinks were spiked.

It's not like I don't know how to handle my liquor,

so for me to be having a drink

and then I wake up trying to remember

exactly how I got here, what's going on.

I can only imagine that somebody tapped me.

Everybody was sipping on the Puffy juice.

That makes me feel very used, abused.

It makes me feel like only a monster can do this.

As disturbing as Lil Rod's lawsuit was,

there have been more shocking things that have come out.

I've tried to put it away for all these years,

but even now it's a lot.

The color red for me is a trigger.

It took a lot to wear this red shirt today.

Um, you know, 'cause it's a process.

I'm trying... I'm trying to get there.

I can't listen to any Bad Boy music without it triggering me.

I cannot hear his voice

without it making my stomach hurt.

That effing monster.

Back in 2000, I was living in Queens.

I was a mom in the middle of a divorce,

so kind of maintaining house and home first.

And then I started dating a Bad Boy executive.

Through my boyfriend,

I met Sean Combs at Daddy's House Studio.

It was just a normal, "Hey, how you doing?

"Welcome to the fam. Welcome to Bad Boy."

That was the atmosphere.

Very fun. Very upbeat.

At that time, Diddy was the jokester, the prankster.

But now, thinking back, Diddy would make remarks

that if you have to really think back to it,

it's like, a little weird.

Like, "Hey, don't leave her alone over here.

You've got a pretty girl. She's a little thing."

Now, in hindsight,

it's like we're prepping yourself for the kill.

And then what happened in 2001 changed my whole life.

I was home in Queens.

I got a call from one of the people at Bad Boy Studios.

They said, "Puff wants to talk to you

because your boyfriend is up at work again."

There was nothing alarming about Puff wanting to talk to me

because we've had a conversation about him screwing up at work

prior to this, to get him back on track.

A little while later,

this burgundy Escalade pulls up,

and Puff was sitting in the back, so I jumped in the back.

And he said, "Hey, what's up?

Do you want something to drink?"

I said, "Sure, what you got?"

And he was drinking something in a red Solo cup.

And he gave me a clear glass, like a little cup with some white zin.

By the time we got to Daddy's House Studios,

I started feeling a little woozy, lightheaded.

I kept doing this, trying to feel my face

because it kept feeling a little numb.

I remember getting out the Escalade.

Still, I'm thinking we're going to go to the studio

and my boyfriend's gonna be there.

But at this time, we went down the hallway

to a door and a lounge that I've never been to.

And I remember sitting on the dark couch.

Puff was sitting there on the couch with me,

and I'm not sure for how long I was sitting there.

And I started feeling a lot more fuzzier,

and I remember crying.

And the next thing I remember

was I was slammed on a pool table.

I was naked

on the pool table,

and my hands were tied behind my back.

And I kept trying to do this to try to figure out what was tying me.

It felt like plastic bags.

Puffy was standing by the bar and he was naked.

There was a jar on the bar.

And he put on something on his privates that...

Like, I smell it. It smelled like menthol.

And he was slathering it in.

So...

I was still trying to figure out what's going on.

And Puffy came up behind me

and went straight in my anus

to where I ended up throwing up on the pool table.

And screaming.

And I'm not sure

if there was anything coming out my voice while I was screaming,

but I could feel the burn anally,

and I was trying to try to kick him.

I'm short so my feet wouldn't even touch the ground,

and I was trying to kick him

and I was trying to hold on to the table at the same time.

At some point, Puffy stopped, went back to the bar, wiped himself off

because I'm looking at him like this, still tied,

and trying to... trying to see everything I possibly can,

and trying to focus 'cause it was a big blur.

And then he came back and went into me vaginally.

And, um...

He said something.

I'm not sure what he said or if he was even talking to me.

Um...

And then when I came back to,

I was back on the couch.

I had stuff all over me, um, from throwing up, drooling,

whatever it was.

But this time, I didn't have the ties anymore on my hands.

I had red panties on. I couldn't find my panties.

I remember putting on my bra, putting my dress on.

I don't even remember if I put the dress on correctly.

And I ran out the door.

I was terrified.

I just didn't want to die.

I remember running out, going downstairs, and running down the block.

I didn't see anybody. I was just gone.

I ended up calling a cab driver that I knew.

When he came and picked me up, I jumped in the front seat.

I was a mess.

And he was in shock.

His exact words were "What the F happened?"

Did you get hit by a truck? A car?

Did you have an accident?"

And he was checking out my wrist

because I had bruises and welts on my wrist.

And he took me straight to Elmhurst Hospital.

I couldn't go in. I couldn't go in.

I couldn't move.

I was scared, not just for my life,

I was scared for my parents finding out,

just because, you know, I didn't want to embarrass them.

I didn't want to embarrass myself.

And I didn't want to go to the police

because I was in the middle of a child custody battle and a divorce,

and I didn't want anything stopping this process.

And he was trying to convince me to go into the hospital,

and I just wanted to go home.

And just sit in the shower for about an hour, and that's what I did.

I'm trying to scrub, literally, like scrub your life away.

I have stayed in bed,

and hiding from my parents for three days in the same household,

because I still couldn't fathom what happened.

It didn't seem... real.

And then came the questions. "Why me?"

You know, we were supposed to be cool.

We were supposed to be like friends.

We were supposed to be, you know, you know me.

Those were all the thoughts going through my head while I was hiding.

Soon after that, I got a call.

And it was Puff.

I was terrified.

He said, "Ay. Keep your effing mouth shut."

And then he hung up the phone.

Puffy has ways of finding out stuff and making things happen.

I need to get the hell away from New York.

I ended up disappearing for a few years.

I was a total wreck, hanging on to sanity by a thread.

Trying to cope with being raped and assaulted,

trying to raise a child,

depression,

trying to fight every day to keep yourself alive,

because at that point there was nothing there.

There was nothing to say, "Okay, you've got tomorrow to live for, right?" So...

Every day. Every day was a battle.

Every day was a struggle to try to keep me

from either killing myself or doing something stupid.

Today, I'm still coping with and trying to get through it.

Because in November of 2023, I was told by my ex-boyfriend

that my assault was actually recorded on tape.

For me, it was like, why would somebody record raping somebody,

and then you show it to other people?

I was so angry.

And then he said, "Do you see what's happening in the news with Cassie?"

Sean Diddy Combs, the disgraced music mogul.

Sean Diddy Combs.

Sean Diddy Combs, facing a slew of allegations,

including rape and sex trafficking.

She opened up a can of worms with Puff.

forcing her into unwanted sexual encounters

through the use of illegal substances and threats of violence.

The acclaimed music producer vehemently denying the allegations.

I always believed that I was the only victim.

These are the first of what could be

scores of lawsuits.

I'm definitely looking at a piece of property that is owned by Sean Combs.

It has been a staggering fall from grace.