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If its subject gets his way, the new documentary series Sean Combs: The Reckoning might not be available on Netflix for long. On Monday, lawyers on behalf of Combs sent a cease and desist letter to the streamer, demanding that the series be withdrawn based on the inclusion of footage that they claim violates copyright, and involves discussions of “legal strategy that were not intended for public viewing”.
After watching the series, you can see why Combs might be rattled. This is a man whose fall from grace last year was sudden and comprehensive, and yet Sean Combs: The Reckoning feels like the moment of no return for him. It does such a thorough job of laying out and backing up so many horrific allegations that his way back to stardom is surely blocked for ever.
Combs – variously known throughout his career as Puffy, Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Diddy and Love AKA Brother Love – is serving a 50-month prison sentence for transportation to engage in prostitution. Additionally, he faces a tidal wave of civil cases from former girlfriends, employees and associates, hitting him with a laundry list of accusations that includes (but is not limited to) rape, sex trafficking, false imprisonment and physical abuse.
Many of these allegations are addressed in Sean Combs: The Reckoning. And while this means that the series isn’t a pleasant watch, it does feel like a grimly necessary one. Over the course of four episodes, the director, Alexandria Stapleton, paints a pattern of behaviour that starts to feel horribly inevitable.
We meet Combs as a hungry youngster, willing to work longer and push harder in his thirst for success. We see him grow into an all-powerful mogul, before making the leap to becoming a rapper himself; draped in furs, swigging champagne from the bottle, J-Lo on his arm. We see his uncanny sense of timing, watching him pivot to reality TV fame at precisely the moment his music career starts to wane. But, at the same time, the series paints a picture of a rise fuelled by darkness.
There’s his lacklustre planning and lack of insurance for the overattended basketball game in 1991 that resulted in nine people dying in a stampede. There’s talk of him demanding employees sign over their stake in his business, holding baseball bats over their heads. There was a shooting in 1995, in which Combs allegedly attempted to bribe a driver with $50,000 to claim ownership of the gun (he denies this).
And then there are the allegations of sexual assault from women. We meet Joi Dickerson-Neal, who says that Combs drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1991, taping the act in order to show it at parties. We meet the singer Aubrey O’Day, who only learns that she was allegedly drugged and raped by Combs after reading it in a witness statement several years after the fact. We meet Rodney Jones, a music producer who claims he was drugged and sexually assaulted in a home riddled with hidden cameras.
One figure we don’t meet is Cassie Ventura, who nevertheless forms the centre of gravity in The Reckoning. It was CCTV footage of Combs punching, kicking and dragging Ventura through a hotel corridor that first brought the walls crashing down on him, and the series is highly insistent that this was far from a one-off event. Ventura sued Combs for rape and domestic violence in 2023, and reportedly received a $20m settlement.
However, what caused Combs to demand Netflix remove the series is something even more eye-opening: footage filmed in the week before his arrest. Knowing that he was about to face the music, Combs apparently hired a videographer to follow him, in order to plead his innocence in the court of public opinion. At one point he talks to a lawyer on the phone, telling them that the narrative is slipping away from him on social media and demanding “somebody that’ll work with us that has dealt in the dirtiest of dirty business”.
Thankfully, the existence of The Reckoning seems to suggest that the arch manipulator has finally been outmanoeuvred. Although there are certainly elements of this story that have not been told – Combs’s infamous “freak-off” parties are presented as an afterthought, and none of their long line of celebrity attendees are mentioned – the series does what is most needed right now. If Combs is able to uncancel himself in the face of evidence this damning, it will be nothing less than a miracle.
