“Please understand the truth.”
That was the simple instruction director and executive producer Alexandria Stapleton received from Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson when she began work on Sean Combs: The Reckoning.
The four-part Netflix documentary explores the allegations of sexual assault, human trafficking and legal battles surrounding Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Stapleton and Jackson had begun working together behind the scenes to learn the truth behind the allegations, but none of them could be told without the larger story of Combs’ rise to power in the music industry. This was the focus at the beginning of the document.
However, when we dug deeper into the many allegations, we found that no charges had been filed at the time.
“The biggest challenge was figuring out how to cut through the noise of social media and have meaningful conversations,” Stapleton says. “I knew my roadmap had to look like this and I had to follow the yellow brick road.”
Stapleton’s directorial credits include “Corman’s World: The Exploits of Hollywood Rebels,” “Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea,” “The Playbook” and “Reggie.” Coupled with Jackson’s involvement as executive producer, she was able to gain the trust of Combs’ opponents.
She knew she wasn’t going to tell a dirty story. Stapleton did not rush through his interviews, often spending eight to 12 hours with his subjects. “Victims who are talking about physical assault and sexual assault, you can’t just ignore that,” she says.
Editors Jack Gravina, Evan Wise, Charles Divac and Benji Kast pieced together Stapleton’s footage like a puzzle, mixing it with footage from Combs’ time up until his arrest in 2024.
Aubrey O’Day, who Combs signed with her girl group Danity Kane in the early ’80s as part of his “Making the Band” show, was one of the interviews Combs needed to complete the puzzle. In this series, she spoke about her former boss and the trauma she endured.
But the question was where to put it. At one point, that scene even set the episode in motion. “There was a point where I started having a cold. It started at the end of episode three, and it started at the beginning of episode four,” Divac says. “We were moving it around.”
In the end, episode 4 was the final episode.
“It felt so rewarding because we were going on this journey with her in Episode 3, learning about her experiences and growing to like her as a person,” Divak explains. “Right now, she’s going through something where she doesn’t even know if it happened or not. The cases that come out are like a fog, and I don’t want to diminish the value of other people who are suing, but at the same time, she doesn’t know if it really happened to her. But I have no doubt that it probably could have happened to her, because it’s similar to other stories that have been told.”
When O’Day first read a lawsuit, he stopped, stumbled a little, and spoke to the camera. It was a scene that needed to take a breather as she grappled with everything she was going through.
The documentary took a turn when the verdict was returned and Combs was found guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
“The way we tell stories has changed,” Divac says. Those who wanted to speak out were scared, but some were determined to come forward. “This verdict puts pressure on all of us to tell exactly what happened, because the real story did not come out at trial.”
