Sean “Diddy” Combs’ private videographer has addressed how he alleges Netflix and 50 Cent obtained the behind-the-scenes footage of Combs for the docuseries Sean Combs: The Reckoning, which unpacks the allegations behind the rapper and his Dangerous Boy Leisure empire.
The videographer, Michael Oberlies, is alleging that the footage was launched by a freelancer who was employed to fill in for him whereas he was out of state for just a few days.
“For over two years we’ve been engaged on a challenge profiling Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs,” Oberlies mentioned in a press release to Rolling Stone. “The footage in query was not launched by me or anybody approved to deal with Sean Combs’ supplies; it was by a 3rd occasion who coated for me for 3 days whereas I used to be out of state. This incident had nothing to do with any charge dispute or contract subject.
“The actions of the events concerned replicate the shortage of integrity each storyteller ought to uphold. Taking footage supposed for our challenge to advance a story that was not our personal is each unethical and unacceptable.”
The footage Oberlies is referencing options clips of Combs in his New York Metropolis lodge room days earlier than his September 2024 arrest, when he was indicted on federal intercourse trafficking and racketeering prices that accused him of hitting and abusing girls for over a decade and presiding over an empire of sexual crimes.
The footage featured within the Netflix docuseries, produced by 50 Cent, shares conversations with Combs’ authorized staff about easy methods to navigate the case.
“We now have to search out someone that’ll work with us. Whether or not they’re from this nation or from one other nation, it could possibly be someone that has the dirtiest of dirtiest soiled enterprise of media and propaganda,” Combs advised his lawyer Marc Agnifilo on the telephone, earlier than including, “We’re dropping.”
In one other scene, Combs meets followers in Harlem, the place he later says he wants hand sanitizer as a result of he was “out within the streets amongst the folks.”
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“The quantity of individuals that really I’m coming involved with, that’s what I’ve to do,” he mentioned whereas asking the folks round him for hand sanitizer. “It’s time to cleanse, I acquired to go underneath the water, water acquired to be boiling scorching, put some peroxide in that.”
A day earlier than the docuseries was launched on Netflix, a consultant for Combs issued a press release, calling it a “shameful hit piece.”
“As we speak’s GMA (Good Morning America) teaser confirms that Netflix relied on stolen footage that was by no means approved for launch. As Netflix and CEO Ted Sarandos know, Mr. Combs has been amassing footage since he was 19 to inform his personal story, in his personal manner. It’s basically unfair, and unlawful, for Netflix to misappropriate that work,” the Dec. 1 assertion learn.
Combs’ rep mentioned Netflix was “plainly determined to sensationalize each minute of Mr. Combs’s life, with out regard for fact, with a purpose to capitalize on a endless media frenzy.”
“If Netflix cared about fact or about Mr. Combs’s authorized rights, it could not be ripping non-public footage out of context – together with conversations together with his attorneys that had been by no means supposed for public viewing. No rights in that materials had been ever transferred to Netflix or any third occasion,” the assertion mentioned.
“No rights in that materials had been ever transferred to Netflix or any third occasion,” the assertion continued. “It’s equally staggering that Netflix handed artistic management to Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson — a longtime adversary with a private vendetta who has spent an excessive amount of time slandering Mr. Combs.”
In a press release supplied to Netflix’s official information web site, Tudum, Sean Combs: The Reckoning director Alexandria Stapleton mentioned the behind-the-scenes footage “got here to us.”
“We obtained the footage legally and have the mandatory rights. One factor about Sean Combs is that he’s all the time filming himself, and it’s been an obsession all through the a long time,” Stapleton mentioned.
She additionally claimed that the docuseries staff “reached out to Sean Combs’ authorized staff for an interview and remark a number of occasions, however didn’t hear again.”
In a second assertion to Deadline from a Netflix spokesperson, the streamer doubled down, saying, “The footage of Combs main as much as his indictment and arrest had been legally obtained. This isn’t a success piece or an act of retribution. Curtis Jackson is an government producer however doesn’t have artistic management. Nobody was paid to take part.”
50 Cent insisted the docuseries isn’t a part of a “private vendetta” to take Combs down.
“I’m not doing this as some private mission. I’m telling a narrative nobody else is telling as a result of I don’t have the worry that others really feel in the direction of him. I’m not afraid in any respect,” he advised Us Weekly in an interview on Tuesday.
When requested how he acquired the footage filmed earlier than Combs’ arrest, 50 Cent mentioned, “A journalist would ask that, however a journalist would additionally say, ‘I’m going to maintain my sources safe.’”
Combs is at present serving 50 months in jail after a New York jury discovered him responsible on two counts of transportation to have interaction in prostitution whereas acquitting him of essentially the most severe prices of racketeering and intercourse trafficking.
The 56-year-old disgraced hip-hop mogul was initially scheduled to get out of jail on Could 8, 2028, however the date has now been modified to June 4, 2028, in line with the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ on-line database.
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