Sean Combs has filed a $100 million lawsuit against NBCUniversal for its Peacock documentary “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy.”
The fallen music mogul, fashion designer and entrepreneur was arrested for sex trafficking and racketeering charges last fall and is being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The case against Combs, who is also known as “Diddy,” has prompted several media outlets to explore the allegations with podcasts, docuseries and news specials. His trial is scheduled to start in May.
The 55-year-old multi-Grammy winner and Sean John clothing label founder is facing more than two dozen lawsuits and accusations of rape, sexual assault and drugging some victims. Combs, who has denied any wrongdoing, is being detained in the same federal prison as Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s Brian Thompson, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto mogul convicted of fraud.
Representatives at NBCUniversal Media and Peacock TV did not respond to media requests Wednesday.
The 17-page complaint, which was filed Wednesday in the Supreme Court of the State of New York County, challenges the Peacock documentary’s accusation that Combs “murdered the love of his life and mother of his children, Kimberly Porter,” despite the Los Angeles County coroner’s office “confirming that her death was from natural causes and there has never been any evidence of foul play.”
Referencing the nature of the action in the lawsuit, Erica Wolff, an attorney for Combs, said in an issued statement that NBCUniversal Media LLC, Peacock TV LLC and Ample LLC “made a conscious decision to line their own pockets at the expense of truth, decency, and basic standards of professional journalism.”
The statement read: “Grossly exploiting the trust of their audience and racing to outdo their competition for the most salacious Diddy exposé, Defendants maliciously and recklessly broadcast outrageous lies in ‘Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy.’ In the purported documentary, Defendants accuse Mr. Combs of horrible crimes, including serial murder and sexual assault of minors — knowing that there is no evidence to support them. In making and broadcasting these falsehoods, among others, Defendants seek only to capitalize on the public’s appetite for scandal without any regard for the truth and at the expense of Mr. Combs’ right to a fair trial. Mr. Combs brings this lawsuit to hold Defendants accountable for the extraordinary damage their reckless statements have caused.”
“Fashion Influencer” honoree Sean “Diddy” Combs and Naomi Campbell attend the Accessories Council’s 9th annual ACE Awards.
Steve Eichner/WWD
The lawsuit disputed the documentary’s accusations of Combs having had sex with minors that was “based entirely on a false claim by an anonymous interviewee.” The filing also claimed that the story had been “rehashed from a baseless lawsuit seeking $30 million — has already been discredited by those 1739415373 adult women in their 30s referenced in that lawsuit who have come forward to say that they were adults at the time.”
The Peacock documentary debuted on Jan. 14. In addition to Porter, who was Combs’ partner for 10 years, the lawsuit alleges that the documentary “falsely, recklessly, and maliciously accuses Combs of murdering the musician Christopher ‘Biggie’ Wallace, music executive Andre Harrell, and the rapper and producer Dwight ‘Heavy D’ Arrington Myers, as well as attempting to murder Albert ‘Al B. Sure’ Joseph Brown aka ‘Al B. Sure.’”
In an interview with WWD last month, the Peacock documentary’s producer Ari Mark said Combs’ team had declined a request for an interview. The goal of this project for him and the network “was certainly not to come in and do a biopic about Sean Combs,” he told WWD. “It certainly wasn’t an attempt to cover every single piece of information that has come out about him recently…for us, it was really about what can we do here to tell an unexpected story. What can we do to definitely put the victims front and center?”
Notorious B.I.G, Sean “Diddy” Combs and producer Stevie J at a Peterson Vibe magazine party.
Maury Phillips
Mark claimed that the documentary offers insights to the audience about Combs’ “origins story and his transformation from Sean to ‘Puffy’ to ‘Diddy,’” he said. “What I mean is, who was this guy? It’s easy to jump in now and riff from the headlines, ‘Here’s this [alleged] criminal, here’s this guy — how salacious and surprising is that?’”
“Suggesting the accusations against Combs are part of the zeitgeist and don’t need to be repeated over and over, what we want to do is to go back and say, OK, where did this come from? Where did this originate from — not just [looking at] him as a child, but his start, as an intern at Uptown Records, [working at] Bad Boy and his relationship with Al B. Sure and Kim Porter. If you track the cultural milestones, but stop to think about them from a more psychological and sycophant standpoint, you just wind up with something much richer,” Mark told WWD last month.
Last week Kanye West announced a collaboration on social media that he would be splitting sales of Yeezy products 50/50 with Combs’ Sean John label. In an Instagram post to his 20.8 million followers, West, who changed his legal name to “Ye” in 2021, wrote, “ME AND PUFF SPLITTING THIS 50/50 LIKE WE DISCUSSED BEFORE THEY LOCKED HIM UP.”
