For as big of a Hollywood fixture as Sean “Diddy” Combs has been, the lack of calls to “free Diddy” isn’t going unnoticed.
While the millionaire music mogul’s connections run deep and all the top celebrities once flocked to his parties, many are distancing themselves from Combs amid the explosive federal criminal charges, including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. It was cool back in the day to attend a White Party. Having one’s name associated with a Diddy “freak off” — what prosecutors claim were coercive and abusive sexual encounters in hotel rooms — isn’t.
The unraveling of Diddy — who pleaded not guilty to the federal charges and maintains his innocence — has been in motion for nearly a year, starting with his ex Cassie Ventura’s bombshell sexual assault lawsuit against him. His large circle of A-list friends who once surrounded him backed away with each shocking development that followed: the additional sexual misconduct lawsuits, the federal raid of two of his homes and when the Ventura hotel surveillance tape surfaced.
Now, three weeks after his arrest, he remains in jail pending trial after being denied bail. There’s a lot of silence, with support coming mostly from family.
Which stars have distanced themselves from Diddy?
The allegations against Diddy have led to the resurfacing of old photos and videos from his big parties — and the many big-name celebrities there. It’s clear the partygoers would prefer not to be pulled into the narrative amid the nonstop social media conjecture.
Ashton Kutcher: The actor had a well-known bromance with Combs in the 2000s, they were photographed together all over the place, and he co-hosted a White Party in 2009, making his entrance on a swing. Kutcher once said, “I’ve got a lot I can’t tell” about the goings-on at a Diddy event.
Since Combs’s arrest, an unidentified Kutcher source told People, “Ashton has no involvement in any of this. He doesn’t belong in this conversation about Diddy. Ashton has only seen Diddy in a handful of social and business events, all of which have been documented by the media.”
Leonardo DiCaprio: Photos of the Oscar winner partying with Combs at different events through the years — in the ’90s, ’00s and ’10s — are being recirculated amid the headlines. Combs once said DiCaprio was the “number one person” on his White Party guest list.
While DiCaprio hasn’t commented directly either, a source close to the actor told the Daily Mail that he “has absolutely nothing to do with” Combs or the allegations. “He attended a few of his parties back in the early 2000s — but literally everyone did. They were not freak offs. They were big house parties.”
The source said to jump to the conclusion that DiCaprio attended “freak offs” — which prosecutors claim were coerced sex marathons in hotel rooms that Combs secretly taped — was a reach.
“He has nothing to do with any of that world, so for anyone to assume that he will get roped into this based on a few grainy photos that are more than 20 years old is ridiculous,” the DiCaprio source added.
Justin Bieber: Videos of a young Bieber hanging out with Combs have raised eyebrows. A Bieber source told People that while Bieber is aware of “all the allegations,” it’s “not anything that he wants to focus on” as he’s in a “happy bubble” after the birth of his first child in August.
Ice Cube: While he knows Combs, he’s said he’s “never been to a Diddy party. You ain’t gotta worry about us on those motherf***ing tapes.”
Damon Dash: The record exec who co-founded Roc-A-Fella Records said on Instagram, “I didn’t go to those parties. I went to one in the Hamptons about 20 years ago … and that’s about it. But a lot of people were at those, you know what I mean?”
Biggie Smalls’s mom: Voletta Wallace — mother of the late Notorious B.I.G., who Combs signed to his Bad Boy Records label as a budding star — ripped Combs earlier this year after the video footage of him seemingly assaulting Ventura in 2016 was published by CNN.
“I hope that I see Sean one day and the only thing I want to do is slap the daylights out of him. And you can quote me on that,” Wallace said. “Because I liked him. I didn’t want to believe all the awful things, but I’m so ashamed and embarrassed.”
Who else? There have been a lot of different stories about celebrities unfollowing Combs on social media. According to Vibe, Combs’s ex Yung Miami, Kim Kardashian and LeBron James were among those to delete him from their follow lists on X. (While Taylor Swift was reported to have unfollowed him, she hasn’t unfollowed anyone on X in years, according to Reuters.)
Janet Jackson and Naomi Campbell both deleted photos they posted to social media from Combs’s birthday party last year after Ventura filed her lawsuit against Combs in November 2023, Page Six reported.
Who’s supporting him?
His family, led by his mother, Janice Combs, slammed the “public lynching” of her son on Monday.
“It is heartbreaking to see my son judged not for the truth, but for a narrative created out of lies,” she said in a statement released by her lawyers. “To bear witness [to] what seems like a public lynching of my son before he’s had the opportunity to prove his innocence is a pain too unbearable to put into words.
“My son may not have been entirely truthful about certain things, such as denying he has ever gotten violent with an ex-girlfriend when the hotel’s surveillance showed otherwise,” her statement continued. “Sometimes, the truth and a lie become so closely intertwined that it becomes terrifying to admit one part of the story, especially when that truth is outside the norm or is too complicated to be believed.”
She said she believes that Combs settling Ventura’s lawsuit against him resulted “in a ricochet effect as the federal government used this decision against my son by interpreting it as an admission of guilt.”
“It is important to recognize that none of us, regardless of our status, are immune to fear or mistakes,” she wrote. “Not being entirely straightforward about one issue does not mean my son is guilty of the repulsive allegations and the grave charges leveled against him.”
Combs has seven children. His sons Christian Combs, Justin Combs and Quincy Brown attended his arraignment in NYC.
Who hasn’t said anything?
There are many of Combs’s A-list friends who haven’t said a peep about the charges against him, including Mary J. Blige, whose music he’s produced, and Jay-Z, who he rose the ranks of hip-hop with. The same goes for his ex Jennifer Lopez, who was with Combs the night of the 1999 nightclub shooting.
Usher has also been quiet. While there are many resurfaced clips of him talking about the “wild” things he saw living with Combs for a year when he was 13 and first pursuing his singing career, he hasn’t addressed Combs’s case directly.
What resurfaced interviews have told us about Diddy’s role for young people in music
The videos of a 15-year-old Bieber hanging out with Combs and Usher talking about living with Combs at age 13 raise questions about his mentorship of budding artists.
Combs’s 14-year age gap with Bieber appears so noticeable in this clip of him gifting Bieber a Lamborghini before the singer could even drive.
In another clip, Combs told Bieber he’d better not talk on national television about things he does with “big brother Puff.”
Also cringe is Usher recalling in a 2016 interview with Howard Stern how he moved in with Diddy as a newly minted teenager at the advice of record exec L.A. Reid.
“Do you understand what that’s like?” Usher said, acknowledging that he saw things. Asked if he would let his sons live with Combs, Usher replied, “Hell no.”
50 Cent has long been feuding with Combs. They worked together early in 50’s career, but he’s since said he didn’t like Combs’s “uncomfortable energy.”
“[Diddy] asked to take me shopping,” 50 Cent said in a July interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “I thought that was the weirdest shit in the world because that might be something that a man says to a woman. And I’m just like, ‘Naw, I’m not f***ing with this weird energy or weird shit,’ coming off the way he was just moving. From that, I wasn’t comfortable around him.”
The “In da Club” rapper, who is making a doc about the Combs allegations, said he’s “been very vocal about not going to Puffy parties and doing shit like that. I’ve been staying out of that shit for years. It’s just an uncomfortable energy connected to it.”
Combs’s mentoring skills were on display with Making the Band, the MTV reality show that helped launch musical acts such as Danity Kane. A member of that group, Dawn Richard, is one of the people suing Combs for sexual abuse.
In a lawsuit filed in September, Richard claims Combs groped her on numerous occasions, trapped her inside a locked car for two hours, withheld payment for work on albums and hosted parties at which intoxicated young girls were sexually violated. She also claimed he threatened her life when she tried to intervene after witnessing his alleged abuse of Ventura.
Diddy’s attorney said Richard was just after “a payday.”
Aubrey O’Day — who was also in the group as a teen but was fired by Diddy — has spoken out against him for years. In 2022, O’Day said on the Call Her Daddy podcast that she was fired because she “wasn’t willing to do what was expected of [her] — not talent-wise, but in other areas.”
After Combs’s arrest, she wrote on X that “his behavior could have been stopped” and “a lot of people are responsible for keeping him in a place of power and visibility.”
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