Sean “Diddy” Combs’ personal 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 Bad Boy Entertainment empire.
The videographer, Michael Oberlies, is alleging that the footage was released by a freelancer who was hired to fill in for him while he was out of state for a few days.
“For over two years we have been working on a project profiling Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs,” Oberlies said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “The footage in question was not released by me or anyone authorized to handle Sean Combs’ materials; it was by a third party who covered for me for three days while I was out of state. This incident had nothing to do with any fee dispute or contract issue.
“The actions of the parties involved reflect the lack of integrity every storyteller should uphold. Taking footage intended for our project to advance a narrative that was not our own is both unethical and unacceptable.”
The footage Oberlies is referencing features clips of Combs in his New York City hotel room days before his September 2024 arrest, when he was indicted on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges that accused him of hitting and abusing women for over a decade and presiding over an empire of sexual crimes.
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The footage featured in the Netflix docuseries, produced by 50 Cent, shares conversations with Combs’ legal team about how to navigate the case.
“We have to find somebody that’ll work with us. Whether they’re from this country or from another country, it could be somebody that has the dirtiest of dirtiest dirty business of media and propaganda,” Combs told his lawyer Marc Agnifilo on the phone, before adding, “We’re losing.”
In another scene, Combs meets fans in Harlem, where he later says he needs hand sanitizer because he was “out in the streets amongst the people.”
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“The amount of people that actually I’m coming in contact with, that’s what I have to do,” he said while asking the people around him for hand sanitizer. “It’s time to cleanse, I got to go under the water, water got to be boiling hot, put some peroxide in that.”
A day before the docuseries was released on Netflix, a representative for Combs issued a statement, calling it a “shameful hit piece.”
“Today’s GMA (Good Morning America) teaser confirms that Netflix relied on stolen footage that was never authorized for release. As Netflix and CEO Ted Sarandos know, Mr. Combs has been amassing footage since he was 19 to tell his own story, in his own way. It is fundamentally unfair, and illegal, for Netflix to misappropriate that work,” the Dec. 1 statement read.
Combs’ rep said Netflix was “plainly desperate to sensationalize every minute of Mr. Combs’s life, without regard for truth, in order to capitalize on a never-ending media frenzy.”
“If Netflix cared about truth or about Mr. Combs’s legal rights, it would not be ripping private footage out of context – including conversations with his lawyers that were never intended for public viewing. No rights in that material were ever transferred to Netflix or any third party,” the statement said.
“No rights in that material were ever transferred to Netflix or any third party,” the statement continued. “It is equally staggering that Netflix handed creative control to Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson — a longtime adversary with a personal vendetta who has spent too much time slandering Mr. Combs.”
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In a statement provided to Netflix’s official news website, Tudum, Sean Combs: The Reckoning director Alexandria Stapleton said the behind-the-scenes footage “came to us.”
“We obtained the footage legally and have the necessary rights. One thing about Sean Combs is that he’s always filming himself, and it’s been an obsession throughout the decades,” Stapleton said.
She also claimed that the docuseries team “reached out to Sean Combs’ legal team for an interview and comment multiple times, but did not hear back.”
In a second statement to Deadline from a Netflix spokesperson, the streamer doubled down, saying, “The footage of Combs leading up to his indictment and arrest were legally obtained. This is not a hit piece or an act of retribution. Curtis Jackson is an executive producer but does not have creative control. No one was paid to participate.”
50 Cent insisted the docuseries isn’t part of a “personal vendetta” to take Combs down.
“I’m not doing this as some personal mission. I’m telling a story no one else is telling because I don’t have the fear that others feel towards him. I’m not afraid at all,” he told Us Weekly in an interview on Tuesday.
When asked how he acquired the footage filmed before Combs’ arrest, 50 Cent said, “A journalist would ask that, but a journalist would also say, ‘I’m going to keep my sources secure.’”
Combs is currently serving 50 months in prison after a New York jury found him guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution while acquitting him of the most serious charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.
The 56-year-old disgraced hip-hop mogul was originally scheduled to get out of prison on May 8, 2028, but the date has now been changed to June 4, 2028, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ online database.
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