Sean Combs: The Reckoning, which is currently streaming with a Netflix subscription, has seemingly made quite an impression amongst viewers. The Alexandria Stapleton-directed and 50 Cent-produced docuseries covers Diddy’s ascension in the music industry, his ongoing legal issues and more. Several notable people were interviewed for the doc, including Aubrey O’Day, one of Combs’ former collaborators. O’Day recently explained why she joined the production after passing on similar opportunities to share her story.
The last several years have seen Diddy face allegations of sexual assault, harassment and more from various people, and Aubrey O’Day is among those who’ve made such claims. O’Day began working with Combs when she joined the cast of MTV’s Making the Band 3 in 2004 as a college student, and he eventually tapped her to be a part of the girl group Danity Kane. O’Day has since accused Diddy of being “predatory” while she was on the show, and she alleged that he made sexual advances towards her, which she repelled.
O’Day recently explained to Variety that after she began speaking out against the now-incarcerated Sean Combs, a number of entities reached out to her with offers to appear in documentaries about her former boss. As O’Day explained to the trade, though, there were several key factors that caused her not to “trust” those individuals:
So when this whole thing occurred, the very first thing that happened in my world is every single person that was making a documentary ran straight to me and offered me the world. And I would have conversations, and I would notice, ‘Oh, these people are just wanting to make a hit piece on Diddy. These people seem interesting, but I’ve spoken with all the producers and I’ve asked to meet all of the editing bay and there is no Black representation here. How would they ever be able to tell a culture piece and not have any representation on the production side or the editing bay?’ I didn’t trust that.
In time, the “Automatic” singer heard from Netflix and director Alexandria Stapleton about their four-part docuseries. Aubrey O’Day – who recently took part in a Danity Kane reunion tour – went on to recall her early discussions with Stapleton and how the documentarian’s appeal differed from those she’d already heard from:
I was talking with Alex a lot about everything, and she was kind of the last one that came through and had her deal with Netflix. And then she was the last person that got to me. But when I got on with her, she’s just such an incredible, incredible human. The way that she listened to me, the way that she validated the things that I said, the way that she listened to the things that had happened to me prior to doing the documentary and advised me that I’m not experiencing the way that doing a documentary on this project would look. It almost sounded like I’m experiencing what a reality TV version of this would look like, which I’m very used to.
Aubrey O’Day gets candid about her experiences with Diddy during the third episode of The Reckoning. In addition to detailing how she joined Making the Band, she also claimed that in 2008, Combs started sending her sexually explicit emails, including a photo of his penis. O’Day went on to say that after denying Combs’ advances, she was dropped from Danity Kane. Another portion of the doc also sees O’Day reading an affidavit from a man who described watching her get sexually assaulted by Diddy and an unnamed man in a studio in 2005.
What O’Day appreciated during the process of making the doc was that Stapleton “had such patience” and “respect.” Based on the development process, O’Day also “saw that Netflix was willing to take its time and that she was taking her job of telling this piece of history with a lot of integrity and she was being very careful.” That “piece of history” remains a topic of discussion in the aftermath of the docuseries’ release and Combs’ 2025 trial.
In July 2025, Diddy received a mixed verdict and was convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. Aubrey O’Day, who didn’t testify at the trial, later expressed uncertainty about how the sentencing would play out, and that hearing ended with Diddy being sentenced to four years (50 months) in prison. Now that O’Day has opened up about her experiences on The Reckoning, it’s unclear if she’ll speak more about her experiences with Sean Combs.
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