Director Alexandria Stapleton got an astonishing number of people to speak on camera for her docuseries Sean Combs: The Reckoning — from jurors in Combs’ criminal case to the co-founder of Bad Boy Records to Combs’ security guard to his former global brand director to women who discuss harrowing sexual-assault allegations.
They spoke out in part, Stapleton believes, because the project was executive produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson — and they believed his influence and power would protect them and amplify their stories.
“I think that was really important for people in order to come forward, to feel safe, to feel like their story would actually be listened to,” Stapleton says.
But the other part of getting people on the record was her own record – as a documentarian with a reputation for empathy and fairness.
“One thing that I know to be true is that all you have is your name,” says Stapleton, whose documentaries include 2011’s Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, the 2023 Reggie Jackson film Reggie, and the recent Sundance premiere The Brittney Griner Story.
“As documentarians, our names and our reputations are really important. Even in gaining the trust of people to sit down with me for this film, they went to past films that I had done to be able to judge, ‘Well, what does she do? What kind of stuff does she put out there?’”
Alexandria Stapleton on Taking a Studiously Fair Approach to Diddy
Coverage of Diddy tends to be messy — filled with innuendo and references to his apparent fondness for baby oil. The four-part The Reckoning stands out for its somber, nuanced, expansive approach.
We hear criticisms of Diddy, formerly known as Puff Daddy and P Diddy, but also counter-arguments, sometimes straight from Combs. In the fourth episode, two jurors explain why they didn’t buy some of the arguments made earlier in the doc by former Diddy collaborators.
The Netflix docuseries bears more resemblance to PBS’s Frontline than the kind of jokes 50 Cent has made about Diddy on Instagram. If anyone ever tried to sway Stapleton’s evenhanded approach to the doc — or any of her docs — she’s very clear about what she would do:
“I would walk.”
She adds that everyone involved, including Jackson, shared her genuine curiosity about Combs’ life and her commitment to journalistic rigor, with a focus on who, what, when, where, how and why.
The doc is careful to remind viewers, in every episode, what Combs was found guilty of and not guilty of in his 2025 trial: He was convicted on two counts of transportation for prostitution, and acquitted of more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. He is, as of this writing, appealing a 50-month prison sentence, and denies all the charges.
Combs didn’t take part in the docuseries, though it does feature plenty of footage of the days before his September 2024 arrest, recorded by a videographer Combs had allowed to follow him.
Asked what she would ask Combs if she could sit him down for an interview, Stapleton doesn’t jump to gotcha questions, or anything that would further shame or embarrass him. She wants to genuinely understand her subject. The area she would most want to investigate, she says, is how he became who he is.
“I’m very interested in origins, as a filmmaker,” Stapleton says. “It would be like, ‘Can you tell me about your upbringing and your childhood?’ I would really want to understand more about who Sean was before the fame came, that might have influenced or been a part of some sort of unchecked behavior, or maybe cries for help.”
She would also like to hear his rebuttals to the people who sat down for her film: “How do you answer them?”
Sean Combs: The Reckoning is now streaming on Netflix. You can read more of our interviews with 2026 Emmy FYC contenders here.
Main image: Sean Combs: The Reckoning. Netflix.
