‘Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy’ gets caught up in too much conspiracist nonsense

The unwieldy new Peacock documentary lays out much of the case against the disgraced impresario- and throws in a bunch of other nonsense as well.

Sean “Diddy” Combs, the hip-hop impresario, mogul, and occasional actor, had a spectacular fall from grace throughout 2024, first when his homes were raided by the FBI, then when he was indicted on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges, and finally when he was sued by dozens of different people, alleging various degrees of horrific crimes.

There have already been lots of documentaries about Combs, and I expect numerous more to arrive in the next six months. The latest is Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy, which debuted this week on Peacock. The 100-minute documentary, clearly produced in a fairly quick amount of time, is almost spectacularly unwieldy.

It rampages through Diddy’s entire life and decades of fame while later delving into the accusations and having talking heads try their hand at psychoanalysis, drawing connections between, say, the early death of Combs’ Nicky Barnes-associated father and what came later.

We Need to Talk About Cosby or OJ: Made in America, this is not. There’s not much attempt to reckon with Diddy’s pop culture work, his alleged crimes, and how the two fit together. I could imagine, say, a four-hour version of Diddy’s story, albeit one produced with a great deal more care than this was (Max, indeed, has a four-part version coming soon.

(Then again, this isn’t really much of a “separate the art from the artist” situation since Diddy was responsible for some of the very worst music of the last 30 years, although he did do some interesting work from time to time as an actor.)

The Peacock doc also takes some detours into some bizarre corners of conspiracyland, including allegations that Combs was involved in the death of his friend Biggie Smalls, as well as some other murder conspiracies. There are multiple occasions when someone lays out that Combs was involved with a murder, and then a card on screen has to say that there’s no evidence of such things; in a documentary that’s barely an hour and a half long, that’s too many times.

Some of the stuff in the documentary is worthwhile, including a deep examination of the 1991 City College stampede in 1991, when nine people were killed at a basketball game promoted by Diddy and Heavy D. We learn that Combs’ mother, when he was young, hosted the sport of parties at their home that may have inspired him to want to do the same.

The documentary also draws a needed distinction between Diddy’s “White Parties” in the Hamptons, which got massive media coverage and drew A-list celebrities (including Donald Trump!), and the more private after-parties that happened later, including the “freak-offs” that were later in the news.

With the Diddy case in particular, and especially when it comes to social media discussion thereof, I’ve noticed a pattern: The actual alleged facts of the case, based on things in indictments, legal documents, live videos, and other things with some degree of legitimacy, are really, really bad. If a fraction of it is true, I hope Diddy goes away for the rest of his life.

But with Diddy, there’s also a lot of, for lack of a better description, conspiracy bullshit. The kind of TikTok stuff that assumes things without any evidence, based on song lyrics and other nonsense. Other versions merely plug Combs’ name into established Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories, including the idea that virtually everyone in Hollywood and politics — including people whose names have never been raised in any legitimate legal process — must have been involved in his crimes. And then there are offshoot versions, like the idea that, say, the Los Angeles fires were planted as a “distraction” from Diddy’s crimes.

The documentary feels the need to occasionally indulge in murder conspiracies, including a short segment where someone lays out an extremely circumstantial case that Combs was involved in Biggie’s murder in 1997. There’s also a lot of time spent on the insinuation from various talking heads that the late rapper Heavy D and Combs’ former girlfriend Kim Porter died by his hand when the film makes clear that no foul play was suspected in either death. Why even bring it up, then?

Jaguar Wright is included here, and she has (among other things) accused Diddy of Satanic ritual abuse. We know this allegation is false because Satanic ritual abuse isn’t real. Lawyer Lisa Bloom is also there as an expert, to compare Diddy to Jeffrey Epstein, without mentioning the part where Bloom not only represented Harvey Weinstein but did media advocacy on his behalf.

Look, if the point of this documentary is to convince audiences that Diddy is a bad guy, a sex criminal, and a menace to both women in his life and those who have worked for him… I’m convinced, and I hope that similar evidence soon convinces a jury. But at the same time, it introduces inferences that it doesn’t have the goods to back up.