Diddy Doc Producer on Getting Al B. Sure!, Close Friends to Speak for Peacock Exposé
With so many documentaries about the rise and fall of Sean “Diddy” Combs released or in the works, producer Ari Mark initially didn’t think he would tackle the subject. But then he developed a relationship with Ariel Mitchell, the attorney representing several cases against the entertainment mogul and realized “there was a much more victim-forward approach” he could take. He also got in touch with a childhood friend who grew up in the same house as Combs.
“When we heard his perspective, it really clicked for us that this could be something more layered and unexpected — a raw exclusive look at Sean Combs long before he was Puff, long before he was Diddy,” Mark tells The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy‘s release. “We all have an origin story [and] we learned about his upbringing, we learned about him as an outcast, we learned about his bullying, the environment he grew up in … and by zooming out and by taking a more psychological approach, a sociological approach, it felt like we could say something a little bit bigger by presenting that information.”
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Mark is one of the executive producers of the 90-minute feature, which will stream on Peacock starting Jan. 14. It features interviews with Mitchell and Tim Patterson, Combs’ childhood friend, as well as a former bodyguard, a former makeup artist, several friends and associates from various points in Combs’ life, Making the Band 2 winner Sara Rivers, journalists and Al B. Sure!, who is speaking out for the first time and was in a relationship with Kim Porter before she dated Diddy.
Mark says, because he was partnered with Peacock, he was able to land Al B. Sure!, who has gone viral for some of his social media posts about Combs. “Being able to call Al B. Sure! and be like, ‘This film is happening. It’s not contingent on your participation. It’s not contingent on you saying this or that or the other thing or revealing some big secret. We just want you to be in this film because we think it will be a better film as a result. And we’re not asking you to share your whole life story, we’re just asking you to share whatever you’re comfortable sharing at this particular moment in time within the trajectory of the saga of your weird, very kind of complicated relationship with Sean Combs,’” Mark says.
“When you present it that way, number one, people listen and I think they recognize that we have a good track record and we’re not making this up. And secondly, I think we really took off the pressure and said, ‘Let’s just have a conversation. Let’s sit down and see where it goes.’ And you’ll see he stops himself about things he didn’t want to share about. I think what a lot of people don’t realize about producing these types of projects — there is a big leap of faith and you hope that the pieces come together because of who you are and what your intentions are,” he continues.
Several docs about Combs have been released, including those by TMZ, Nightline and 20/20, while 50 Cent is working on one for Netflix. Investigation Discovery — fresh off the success of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV — dropped the trailer for its Diddy doc on Thursday.
“It’s really competitive and I think that is why it wasn’t enough to be fast, it was also necessary to be distinct. There’s no time and this was an extremely fast turnaround,” says Mark, whose credits include The Price of Glee and This Is the Zodiac Speaking. “A lot of the content that has been out there and what you will see is frankly probably very close to one another, and I’m not accusing anyone of salaciousness, but I also really wanted to make sure that if we were going to do a doc, we were doing it in a way that felt like there was a new point of view to be offered up.”
Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy also features never-before-seen footage of Combs partying at home and in the studio, which Marks hopes makes his doc unique for viewers. “Look, there’s some people who you saw on-camera who participated in this project who were able to offer up photographs and video, and then you have folks that are silhouetted because they’re giving up the footage. And I think for one of our participants who is silhouetted, that was part of the understanding of sharing that footage with us; that individual does not want to be known because they are offering up that footage,” Mark explains.
“It was gaining the trust of some folks in his inner circle, making them understand we are doing the most authentic version of this story and the most substantive version,” he adds. “Also at the same time saying, ‘Hey guys, what do we have available? What visual material do you have access to that you’re comfortable sharing?’ So I actually think in some ways a lot of it’s understated, somewhat intentionally, in the film that what often will be assumed to be B-roll or would assume to be sort of filler footage is actually very hard to come by exclusive footage of his life, his world, his environment. And I hope and think it breathes life into it.”
Combs, 55, is the subject of more than 25 lawsuits related to accusations of sexual misconduct. He is currently awaiting a May trial behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. “I think the stories are shocking, but I think they’re kind of the only reason to do it. If we don’t have that kind of emotional currency in the film and we don’t have these kinds of brave participants coming forward, why are we doing it?” Mark asks.
“I think this is a story that’s touched most of us in a lot of different types of ways,” he continues. “The fact that we’ve got these brave people to come forward and to say the things that are really hard for them to say, I hope audiences can look at that, look at their faces, hear their voices and realize that in some ways this is a shared trauma.”
Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy streams on Peacock starting Jan. 14.
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