Opening up about her wild experience with Sean “Diddy” Combs, journalist Danyel Smith claimed the rap mogul once threatened her over magazine photos. Smith, who was once the editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine, revealed in the upcoming documentary The Fall of Diddy that the rapper once threatened to have her left “dead in a trunk” if she didn’t show him the magazine photos in advance.
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“After the shoot, Mr. Combs wanted to see the covers before they were published,” Smith recounted, per Daily Mail. “It was policy for us not to show the covers to anyone before they were published.”
Smith then explained that the Combs had called her to complain about the photo policy. The conversation quickly turned ugly.
“I told him that I wouldn’t be making an exception, and he said that he would see me dead in a trunk if I did not show it to him,” she said.
Smith replied that he needed to “take that back,” to which he replied he wasn’t “taking s— back.” That’s when she sought legal help.
“My attorney called him to say that if he didn’t immediately fax over an apology, my attorney was going to reach out to law enforcement,” she explained. “It took about 90 minutes to two hours, and I received that faxed apology.”
However, Smith said she had later learned that Diddy had sent people to intimidate her over the photo issue.
“I’ve only recently come to realize – through the members of the staff at that time – that he had actually, in the days before, come up to the Vibe offices with two tough guys looking for me,” she said.
The story, titled The Good, The Bad, and The Puffy, appeared in Vibe’s December 1997/January 1998 issue of Vibe.
The Fall of Diddy is set to premiere on Jan. 27.
The Journalist Recalled Another Encounter With Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Involving His Former Partner Kim Porter
In a 2024 op-ed for The New York Times, Danyel Smith recalled another terrifying experience with Sean “Diddy” Comb, which involved his then-partner, Kim Porter. While
Smith was out with Porter for a few drinks when Combs appeared, and demanded that Porter go home. He then dumped the contents of Porter’s purse on the table.
“He snatched up her bank cards to the beat of: You ain’t got. No business. In here. You need. To be. At home. With. Those. Kids,” Smith recalled. “Combs yelled something like, ‘Get home as best you can.’ From the sidewalk, I saw Porter being hustled into the limo in which we arrived. One of the friends, more tired than terrified, shot me a look: You good? And they were gone.”
Smith then remembered a strange encounter with Cassie Ventura, who had an on-and-off relationship with Sean “Diddy” Combs for nearly a decade. Smith said she and Ventura were at an Epic Records party and Ventura was “uncharacteristically alone.”
When she asked Ventura how she was doing, Smith said the singer looked like she was ready to speak out.
“We each wanted to say something. It seemed that neither of us could find the words,” Smith added.