Main Character: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs
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Happy Friday, Slatesters. It's Mary, and it's time for another episode of the show, a super secret special episode just for Slate Plus members. That is you. So come on in. The idea here is that I pull one of my colleagues into a studio, basically say, tell me all the things you know this week. And they tell me about someone or something that is dominating the news and hasn't gone down the What Next feed yet. And I'm going to tell you what it is.

This week, my victim, for lack of a better word, is Nadira Goff. Nadira, what's up? Hi, thanks for having me. You cover all things culture for Slate. And fortunately, unfortunately, that means you've been sent to cover the Sean Diddy Combs trial in Manhattan. How are you doing? Oh, you know, great. It's nothing. Nothing about this is hard at all.

Yeah. It's still going on. Are we in week three now? Week four? Where are we? I believe that we're in week four, if time serves me correctly. It's also kind of hard to count because there was a full week of jury selection before the actual trial started. And so my count always gets a little bit off. But I believe we're in week four.

Okay, we usually give ourselves like 15 minutes to go through it here. So we'll do that. And I guess my first question is, as someone who's been in the courthouse a bunch, Nadira, can you just tell me what the vibe is in there? Everyone's sitting through this grueling testimony and images, videos. What is it like in there? Gosh, you know, this is my first time covering any sort of trial. And so I didn't really know what to expect going in. And

The one thing or there are many things that turned out to be different than I thought they would be. But one of the biggest is the vast difference between watching the court proceedings from the actual courtroom, if you're lucky enough to make it in, and watching the court proceedings from the overflow rooms with all of the other unfortunate souls who were not lucky enough to make it into the courtroom. What's the difference?

Well, when you're in the actual courtroom, of course, the judge is there, the jury is there. You have to be silent. Occasionally you can chuckle if a lawyer or a witness cracks a joke or something like that. But for the most part, everyone's personal feelings are silent.

are kept mum. Whereas in the overflow rooms, there's no one watching you except a court-martial and the court-martial will shush the crowd from time to time, but that's not going to stop anyone from, you know, tsk-tsking at Cassie's testimony or, you know, um...

tearing up at a different testimony or, you know, really just expressing their disbelief or their belief. So it's like a spectator sport in there. Absolutely. You get a lot more input from just the general public, whether they are

I mean, it ranges. You know, those overflow rooms contain regular civilians. They contain journalists who didn't make it into the courtroom. They contain lawyers who are representing people with civil suits against Diddy. They contain sometimes witnesses, friends and family. Occasionally Diddy's publicist will be in there sort of ear hustling. It's a very, you have to also sort of watch what you say. It's a very interesting dynamic. Well, it also seems like

the vibe's weird no matter where you are. Like, Jean Deal, this former bodyguard for Diddy, may or may not have knocked out another content creator in the courthouse. Like, a woman got kicked out of the courtroom last week after heckling Diddy from the gallery. Like, a YouTuber got banned. It just sounds like there are a lot of people out of pocket. Yeah, and I think that that has been increasing over time. I mean, for the first week...

There certainly was a lot of hullabaloo, if you will, outside of the courthouse, but inside it seemed to be fairly chill.

chill. Everyone was very tuned in for Cassie's testimony. But since then, as the proceedings have continued to go on, whether I've been there or not, I have a lot of friends who will text me when something insane happens in the courtroom or at the courthouse. And it just seems like I'm getting those texts more and more and more frequently. And the energy is so hard to describe outside while you're waiting in line to get into the

courthouse, it does feel charged in a different way than it obviously feels charged when you're, you know, listening to some really harrowing testimony. But it feels charged in a very specific way. People are agitated. There's a lot of fights that break out. There's a lot of people, I don't know, who I guess would be

just milling about on other streets, but have decided that this is the place to be, that this is the hot ticket to be. And so there's a lot of combating energies at the courthouse at all times. And this does not sound like a great environment in which justice can be served. You know, I mean, like just before we got on the line, the judge in this case actually threatened Diddy himself with being thrown out of the courtroom because he was making faces of the jury.

Yeah. And that's OK. The other thing that I think is fascinating is the sort of rumor mill of all of this. Right. Because sometimes things happen in overflow that you don't see in the courtroom and most times vice versa. And for the longest time, I was trying to make it into the courtroom and I didn't. I mean, I eventually did. But for days on end, I didn't. And I just kept hearing these

these reports of Diddy being very engaged and always staring people down and whether they're jury members or press and really just sort of being physically engaging with his face. And it seems like that has, you know, sort of come to bite him a little bit when the judge was like, hey, you've gotten to a point where you're vigorously nodding at the jury during, you know, direct testimony.

You have to stop doing that. And so it's, yeah, there's just a lot of things going on all at once. That's it for now. And if you want to hear the rest of this episode, the way to do it is to subscribe to Slate Plus. Unlock Slate Plus now by going to slate.com forward slash what next plus.