US comedian and TV producer Rosie O’Donnell has told how her family was knocked back from a party held by neighbour Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs because they wore sweatpants – and says she can’t understand why the rapper doesn’t think of himself as a ‘rapist’.
In a nearly 10-minute-long TikTok video, the TV personality shared her thoughts on Diddy after he was indicted on sex trafficking, racketeering, and kidnapping charges, comparing the rapper to convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein.
O’Donnell said Diddy was her former neighbour and recalled their first and only alleged encounter after which he apologised by hiring out a cinema for her.
O’Donnell, 62, said: “Although I only met him once he did invite me to his New Year’s Eve party, which I believe everybody was wearing white, but we didn’t know.
“We had on, like, sweatpants, me and my family and my kids,” she said, before revealing that she and her family weren’t allowed into the party.
“They didn’t let us in,” she added. “The doormen were like, looking at us. I’m like, ‘No, no. He invited me yesterday. I live right there. My daughter saw him in the street and we talked’ … No, we couldn’t come in.”
The comedian said that Diddy called her the next day to say that he was sorry about the misunderstanding.
“He called, and he felt so bad that he rented out the Regal Cinema for me and my family to see any movie we want, the entire day, in any theatre, whenever we wanted, which was so unbelievably over the top and extraordinary,” O’Donnell said. “I never spoke to him before or after that.”
O’Donnell says she was shocked when she heard the news of his arrest and the allegations against him.
“I’m just kind of in shock,” she continued in the TikTok video. “I know that there’s perhaps a naïveté to me in some way.
“But I think, how could a person live knowing that they had done that and then be a public person and continue to do it? Didn’t he feel, like, the footsteps of the law behind him at all times?
“Or do you just get to be so big – like Harvey Weinstein did – that he thought, ‘Well I control Hollywood. I control the Oscars. I can sleep with any actress I want, whether they want to or not’.”
O’Donnell noted that she didn’t “understand” how Diddy didn’t “consider himself a “rapist“.
“How can you not consider yourself a rapist if you’re doing or participating in or filming or watching the rape?” she asked. “I don’t understand it. I really don’t.
“It’s very disturbing. And then you start to think, how many people really knew that?”
O’Donnell, who got her big break in Star Search in 1984, went on to host The Rosie O’Donnell show on NBC from 1996 to 2002.
She admitted that before disgraced movie mogul Weinstein’s accusers came forward that if someone were to ask her if the he was a “rapist,” she would have said no.
“If you would have said to me, ‘Million dollars if you’re right, is he a rapist?’ I would have said, ‘No. He runs Miramax.
“You think he could also be a rapist? What is he, Clark Kent? He gets in a cape and he is someone different?’” O’Donnell said. “Give me a break, too many people know him. Too many people would be involved. Too many people would have to participate in that in order for it to be true.”
“Well, people did. People do,” she said.
Weinstein has been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment.
He was arrested in 2018, and pleaded not guilty.
In March 2020, Weinstein was sentenced in New York City to 23 years in prison for third-degree rape and a first-degree criminal sexual act.
His rape conviction was overturned in April 2024.
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The court ordered a new trial, and the Manhattan District Attorney‘s Office plans to retry the case.
As for Diddy, O’Donnell said the allegations and charges are “very upsetting”.
“Sex trafficking? That’s serious, man,” she said. “And then they found 1,000 bottles of baby oil.
“I’m gonna be thinking about that the rest of my life.”
Police found narcotics during the raids in Diddy’s Beverly Hills and Miami homes, and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant.
“It’s very unnerving and very disturbing,” she added.
Diddy was arrested on September 16 in New York City and is now a criminal defendant in a federal sex trafficking, racketeering, and kidnapping case.
He’s been charged with three counts – racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He entered a not guilty plea.
The 54-year-old was denied bail for a second time on Wednesday, September 18 after a federal judge in Manhattan remanded him to await trial at a jail in Brooklyn.
Combs’ lawyers described conditions at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as “horrific” and “not fit for pre-trial detention.”
If convicted, Diddy faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison, and a maximum of life behind bars.
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