Making the Band was once one of MTV’s most popular reality shows, but several former contestants have since leveled allegations against producer Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The reality series premiered on ABC in 2000 before moving to MTV and promised to put a band together at the end of each season. The show focused on the formation of a specific band or act, including O-Town and Danity Kane. Starting with Making the Band 2, Diddy served as an executive producer on the series.
Since the show ended in 2009, Danity Kane members including Aubrey O’Day and Dawn Richards have spoken out about the alleged treatment they faced while working for Diddy. The music mogul was arrested in September 2024 and charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In February 2025, Sara Rivers, who appeared on Making the Band 2 as a member of Da Band, filed a lawsuit against Diddy accusing him of sexual harassment. Diddy’s attorneys called the claims “false” in a statement, adding, “Mr. Combs remains confident he will prevail in court.”
Since Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested in September 2024, multiple documentaries — two in total as of January 2025 — have detailed the allegations against the rapper. The first, Peacock’s Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy, started streaming on January 14. The 90-minute film included interviews with the mogul’s childhood friends and former employees […]
Keep scrolling for a breakdown of all the allegations against Diddy from former Making the Band stars:
Aubrey O’Day
In September 2024, O’Day (a member of Danity Kane from 2006-2007) claimed that Diddy attempted to dictate her appearance while she was in the band. “With Diddy, I saw multiple sides of him but I don’t know who I was ever talking to that was sober. There was always an element of something going on,” she told Renee Graziano during an interview on the “Crysis Queen” podcast.
“He’s on camera telling me how much he hates it, but he’s off camera telling me all the ways I needed to be groomed properly, down to my toenails,” she continued. “I was sent out of a studio session one time because my toes weren’t polished properly.”
In a different podcast interview that same month, O’Day reflected on being fired from Danity Kane in 2008. “I was so young and so many things were put on me,” she said during an appearance on Kaitlyn Bristowe’s “Off the Vine” podcast. “I was fired on national television for being overly raunchy and promiscuous. That’s actually like wrongful termination. That’s a lawsuit against a lot of people.”
Sara Rivers
In a lawsuit filed in February 2025 and reviewed by Us Weekly, Rivers, who was on the show from 2002 to 2004, claimed that Diddy and Making the Band’s staff subjected her and others to “inhumane” treatment, including controlling when and how she slept and making fun of her for suffering from bulimia.
Rivers also claimed Diddy sexually assaulted her while she was walking down a hallway, alleging he was standing so close that “he could kiss her and ask her in a low, sensual voice how she is doing, if she’s ok and if she needed anything at all.”
She further claimed that Diddy then “used his left hand to adjust [the] collar of her jacket and then ran his left hand across her breasts while repeating the phrase if she needs anything to let him know.”
Diddy denied Rivers’ claims in a statement to Us, saying, telling the outlet: “This is yet another example of false claims being filed against Mr. Combs. No matter how many lawsuits are filed, it won’t change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone — man or woman, adult or minor. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason. With the deadline for New York’s Gender-Motivated Violence Act expiring tomorrow, it’s clear that opportunists are rushing to file last-minute, meritless claims. Mr. Combs remains confident he will prevail in court.”
In January 2025, Diddy filed a lawsuit against Rivers’ lawyer Ariel Mitchell, accusing her of defamation in a NewsNation appearance. He accused Mitchell and other defendants of “fueling a media frenzy, fabricating outlandish claims and stirring up baseless speculation” about sex tapes that allegedly involved him and other unnamed celebrities.
Rivers spoke out about her former boss for the first time in the January 2025 Peacock documentary Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy. “When he got angry with one of my band members, he said, ‘You make me so mad I wanna eat your flesh,’” she alleged in the film. “And then he said to another one of my band members, ‘You’re rolling your eyes. I could go get a crackhead and pay them $20 to smack the s— out of you.’ Who says that? That’s crazy.”
In response to the documentary, Diddy’s representatives told Us in a statement: “This documentary recycles and perpetuates the same lies and conspiracy theories that have been slung against Mr. Combs for months. It is disappointing to see NBC and Peacock rolling in the same mud as unethical tabloid reporters. By providing a platform for proven liars and opportunists to make false criminal accusations, the documentary is irresponsible journalism of the worst kind.”
D. Woods
In January 2025, Woods, a member of Danity Kane from 2005 to 2008, alleged to ABC News’ Eva Pilgrim that Combs fostered an environment that was emotionally and verbally abusive.
“He did it in different ways with all of us, you know, picking and prodding and just a way to chip and knock away, but then praise you,” she explained on Good Morning America. “Somebody constantly treating you like a piece of meat.”
Woods also participated in the Investigation Discovery docuseries The Fall of Diddy, which premiered in January 2025. In one episode, she claimed that O’Day opened up to her about behavior by Diddy that made her uncomfortable.
“I remember her sharing with me that he had sent her a lot of very inappropriate pictures,” Woods alleged. “I saw a lot of things that he would email her, very sexual in nature … pornographic-like things that he wanted to do to her. She was just kind of like, ‘What do I do?’ I remember telling her, ‘Girl, put that in a folder, send it to your mama, save that.’”
Weeks before Sean “Diddy” Combs’ arrest, Aubrey O’Day reflected on the recent “big shift” her life had taken. “At the end of last year when Cassie dropped her lawsuit, all of our lives changed forever,” O’Day, 40, said on a recent episode of the “Off the Vine” podcast. “I mean, they changed forever back then […]
Dawn Richard
Richard, also a member of Danity Kane, filed her own lawsuit against Diddy in September 2024. In court documents obtained by Us Weekly, Richard claimed she saw Diddy physically abusing his ex-girlfriend Cassie. She further alleged that he forced Richard to rehearse for up to 48 hours at a time, which resulted in dehydration and fatigue.
Richard also claimed Diddy once burst into her dressing room and touched her inappropriately, and, in a separate incident, locked her in a car for two hours.
In response to allegedly witnessing Diddy choke Cassie, Richard and her Diddy – Dirty Money bandmate Kaleena Harper tried to convince her to leave the relationship. After Diddy found out, he allegedly told them, “Y’all bitches don’t get in my relationship. Don’t tell my bitch [Cassie] what she need to be doing. Just make money and shut the f— up. I end artists, I shelve careers. You could be missing. You bitches want to die today.”
Diddy denied Richard’s allegations in a statement via his attorney Erica Wolff, who told Us, “Mr. Combs is shocked and disappointed by this lawsuit. In an attempt to rewrite history, Dawn Richard has now manufactured a series of false claims all in the hopes of trying to get a payday — conveniently timed to coincide with her album release and press tour.”
John Doe
In October 2024, attorney Tony Buzbee filed a lawsuit against Diddy alleging the rapper assaulted a 17-year-old who auditioned for Making the Band in 2008. The victim said he went through three auditions for the show and claimed that each Diddy told him to perform sex acts on himself and on his bodyguard, referred to as “T.” The acts were allegedly meant to test how badly the boy wanted to become a singer. The victim was also eventually eliminated from the competition.
In response to the lawsuit, a rep for Diddy told Us, “The lawyer behind this lawsuit is interested in media attention rather than the truth, as is obvious from his constant press appearances and 1-800 number. As we’ve said before, Mr. Combs cannot respond to every new publicity stunt, even in response to claims that are facially ridiculous or demonstrably false.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
