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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Parties, in His Own Words

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    For decades, Combs and other celebrities have commented on his party lifestyle. Here’s some of what they have publicly said.In 2005, when Sean Combs — also known as Diddy or Puff Daddy — hosted the MTV Video Music Awards, the network advertised the broadcast with a playful star-studded spoof called “Diddy Parties,” in which the events he hosted were referred to as “hedonistic romps.”It’s one of many examples that illustrate how the powerful music mogul’s reputation for hard-partying was an accepted part of the pop culture discourse. But since Combs’s arrest on charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking this month, the lifestyle at the center of the criminal case has taken on a different light.Those who attended his events — whether his glitzy, A-list “white parties” or the “freak-offs” described in the indictment against him — have largely refrained from discussing their experiences in recent weeks. That hasn’t always been the case. In years past, celebrities have openly talked about his public-facing bashes and his general party habits.Here is some of what Combs and other stars have said about his party orbit.In His WordsIn a 1999 interview with Entertainment Tonight, in response to an interviewer who said, “Your parties are the hottest ticket around,” Combs said, “They won’t even give me a permit for the parties no more.”“They don’t want me to throw the parties no more, but we ain’t going to stop, we going to keep on having fun, bringing people together from all walks of life,” he continued. “You’re going to hear about my parties, they’re going to be shutting them down, they going to probably be arresting me, doing all types of crazy things just because we want to have a good time. Whenever you bring up a different element into people’s environment, things that broaden people’s horizons, people get intimidated.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis Explain Their Letters in Danny Masterson Rape Case

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      The letters to a judge ahead of Masterson’s sentencing described their friendship with him and spoke glowingly of his character.Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher on Saturday spoke about letters they had written seeking leniency in the prison sentence of Danny Masterson, the actor best known for his role in the sitcom “That ’70s Show” who was found guilty of raping two women more than 20 years ago.Masterson was sentenced to the maximum, 30 years to life, on Thursday.The letters to the judge in the case, Charlaine F. Olmedo of Los Angeles Superior Court, which were published on Friday on Substacks of journalists who had covered the trial, described the couple’s friendship with Masterson.“I do not believe he is an ongoing harm to society,” Kutcher, who is married to Kunis, wrote of Masterson in a letter dated July 27, adding that “having his daughter raised without a present father” would be “a tertiary injustice in and of itself.”In her letter, Kunis vouched for Masterson’s “exceptional character and the tremendous positive influence he has had on me and the people around him.”Masterson, 47, co-starred on “That ’70s Show” with Kutcher and Kunis from 1998 to 2006. Debra Jo Rupp and Kurtwood Smith, two other co-stars from the show, also wrote letters to the judge in support of Masterson, praising their interactions with him while working together.Kunis and Kutcher defended their letters in support of Masterson in a recorded statement posted to Instagram on Saturday, saying they “were not written to question the legitimacy of the judicial system or the validity of the jury’s ruling.”“They were intended for the judge to read,” Kutcher said. “And not to undermine the testimony of the victims or re-traumatize them in any way. We would never want to do that and we’re sorry if that has taken place.”Comments were closed on the Instagram post addressing the letters, but other recent posts on the account were flooded with outrage and criticism, with many noting Kutcher’s longtime philanthropic efforts to combat sex trafficking.The letters from Kutcher and Kunis sought to portray Masterson as someone who was critical of drug use. Kutcher said he attributed “not falling into the typical Hollywood life of drugs directly to Danny.” Kunis said that “Danny played a pivotal role in guiding me away from such destructive paths.”Those statements appeared to be responding to specific allegations in the case.Prosecutors had accused Masterson of drugging and then raping three women at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles between 2001 and 2003. (The jury deadlocked on the charge that Masterson had raped a third woman.)In the video statement, Kutcher said that he and Kunis were “aware of the pain that has been caused” by the letters. Kunis added, “Our heart goes out to every single person who’s ever been a victim of sexual assault, sexual abuse or rape.”The couple said in the video on Instagram that Masterson’s family had asked them to write the letters “to represent the person that we knew for 25 years, so that the judge could take that into full consideration relative to the sentencing.”Tony Ortega, one of the journalists who published the letters on his Substack, “The Underground Bunker,” wrote that “these letter writers were probably aware that Judge Olmedo could really only choose between 15 to life and 30 to life.”“They knew they were not trying to convince her to let Danny walk out of prison,” he added. Another Substack, “Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff,” also published the letters.The case against Masterson drew widespread attention, in part because of accusations that the Church of Scientology, to which Masterson belonged, had pressured his accusers to keep quiet. The church denied that it pressured the victims.Kutcher and Kunis in their letters described deep connections to Masterson, with Kutcher saying that Masterson had been his friend and role model for 25 years.“We’ve traveled around the world together, raised our daughters together and shared countless family moments,” Kutcher said, adding “he is among few people that I would trust to be alone with my son and daughter.”Kunis added that Masterson’s “unwavering commitment to being an exceptional older brother figure to me has had a transformative impact on my life.”Masterson will be eligible for parole in 20 years, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Your Place or Mine’ Review: Try Neither

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      This humdrum Netflix romantic comedy features Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher as longtime friends with possibly hidden feelings for each other.Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher and the screenwriter (and first-time director) Aline Brosh McKenna each have decades of experience making hit romantic comedies. So it’s all the more confounding that their latest, “Your Place or Mine,” is as phony and flat as a store-bought valentine forced on every kid in class. Witherspoon and Kutcher play Debbie and Peter, longtime chums who shared a sole night of passion 20 years ago before settling into a bicoastal best friendship. Why haven’t these codependent singletons gotten back together? “She’s … her and I’m … me?” he sputters. His answer sums up the hard thinking that went into this script.An opening flashback to Debbie and Peter’s previous hookup is the film’s comedic peak. Brosh McKenna points out the onscreen 2003 signifiers: trucker hats, flat-ironed hair and enough layered shirts to turn Witherspoon into a matryoshka doll. There’s also, of course, Witherspoon and Kutcher themselves, who spent that year shooting separate rom-coms, hers with Luke Wilson and his with Tara Reid and Brittany Murphy. Past the intro, they’re kept apart here, too. Instead, their characters swap homes, forcing the two stars to squander their breezy familiarity with each other on separate sides of phone conversations and split-screen bubble baths.This Netflix production is banking on nostalgic good will for curiosity clicks. People puttering in and out of the room folding laundry can rest easy that there are few crucial plot points to miss — and the ones that exist tend to get repeated at least twice.Peter, for example, is a Manhattan marketing consultant with commitment problems. Early on, he breaks up with his latest girlfriend at the six-month mark; in his next scene, he has a near-identical conversation with his latest corporate clients. (The clients take it harder.) Debbie, a risk-averse single mother in Los Angeles, is pilloried with advice from one friend (Tig Notaro) — “Get your degree, find a man, then come home and redo your kitchen” — and escapes only to immediately collide with a second pesky pal (Rachel Bloom), who tacks on that the self-sacrificial parent should also pursue her dream job as a book editor.The pacing of these scenes feels as though we’re trapped in a spaceship airlock and can only faintly remember what natural life felt like back home on Earth. It only takes a squint to see that Debbie’s adorable foibles — rules scribbled on Post-it notes stuck all over the house, an insistence that her overprotected 13-year-old son (Wesley Kimmel) is allergic to everything from grass to fun — would, in reality, demand an intervention and, perhaps, a diagnosis of Munchausen by proxy. But no one in this movie is playing anything near a human being, although Kutcher occasionally resembles one when he lowers his head, crinkles his eyes and chuckles.The movie’s sincerity can be measured by how flippantly it disposes of its love rivals. Steve Zahn suffers the most indignities as a tech millionaire who retired to garden Debbie’s yard pro bono, while Jesse Williams’s charming literary publisher never gets a chance to put up a fair fight. As for Minka (Zoë Chao), Peter’s ex, a marvelously droll narcissist somehow willing to drop her whole big-city life to help a stranger get her groove back, she may not win the guy, but she steals all of her scenes.Your Place or MineRated PG-13 for strong language and suggestive material. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More