According to his former publicist Rob Shuter, Sean "Diddy" Combs was a brilliant businessman, a limited musician, but someone who knew more than anyone how to put on a show.
Warning: This story contains details of sexual abuse and domestic violence.
"He knew the power of show business, of distraction, of smoke and mirrors, of creating a circus," says Shuter, who worked for Combs between 2002-04. "And in the centre of that circus, Diddy stood as the ringmaster."
But the hip-hop mogul could probably never have anticipated the circus that surrounds him now at his trial for sex trafficking and racketeering.
No longer the ringmaster, Combs has become a caged attraction.
Every morning, the queue outside the Manhattan court stretches down the block with journalists, YouTubers, curious onlookers and people paid to line up all night for others.
On our way into court on day two of the trial, I speak to a woman from the Bronx who travelled an hour at 2am to get here.
"This is our generation's OJ Simpson trial," she says. "I couldn't miss it."
Combs, 55, is accused of running a criminal empire that coerced and forced women into abusive sex parties, known as "freak-offs". He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
His legacy and life are now in the hands of 12 average New Yorkers — not the celebrities he's spent decades surrounded by.
In seven weeks, the jurors will decide if he returns to the New York playground that glistens through the courtroom window or never sees it again.
Snickers and scuffles in overflow courtrooms
Because of the interest from spectators, the court opened three overflow rooms — empty courtrooms with the hearing live-streamed on screens at the front.
Some attendees complain the screens are too small. "Does he still have the goatee?" one asks. "I can't even tell."
People strain to see the sexually explicit text message exchanges between Combs and his former partner, Casandra Ventura, until someone at the back yells: "What does it say? Read it out!"
Unlike the subdued and heavily controlled environment of a regular courtroom, the overflow rooms are packed with people commenting on the credibility of witnesses, laughing at sordid details of the case, snickering at words like "semen", "ejaculation" and "erection".
On day four, there's a scuffle in one of the overflow rooms over a seat and the court security guard kicks out a woman as she hurls abuse at him.
In the short breaks between testimony, TikTokers and YouTubers — separated from their phones while inside court — rush outside to tell their followers what they saw.
I hear a young man in a puffer vest offer the "funniest moments" of the trial — moments Ventura described as "humiliating" and "degrading" during her days on the stand as the prosecution's star witness.
I learn one of the other content creators has written a book called Why Women Deserve Less.
A musician known as Chaka Chocolate in a "Free Diddy" T-shirt yells: "We are all sinners!" A woman yells back: "Diddy's guilty."
The man tells me he's known the rapper for decades and he thinks he's been framed.
"I came here to support Diddy," he says. "They don't have no proof."
Nearby, two female TikTokers tell me they're doing a public service for the people who can't be here.
"They're not experiencing what's happening firsthand," one of them, Terenya Phillips, says.
"They're seeing the edited versions that are on TV and news.
"We're here to give them the unedited version. The up close and personal information of what's going on."
The other, Kealoha Conner, tells me she's doing her best to remain neutral and unbiased.
"It doesn't look good for Diddy's side," she says after hearing Ventura give evidence for the prosecution.
"But they [the defence] also didn't have their chance to say anything or fight back. They're just starting that today so I'm sure at the end of next week, it's going to be a lot more equal."
'Here to do the right thing'
For days, Ventura sits in a witness box metres from Combs and his family to discuss graphic detail of what she says are some of the worst experiences of her life. She says they left her suicidal and needing rehab and trauma therapy.
Jurors watch the now-infamous CCTV of Combs beating Ventura in an LA hotel in 2016, and she tells them she was trying to leave a "freak-off" at the time. She says she felt pressured to partake in the sessions. "I didn't know what 'no' would turn into," she says.
She recalls a time Combs asked her to get into an inflatable pool filled with baby oil, another time she choked after an escort urinated in her mouth, and the pain of having sex with back-to-back urinary tract infections.
It's hard not to think of Combs's daughters — almost the same age as Ventura was when she met their dad — listening to stories about him allegedly plying her with drugs, urinating on her, beating her, raping her.
They leave during the most graphic parts of the testimony. I don't blame them.
Combs's 85-year-old mother, Janice, sits behind him in the courtroom, having stood by him since his arrest during what she's described as a "public lynching".
"This injustice has been unbearable on my family. The worst part is watching my beloved son be stripped of his dignity," she wrote in a statement in October.
Heavily pregnant with her third child, 38-year-old Ventura sits through days of questioning as lawyers pick through the entrails of a relationship that started 16 years ago, when she was just 22.
They make her read private text messages aloud — some of them graphic, explicit, embarrassing, all of them only ever meant for one recipient.
They debate whether to play the court her sex tapes, the very tapes she says Combs threatened to release to "embarrass me and put my career in jeopardy" and "ruin everything I'd worked for".
Combs's lawyers try to paint the alleged victims as motivated by money, but Ventura already settled a civil lawsuit against Combs for $US20 million ($31 million) in 2023.
His lawyers said at the time the decision to settle was "in no way an admission of wrongdoing".
When asked why she decided to testify seven years after their turbulent relationship ended, Ventura says: "I can't carry this anymore. I can't carry the shame, the guilt… I'm here to do the right thing."
Longing for fame
The defence opened its case by describing Combs as a "complicated man".
"There may be times where you think he is a jerk, he is mean," one of his lawyers, Teny Geragos, tells the jury. "But he is not charged with being mean. He is not charged with being a jerk."
Shuter, Combs's ex-publicist, says he's been questioning his own relationship with his former boss ever since he was charged in September.
He remembers Combs as the only celebrity he ever worked for who let him take his car home at the end of a long night, and as the man who kicked someone out of his vehicle for singing along to a homophobic rap song.
"He said: 'Get out. My publicist is gay and I won't have that around me,'" Shuter recalls.
His fond memories have left Shuter with a dilemma.
"If he did what he's alleged to have done, [then that is] outrageous — absolutely prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law," he says.
"But there's a side of Diddy that was charming, that was funny, that was kind, and maybe that side had to exist for him to be able to get away with this for so long."
The perverse irony of a man who sought fame now at the centre of one of the biggest trials in entertainment history is not lost on Shuter.
"He always told me: 'I want to be the most famous person in the world. I want to be on the cover of all the newspapers. I want everybody waking up and talking about me.'
"Finally, his dream's come true, and even though it's not in the manner he would like, the end result is, who are we all talking about? Diddy."
