Every time a new documentary drops about a powerful, famous man who committed atrocities — like Sean Combs: The Reckoning — I rush to watch it. It’s a kind of morbid curiosity to it — I want to know how someone got away with it for so long. I want the details. I want the downfall.

These documentaries turn abuse into spectacle. When the abuser is powerful enough, famous enough, monstrous enough, it allows me to believe the behavior is rare, like an anomaly tied to excess, fame or ego. I watch to feel shocked, outraged, even morally superior, without having to examine how familiar the dynamics actually are.

It feels distant, almost unreal, like these things only happen in “Hollywood,” in circles so far removed that they don’t quite register as real. That’s the trick: for these exposes to work as entertainment, the audience has to convince themselves that this kind of abuse lives somewhere else. Somewhere that has nothing to do with us. However, I couldn’t find that distance watching Netflix’s new docuseries Sean Combs: The Reckoning.

From the very first episode, I felt a deep connection to Joi Dickerson‑Neal, one of the survivors. Watching her recount how she was drugged, abused, and then dismissed when she spoke up, immediately took me right back to my own experiences working on film production sets. Different scale, different industry, same response.

Early in my career, I already started learning about the dark side of the entertainment industry.   I was working as a production manager on a film set and needed the production credit card so a PA could do a run. I approached the producer and asked for it. He straight up said, “Oh my God, women only ever ask me for money. How about you fuck me first?”

My brain tried to process whether he was joking or not. Because if he was serious, his level of boldness was terrifying. It didn’t feel like a joke. It felt like a test.

Throughout the day, his harassment continued — offers of massages, buying me food once we wrapped, little favors framed as care. Enough to keep me uncomfortable. When I didn’t respond to his first round of misbehavior, he escalated to physical contact — hugging me tight, letting his hand linger on my lower back, poking my chest.

I was 23. He was in his 60s.

Eventually, I reported it to the production company. I told them exactly what happened. “Did he rape you?” they casually asked, “No, but- then, what do you want us to do about it?”

I was never hired by them again.

That experience taught me a lesson I wish I hadn’t had to learn: standing up for yourself often comes with a price — lost connections, lost gigs, lost futures. I’ve gone through countless incidents after that one, with different people, some traumatizing, others not as “bad.” Either way, I never spoke up again.

The same dynamic shows up repeatedly in Sean Combs. Multiple survivors and team members describe how people around Combs knew what was happening the whole time, but chose to stay silent. Speaking up meant losing access to a job, to money, to influence, to fame. In industries where everything runs on who you know, staying quiet often feels like the only way to stay employed.

So how much are you willing to endure to pursue your dreams? Unless you work in these industries, asking yourself this may sound incomprehensible. But in entertainment, too often harassment is something you put up with because if you don’t, someone else will, and that someone else will take the opportunity you’ve spent years chasing.

We (those of us working in the entertainment industry) stay because we love the work, because our passion for the art form makes it nearly impossible to walk away from something we’ve sacrificed everything for, especially when you factor in the added realities of being a woman, and a minority, in industries still oversaturated with white men.

So when an individual like Sean Combs positions himself as a savior — as someone lifting up Black artists, opening doors, and creating opportunities for the Black community — it’s not surprising that the people around him stayed quiet.

Speaking up in those situations doesn’t just feel risky; it feels disloyal. The moment someone becomes a figure of progress, a proof that doors are finally opening for people who have historically been shut out, calling them out feels like betraying the very community you’re part of. You’re not just challenging a person; you’re challenging a narrative. And in industries as small and interconnected as these ones, people remember who disrupts that story. Silence becomes safer than being labeled difficult, ungrateful, or someone who “tried to get them in trouble.”

But folks far less famous than Diddy abuse their power too. Abuse shows up in many forms: White men shaping women’s careers, like Harvey Weinstein. Men influencing young performers’ futures, like Dan Schneider. Or people higher up the ladder shaping my career as a Spanish woman who came to this country to work with people I once only dreamed of. Abusers see the vulnerabilities and they know exactly how to use them.

This is why, when you look at the data, the numbers for women — especially women of color — are still alarmingly high. Research in Hollywood found that nearly half of entertainment workers reported abuse, misconduct, or harassment in the past year, and more than half of people of color in the industry said they personally experienced abuse or misconduct over the last five years. At the same time, women of color remain dramatically underrepresented in creative and leadership positions, making up only a small fraction of directors, producers, and other key roles.

Movements like #MeToo mattered. Documentaries like Sean Combs: The Reckoning matter. But they don’t signal an ending, they expose a pattern. What these stories should really force us to ask isn’t How could this happen? But why does it keep happening?

The answer is uncomfortable: because these industries are built to reward silence, protect access, and punish anyone who threatens the illusion of progress. Until we stop treating abuse as a shocking exception and start recognizing it as a predictable outcome of how power operates, nothing fundamentally will change.

The silence will continue. And so will the cost of breaking it.