Elizabeth Wagmeister on the Diddy Trial, and Hard News on the Entertainment Beat

In November 2023, Elizabeth Wagmeister was at an airport in Singapore, en route to her honeymoon in Bali, when she got a call from a source who said they had a big story for her. A couple of hours later, the news broke that Sean “Diddy” Combs was being accused by an ex-girlfriend of rape, physical abuse, and sex trafficking. Wagmeister had nowhere to report the news; she had recently left a role at Variety, where she covered Harvey Weinstein and helped break the story of the sexual harassment allegations against Matt Lauer, and hadn’t yet started her next job, as an entertainment correspondent with CNN. “It ruined the first three days of my honeymoon,” she said. “I just knew that this story was going to be different than anything else.”

In the end, it didn’t matter that Wagmeister had to sit that one out, because the saga of Combs’s journey through the legal system was only getting started. Nearly two years on, Combs, one of the most famous and powerful music producers alive, has faced more than seventy lawsuits from ex-girlfriends, former romantic partners, and employees, among others, and has been convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. (He was acquitted on the most serious charges, including racketeering and sex trafficking; he pleaded not guilty to all the charges.) Wagmeister broke the news of the existence of a surveillance video showing Combs beating his ex-girlfriend, and was the first to report that a federal grand jury would hear from Combs’s accusers. She covered his trial in court and plans to return to New York later this week, when Combs is scheduled to be sentenced. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.