Investigating the system that protected Sean “Diddy” Combs

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. For 30 years, Sean Combs was one of America's most visible men. He helped shaped Mary J. Blige's early sound, signed the Notorious B.I.G., and built Bad Boy Records into a hip-hop powerhouse. Then he turned himself into a brand. Rapper, clothing mogul, actor, celebrity host. He even got the world to call him by a new name every few years. My guest today, Rolling Stone investigative reporter Cheyenne Roundtree, examines whether those reinventions also gave Combs a way to outrun the scandals that came before. A note to listeners, this conversation includes descriptions of sexual violence, drug use, and other adult subject matter. Combs is now serving a four-year federal prison sentence after being convicted on two counts of transporting people for prostitution. Jurors acquitted him. of the more serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. The case followed a 2023 lawsuit by his former girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, who accused him of years of physical and sexual abuse. One assault she described was later captured in hotel surveillance footage aired by CNN. In 2024, Roundtree and her colleagues published a six-month investigation into Combs' history of violence. Her new book expands that reporting, drawing on more than a hundred sources, along with police and FBI records, court documents, messages, and emails. Her book is called Bad Boy for Life, The Rise and Fall of Sean Combs. Cheyenne Roundtree, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks for having me. Cheyenne, so much of what you found, it's so interesting, it was in plain sight, and yet many people still would not talk to you. For the people who were afraid, what were they afraid of? What did they tell you? There was a portion of people that did feel fear of retribution, that he wouldn't be able to influence their careers or life. After the criminal trial, a lot of people also felt that all of this effort had been put into this investigation, into this criminal trial, and at that point, they just didn't see the point of speaking further on it. So it was a mixed bag of different reasons, for not wanting to talk about what they knew or what they saw. Two ideas about Sean Combs continually showed up in pop culture pretty early on. Number one, that he was a tyrant, and also that questionable things happened at his parties. And I want to play two examples. The first is from Scary Movie, which came out in 2000, so this is 26 years ago. And in this clip, Regina Hall plays Sean Combs, a high school student named Brenda, and she's talking with her friend Cindy, played by Anna Faris. Let's listen. My friend Sean had a pool party this summer. Sean. You know, Puff Daddy. Anyway, everybody was drinking Cristal champagne, and then it started to get wild, and people was getting freaky in the pool and stuff. I look over, and there was your girl getting bucked wild in the jacuzzi. Okay, that was from Scary Movie from 2000. And now I want to play a second example. This is from Maddie. And it's a spoof of Hannah Montana. Let's listen. Anyway, we get to P. Diddy's mansion, and Lance Armstrong and Matthew McConaughey are smoking a joint with Amy Whitehouse. Oh, my gosh! Anyway, Diddy says. Hey, Hannah, why don't you make out with Amy? Gross! I know! But P. Diddy told me to, and he's P. Diddy! The next thing I know, Matthew McConaughey brought in a stripper, I get a lap dance from her, P. Diddy caught it all on his camera phone, and now he's on the internet! That last clip was from Mad TV back in 2008. And even by 2000, when that earlier Scary Movie joke appeared, there were already warning signs. A record studio manager had banned Combs after complaints about his behavior toward women. And P. Diddy said, People at Howard said they had saw him beat up a girlfriend with a belt outside of her dorm. There are also other instances of reports out there around stolen handguns left behind by his entourage during tours. How much of Combs' behavior was kind of like an open secret within the industry? It seemed to be this just kind of background music to whatever he was doing. I think the spectacle of P. Diddy, Puff Daddy was bigger than these incidents that were popping up along the timeline with him. And he was able to overshadow any of these accusations, any of these lawsuits that came up, or police reports of minor infractions. And it just kind of kept getting bigger and bigger. And it was one of the things that really surprised me throughout my reporting was the amount of things that were well-documented either in the press, newspapers, or little police reports, that just disappeared, went away, and there wasn't really much mainstream attention put on it. You actually call Combs one of the original influencers. This is long before social media, because he didn't just know how to promote a record or throw a party. He seemed to understand how to control a story, how to turn attention into power. Even the story of how he got the name Puffy continually changed throughout the course of his career, especially early on. Is that one of the earlier signs of his skill at being, I guess, kind of like a myth maker? I think so. I think it was the first instance that he created a persona around himself. And his first explanation was really early on. And it was explained as, oh, he just had a temper and he ballooned up in anger. And then at some point, he didn't even want to talk about the origin of it. And it's a question mark of, it's kind of an, it's an innocent nickname, really, when you think about it as a kid. Why would you tell Oprah that you can't talk about it? So it feeds into this mysteriousness that he cultivated at an early age or in his early 20s, and then how he was able to shed that as time went on. And he just really had a great handle on who he wanted to be seen as. And the biggest shift we saw was when he went from Puff Daddy, Puffy to Diddy, which came after the criminal trial in 2001, when he was accused of, of carrying a firearm into a crowded nightclub where people were injured. And he actually says at one point, you know, no more Puff Daddy, I'm going by Diddy. And that was a turning point for him, kind of being this mogul business type figure versus this hip-hop music executive. What's interesting about that is there are just so many stories that are happening underneath there, or Whisper Network, even some of the executives who worked with Combs and complained about him still wanted to get into his parties. And those parties became places where music, nightlife, and celebrity all came together. What did Combs understand about access, creating this type of environment as a form of power? He was the gatekeeper to culture in New York City at that time, and he was able to, kind of leverage these connections of going to a cool party, controlling this guest list, that it's not just music people that wanted to be invited to, it was power brokers, it was models, it was actors. And being able to control that environment and curry favor with people just to have access to these spaces, he was able to leverage into business deals later on, and to be this guy that everyone wanted to be in his good graces so they could, you know, can have fun. And yes, people were drinking, and things might've gotten a little bit crazy, but it was all done at first under this guise of just having a good time and letting your hair down with people in your social circle. And later on, that became more called into question. And, you know, there was civil lawsuits filed that claimed that that's where they were sexually assaulted. But in the beginning, it was just people coming together to have a good time. I mean, by the 2000s, he wasn't just selling records, he had his clothing line and vodka and restaurants and television and movies. And one pattern in your book is that, and it's very much in line of someone that you write about, he greatly admire, and that is our now president, Donald Trump, because it seems like with every scandal, he not only survived it, he often came back bigger. I mean, that's the case like in the early 2000s with, like, him changing his name after that criminal case. But was there a point when success itself started to protect him? I would say the success always protected him. His earliest encounter with kind of a scandal was the City College of New York tragedy, where there was a stampede at a charity event he hosted. It was because he already was proving to be successful at Uptown Records that that institution protected him. There was insurance in it. Obviously, there was a lot of civil lawsuits that came later about finding Blamer, who was responsible for this tragedy because people died. But there was that backing and support that he had from a record label because he was proving his worth at that time. And by the time the case was kind of wrapping up, he was working on Mary J. Blige, who became obviously a superstar. But I would argue that his success has always protected him and it's always carried him through to the next high. That event at City College, he helped promote that. It was oversold. It was a charity event, as you mentioned, a basketball event to raise money for HIV AIDS. Nine people, as you said, died. Did he face any consequences at all? There was an investigation. And he was. He was assigned partial responsibility for not having enough security there. But in the end, he did pay out a significant amount of money to the victim's families. But in terms of his reputation, in terms of his career, nothing really happened. It was kind of business as usual. And then it was a few years after that that he founded Bad Boy. In the book, you go back to. Sean Combs before the fame. His father was killed when he was a toddler. His mother moved him out of Harlem to Mount Vernon. She was determined to give him opportunities. But you actually spoke to people who also said another mission of hers was to make him be tough. And there's one childhood story that seems to capture that toughness from his family. His grandmother sent him to the store for cigarettes. And he tells this story as a tale of just how his family kind of built fortitude within him. What happened? So the story was that he was sent by his grandmother to go buy cigarettes from the corner store at the bodega. And along the way, he encounters this bully who basically snatches the cigarette money from him. And he goes back home. And his mom, Janice, tells him, you are not coming back into this house until. Until you get that money back. Kind of instilling this idea of you're not to be a pushover. And he went back, got beat up by the bully, but he was able to get the cash back. But he told this story of kind of how he learned to toughen up at a young age. But he kind of says, my mom would have let me slept out on the street all night. Like I had to come back. That facing the bully was better than facing Janice. There's also this story. He actually talked about it on Fresh Air with Terry Gross when he did an interview with her some years ago. That when he learned that his father had been involved in the drug trade, he said, I'm definitely like him, but I'm just doing it in a legal way. What did his father's story come to represent to him? He idolized him, but he also viewed him as this cautionary tale of why. He didn't want to get involved in the street life. He saw himself as being a hustler, being charismatic, being a go-getter, but doing things a different way. So that meant through music, through music entrepreneurship, through businesses. But he idolized his dad. There was a point that he started wearing a medallion with his face on it. And there was this kind of remorse he had for not being able to. Have a father-son relationship that he really seemed to crave throughout his life. Let's talk about his relationship with Cassie Ventura, because it's her lawsuit that finally breaks things open. She had signed to Bad Boy as a singer when she was 19 and was in a relationship with Combs by her early 20s. And before we even get to the sexual encounters, I'd like to know, how dependent was she on him, especially in those early years as a signed artist with Bad Boy? I think that's one of the biggest questions. Before she got into a relationship with Combs, she was a successful model. I think her friends said that she was making about a quarter of a million dollars a year, which was back in 2008, 2007. So for a 19-year-old girl, That is plenty of cash at the time. And after that she gets involved with Combs, there seems to be a lot more of a financial dependency, or at least Combs inserting himself into her finances. He got her apartment that was closer to where he lived and closer to the Bad Boy offices. He began paying for more things and treating her to trips. And eventually, it seemed that she became totally dependent on his financial giving, and also her career was tied to what Bad Boy was allowing her to release. How would you describe this decade-long relationship between Cassie and Combs? The relationship was not a traditional one. The most surprising thing I found about Cassie and Combs' relationship was, like you said, it wasn't traditional. They were together for almost 11 years. However, they never lived together. Cassie testified at trial that she never spent holidays with him. Christmas was for his family time, and Cassie was not viewed as family when it came to that. And I think those are benchmarks for a lot of relationships, is one, living together, or two, being invited around family events. And that was a big friction between the pair of them. So from afar, people thought of them as a family. And behind the scenes, Cassie alleged that she was trapped in a cycle of domestic violence and sexual abuse, and that she had tried to leave this relationship multiple times, but she kept physically sometimes being dragged back into it. We saw a little bit of that with the video that made its way from the hotel where the two of them were staying at. In that video, it's very disturbing to watch. She has some bags with her. She arrives at an elevator. And is pressing to get out as fast as she can to get into the elevator. And then we see Combs run out with a towel around him. And he hits her. And then he drags her. How often did she say these types of things happened to her? Well, Cassie testified at the criminal trial last summer. And she said it was impossible to count the number of times that she was physically abused. She just said it was too often. And it happened frequently enough that other people around her could also kind of allude to different times that they witnessed over a 10, 11-year period. With her records, her albums, with only one coming out, but she signed for nine additional albums, what was the reality of what was happening behind the scenes that prevented her from putting out more music? So sources told me that she was constantly working on music. That she was trying to get an album released, to follow up. And she always had aspirations of continuing her music career. But her relationship with Combs resulted in the deliberate stalling of singles of albums that he would weaponize his, you know, power over her career to stop those albums coming up. I have a source that told me, essentially, they were in a fight. Okay, your show's off. You're not getting your album. This isn't going to come out. And it speaks to why the public never saw it again. I think there was something that, in my research, that really stuck with me. It was the first time it was getting to a point that she said it was very bad. A review came out in The Guardian. And they said, you know, this would have been the album of the year for me. And it was a demo tape that had leaked that was supposed to be her follow-up album. And it just. This behind-the-scenes, what was happening when people are questioning is just super jarring to me. That the work was there, the talent was there, but there were factors behind the scenes that were deliberately killing those dreams. How did he treat his other artists at Bad Boy? What was his reputation? There's a real shift in terms of how he treated and viewed his artists. I believe that in the beginning of Bad Boy, so prior to Biggie's death, in 1997, they were pumping up albums all the time, that he was really a creative and visionary force and the sound force of these artists. And then after Biggie died, going into the early 2000s, that he became the star of Bad Boy. That after Biggie died, that Puff Daddy was the star of Bad Boy. And there seemed to be a real consensus among former artists that their careers were gone by the wayside. After that point, that they didn't feel like they had the resources, but it didn't. feel like there was any motivation to make them take off, that they were always going to kind of be side characters or be characters to Diddy's star power. Our guest today is journalist Cheyenne Roundtree. Her new book is Bad Boy for Life, The Rise and Fall of Sean Combs. We'll be right back after a break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is Cheyenne Roundtree, an investigative reporter at Rolling Stone. Her new book, Bad Boy for Life, tells the story of Sean Combs across the names he gave himself, Puffy, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Brother Love, and then simply Love. A note before we continue, Roundtree's reporting includes descriptions of sexual violence and other adult subject matter, and our conversation will as well. Roundtree examines whether those reinventions also gave Combs a fresh start. A way to leave the scandals that came before behind. Over his career, Combs shaped the sound of many artists, including Mary J. Blige and the Notorious B.I.G., and built Bad Boy records into the label that carried hip-hop into the American mainstream. Combs is now serving a 50-month federal sentence on two counts of transporting people for prostitution, and he is currently appealing. In this criminal case, the government's other central witness was a woman known as Jane, and both she and Cassie Ventura have said that they sometimes participated willingly in these hotel encounters, these freak-offs, as Combs described them. And at other times, they said they wanted to stop. What did prosecutors argue turned that into sex trafficking? The prosecutor's main theory was that these freak-offs were sex trafficking acts because these women, these girlfriends, were coerced into participating in them. The fact that they voiced hesitancy or said that they didn't want to do it or tried to kind of wiggle their way out of these encounters, it was through, in Cassie's case, they said the physical violence was a form of coercion to keep her compliant in doing them. For Jane's case, they said that the financial support, that he was providing her, was a form of coercion into making her continue these on. So it was this kind of plying them with various means of either domestic violence or substances or financial control to make them agree to these sexual encounters with other men. And I think that it was really hard for them to prove coercion. There were, some jurors that came out after the verdict and explained that, you know, at least one of them said that they believed Cassie that about the domestic violence, but they just couldn't prove his intention to coerce them. And that is where that charge specifically fell short. This was a big case. I mean, we watched as federal law enforcement raided his homes, took computers and other items. It's where we learned all of the sordid details about baby oil and all of that kind of stuff. It was a RICO case, essentially. But you argue that prosecutors never really made clear that this was also a workplace story. Almost every major witness had worked for Combs. Why does that particular point matter? I think for the public to understand that this is a business and as an employer, his employees were being subjected to witnessing domestic violence. They themselves were being threatened or felt like they were being threatened, that they would be blackballed if they there spoke out about what they were witnessing. And if you take apart, you know, the sensationalism of the freak offs, this was an environment where people were stepping into personal systems and they were being threatened. And so, you know, I think that's a big part of it. And I think that's a big part of it. to facilitate their boss's sexual life. I mean, that's not a very great workplace to be in, but that was their job. And I know, you know, the lines blur of personal assistance to high powered people, but still, this was all supposed to be a job in their career. And they had aspirations to work on music or to get to know more ins and outs of the industry. And they were kind of their life was revolving around supplying him drugs or helping him clean off disgusting hotel rooms or keeping their boss's domestic violence of his girlfriend a secret. Can you really lay out for us? I think that some people when they hear this story, and they hear that there's it was so blatant, it was so open. The question is, why did no one speak up? In particular, you write about some employees who themselves alleged that they were abused. What were the consequences for some of those people? And some of them actually did speak out about wrongdoing. And what did they do? And what did they So first of all, they thought they would lose their job. And again, working for Sean Combs, working for Bad Boy was a dream come true. And to risk throwing away your dream career takes some guts. And there was also this fear of retribution, that their career would go nowhere afterward if they dare try to speak up about it, that they would be punished by him that he would badmouth them. And then also, for people that worked very closely with him, they were observing this volatile temper, that they also felt that they could be subjected to physical harm in an outburst by him. And there's instances where people claim, yeah, I was, I was shoved on the hood of a car, I was pushed out the door, my arm was slammed against the wall. Like, there was this environment already where there was tempers and physical kind of reactions. And there were instances where people did try to say, enough is enough, I'm done. And they were fired. Or they tried to report to HR and they were let go. And so there just seemed to be these consequences for trying to do what was right, for trying to exit. And it just enabled a culture of silence. More than two dozen men actually accused Combs of sexual misconduct or assault as well. The criminal case was overwhelmingly about Ventura and Jane. Why did the experiences of men remain largely outside the case? It didn't, it didn't seem to fit the prosecutor's working theory. I think, again, this case was so sprawling. And the amount of accusers is kind of overwhelming. But we only heard from one, Cassie, and then Jane, who actually, never filed a civil complaint. Oh, she never filed. So how did she become part of this case? So Jane became a part of the case almost unwillingly because prosecutors were able to see some of Combs' messages. And they found Jane's messages to Combs three days after Cassie filed her lawsuit saying, it feels like I'm reading my own sexual trauma. And they identified her as a victim of sex trafficking. But she never filed a lawsuit. And another interesting component to Jane's story was that she actually was working with Sean Combs' attorneys before she switched over to the prosecution and spoke. And she said something really interesting. One of his defense attorneys was questioning her while she was testifying. He said, why are you testifying against him? She says something to the effect of, I'm not testifying against him. She just was testifying. And she said, why are you testifying against him? And he said, why are you testifying against him? And she said, why are you testifying Again, a payout, a lawsuit, and kind of the tipping point for the rest of his life. Because how much was the payout? She was paid $20 million by Combs. You know, the government called this a criminal enterprise, but because Combs was the only person charged, his defense essentially asked, if there was a conspiracy, where are the conspirators? So how big of a hole was that in the government's case, in the end, that this wasn't some coordinated effort among those who worked with him, along with him? The lack of co-conspirators being put on the stand was a big hole in the prosecutor's case. They were saying these co-conspirators were part of a racketeering conspiracy organization. And so when you hear those words, you think of mobsters. You think of a sprawling organization. An organization with, I don't know, with big guns and all these people kind of in on it. And when the picture was painted as one man, his assistants, his old bodyguard friends that he grew up with, and some fresh college graduates as co-conspirators, it's kind of hard to square that notion of racketeering with, it's just them? This is this criminal enterprise? Yeah. Has Combs expressed remorse? There was an admission of remorse. Specifically, whenever the video came out of him attacking Cassie in the hallway of a hotel, he posted on Instagram an apology and said that he was so sorry that he sought therapy and that he has worked to be a better man since that moment in 2016. The only other time was when he was found guilty of those two counts. And he spoke to the judge directly, and he said he is sorry for everything, specifically said an apology to Cassie and to Jane for what he had put them through for not knowing the harm that he was causing them emotionally. But I should add, on the other fronts, he has denied almost every other accusation against him. And he has not expressed remorse. Any of the larger elements of artists that have come forward that said they felt that their careers were put by the wayside, he has not apologized on those kind of personal affronts to people. If you're just joining us, my guest is Cheyenne Roundtree, an investigative journalist at Rolling Stone, whose new book is Bad Boy for Life, The Rise and Fall of Sean Combs. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh In. This is Fresh Air. And today I am talking with Rolling Stone journalist Cheyenne Roundtree about her new book, Bad Boy for Life, The Rise and Fall of Sean Combs. What's your relationship to the music, to the persona of Combs? I grew up in the 90s, 2000s. So to me, he's always been Diddy. He made Shake Your Tail. Feather. BTUK. Bump, bump, bump. And obviously he founded Biggie. But he's kind of always been part of the culture. My relationship with music, listening back to the music as I was working, the songs are incredible. And they still stand the test of time. And it has been hard to listen to some of that music and his direct influence, especially some of the songs like Last Night, where he's in the outro kind of referring to a bust up. Between him and a girlfriend about not answering his phone calls. So you're listening to the music with fresh ears, especially with his most recent album, Homecoming, where he talks about Cassie saying, Cece, come home. The whole album is meant to be a soundtrack to a freak off. So I don't know where I kind of land on some of the older music and how I view him in relationship to it. For 30 years, like we've all consumed. We've all consumed the music and the movies and the shows and we've been fans. But in many regards, so much of this was in plain sight. And it's the same way with R. Kelly. You know, it's the same thing happening. And it's disturbing. It's hard to wrap your head around. And as someone who came of age with Diddy's music, it's almost overwhelming to think that something like this could continue to be pervasive. And we all just. Yeah, I think that's the hardest like reckoning kind of beyond this is just like, was I complicit? Did I even recognize the signs that are in front of me? Or, you know, there's interviews that he was kind of telling on himself about certain things. And when you see all these things stacked up and this temper and it's like we didn't have the full picture. And once you have the full picture, you're horrified. And a lot of people. And a lot of people also that had seen maybe these early bursts of domestic violence, not with Cassie, but with another woman, they thought it was a one-time thing. And I think, again, in instances like R. Kelly and Sean Combs, that they're our master manipulators. And not to say that that's a pass for people not saying something, but again, they are. They are cultivating this dynamic where you do think that this is a one-time thing or that you actually didn't get the whole grasp of it. I don't know what's the understanding. I'm just going to take their word for it. And I think it's a lesson for everyone that, you know, when they think something's wrong, to find an avenue to say something about it or to confide in someone else about it. Combs is currently projected to be released sometime in early 2021. What did you learn about maybe even the next reinvention already beginning? There was a Netflix documentary that came out at the end of last year. 50 Cent produced it. It recently won an Emmy for editing, I believe. And there is this remarkable footage of real time right before he's arrested in September of 2024. And he is planning a doco. Of his own and his own comeback story. And it just reinforced this idea that he has always been in firm control of his image. And we should expect no less whenever he is released. And there was reports recently about he was trying to talk to a digital comms person to keep a finger on the pulse of his public perception on social media. So he's very attractive. And I'm very attuned to what people are thinking and saying about him. And I have no doubt that eventually, whenever he is released, that he will come forward and he will say everything he has to say over these past few years. Cheyenne Roundtree, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Cheyenne Roundtree's new book is Bad Boy for Life. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews the new action thriller Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. And the new action thriller Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother. The two-time Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali plays a devout Muslim family man who also happens to be a deadly assassin. The movie was directed by Bassam Tariq and opens in select theaters this week. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review. Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother opens with a murder in a public restroom. The victim, a man, is never identified. The killer is a professional assassin named Latif, played by Mahershala Ali. As their bloody struggle plays out, we hear a solemn voiceover explanation of the film's title. It's rooted in a hadith, a record of the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad. A man approaches the Prophet and asks, Who deserves the best of me? The question is posed three times, and each time, the Prophet responds, Your Mother. Right from the start, the Pakistani-American writer-director Bassam Tariq clearly delights in outrageous juxtapositions. Latif is not your average contract killer. He's a husband, a father, and a devout Muslim. And he justifies his profession by only targeting victims that he believes society would be better off without. He also never uses a gun. A saber is his weapon of choice. It's not an easy thing, killing people and raising a family. Just ask Tony Soprano. And it's about to get a lot harder for Latif. Right after this latest job, he gets the tragic news that his wife has died of an illness. Latif, not the most attentive of dads, is suddenly left to raise a teenage daughter, a preteen son, and a baby by himself. Assassins don't get bereavement leave, and so Latif remains under enormous pressure from his employer, a Muslim crime boss. much of the pleasure of Tarek's movies. comes from trying to get a handle on his gonzo vision of Houston's religious criminal underbelly. It's a wildly stylized world of bright neon lights and ugly strip malls, where it can be hard to tell a house of sin from a house of worship, and even the most unsavory characters live by a particular creed. Lateef is ordered to protect his boss's nephew, Hadi, an online pornographer who offers halal-certified smut. Hadi, played by Abu Bakr Ali, has run afoul of a local Christian pastor who's on a brutal anti-porn crusade. Played by a terrific John Cho, wearing gold dental grills and a cowboy hat, the pastor is one of the film's more fascinating creations, a gun-loving ex-military man who shares Lateef's belief in the cleansing power of violence. One especially chaotic scene takes place at a mosque, where Lateef and his kids have a run-in with the crime boss, the pornographer, and a vanload of sex workers. Afterward, Lateef scolds his daughter, beautifully played by the actor Adia, for having stolen some milk from the mosque for the baby. That leads to a tough conversation about their struggles with faith, including the difficulties of making dua, or praying. You want to explain to me why you stole from the mosque? You want to explain to me why your homies brought hookers to the mosque? They were there to learn about Islam. You really want me to believe that? Allah is a turner of hearts. Instead of being judgmental, she made dua for those sisters. Yeah, yeah, I make dua for them. Like I made dua for Mama to come back. Told a joke to you, right? That's funny. Yeah, people praying to nothing is funny, Baba, and I know you feel the same. You stop praying, too. I'll pray. Come on, Baba, we didn't even go to Juma today. Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother has an interesting origin story. Several years ago, Tariq was set to direct Ali in a new movie about the Marvel comic book antihero, Blade. But after numerous delays, Tariq left the production, and the film fell apart. Years later, the two have reunited on what feels like a more original version of the movie they planned to make. Latif may not hunt vampires as Blade does, but he's no less deadly with a knife. Nearly a decade ago, Ali became the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar for his gorgeous performance in Moonlight. It's great to see him play such an unconventional Muslim protagonist here, and to balance his quiet depth with a lethal display of action prowess. Tariq can stage a set piece with energy and verve, and there's something fitting about the way he uses violence to call out the blood that has been spilled in the name of religion. And it all builds to an undeniably gripping climax that reaffirms the power of faith and surrender. Even so, the action remains by far the most generic aspect of Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother. And I couldn't help but imagine a different version of the movie if it didn't fall back on so many familiar hitman thriller beats. But perhaps those genre moves are what allow the movie's gentler, funnier moments to resonate. I'm thinking of Giancarlo Esposito's lovely performance as a mosque leader who disapproves of Latif's career and tries to steer him right. I'm also thinking of the story's most grounded and compelling subplot. For much of the movie, Latif is driving around Houston, desperate to find breast milk for the baby, who can't keep formula down. Fortunately, a lactating sex worker, played by Tiffany Boone, is on hand to save the day, which she does with the utmost generosity. In Tarek's bracing film, mercy can come to us all in the most mysterious ways. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother. If you'd like to catch up on interviews you've missed, like our comments, or a conversation with singer, banjo player, fiddler, and songwriter Rhiannon Giddens about her new album, Hope is the Thing with Feathers, or Andy Greenberg, senior writer for Wired, who covered a cybercrime operation meant to defraud victims around the world, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of fresh air interviews. You can also watch some of our interviews on our YouTube page. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations on what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.