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Ashton Kutcher’s resurfaced comments about Sean “Diddy” Combs are doing the rounds online, amid the controversy surrounding the rapper and his arrest on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.
For context, Diddy was arrested last week in New York following years-long legal troubles, with authorities alleging the disgraced rapper was the head of a sex trafficking ring that involved so-called “freak offs”. The days-long, drug-fuelled events allegedly saw victims perform sex acts, and Diddy’s parties have now been given renewed attention following Kutcher’s old comments.
The That 70s Show star spoke about his association with Diddy during a 2019 interview on the chicken wing-eating show, Hot Ones. After the show’s host, Sean Evans, said Diddy’s party stories are “our favorite genre of anecdote,” the actor replied skittishly that there’s “a lot I can’t tell” about the events hosted by the rapper. Images of Diddy and Kutcher were shown during the segment, and the actor giggled as he recalled memories from attending Diddy’s parties.
“I can’t tell that one either,” Kutcher said of his stories of Diddy’s parties, “I’m like cycling through them.” The actor skirted around revealing any actual details of the rapper’s parties, and ended the segment by saying that thinking of the events was like going down “some weird memory lane.”
In the same interview, Kutcher reflected on becoming “fast friends” with Diddy, saying the pair met while he was hosting his prank show Punk’d and would “hang out and watch football together.” Naturally, Kutcher’s connection to the now-infamous rapper has attracted backlash, with social media users suggesting that the actor “was complicit” in Diddy’s crimes.
“Why didn’t he speak out?,” one person wrote on X, with another adding that the actor appeared to have “SUPER guilty body language.” It’s worth noting that it is not yet known whether the parties Kutcher is referring to are the “freak offs” now at the center of Diddy’s legal woes, but the actor’s past has done little to quell fans’ suspicions.
Users took particular umbrage with Kutcher’s comments given that, last year, he and his wife face backlash for sending letters of support to their That 70s Show co star Danny Masterson, after he was convicted of rape.
According to critics, Kutcher’s attendance at Diddy’s parties also seems at-odds with his work as the former board chair of Thorn, an organization he cofounded in 2012 to fight child sex trafficking. Kutcher is far from the only celebrity whose connection to Diddy has resurfaced following the arrest, with fans also questioning the rapper’s relationship with stars like Jennifer Lopez, Usher and Justin Bieber.
The associates of the rapper have also reached the political sphere, following Donald Trump’s decision to share a fake image of his presidential opponent Kamala Harris posing alongside Diddy.
While that photo was found to be doctored, the former president himself has made complimentary comments about Diddy in the past, saying in an old episode of The Celebrity Apprentice that he was “going to stick up for” the musician.
Diddy is currently being held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where he has been denied bail twice. His next hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 24, 2024.