Pop star reveals she once narrowly escaped a Diddy party in Miami
Talk about your near misses.
Michelle Branch almost had a possible run-in with Sean “Diddy” Combs back in the day. Almost.
On her Instagram Stories on Monday, the artist behind such early millennium hits as “Everywhere,” “Breathe” and “Game of Love” shared a pretty wild throwback memory.
Branch posted a text message exchange with her Wreckers bandmate Jessica Harp, along with a glamorous picture of them from August 2004.
The Getty Images snap shows them arriving at Combs’ MTV Video Music Awards party, after attending the annual ceremony at AmericanAirlines Arena, now known as the Kaseya Center.
In the screenshot of the texts captured by People magazine, Harp wrote, “Not me watching the Diddy docuseries and realizing that one of the freak-offs absolutely happened this night.”
Harp is talking about 50 Cent’s four-parter about his nemesis “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” currently streaming on Netflix. The doc features the disgraced rapper in the days leading up to his September 2024 arrest on sex trafficking charges in New York City.
Branch’s response: “Oh. My. God. I’ve wondered tbh.”
“I don’t remember why we left,” Harp wrote, adding she was “so glad” the night took a totally different direction, with the women instead hanging out with actor Owen Wilson “smoking weed and eating tacos.”
Ending the convo, Branch texted “Same lol.”
Since our memory is a little fuzzy from 20 years ago, a Google search reveals Combs did indeed host an afterparty with famed talent manager Guy Oseary that year, the first of two times the VMAs were held in the Magic City (Diddy hosted in 2005).
The Getty website has more glam archive pics of Branch and Harp posing in front of a backdrop that features Sean John, Combs’ clothing line, as a sponsor. The venue is called “Ice House,” which no longer exists as far as we know.
Other high profile guests included Bruce Willis, Paris Hilton and Carson Daly.
It’s unclear if anything untoward happened at this particular event. But Combs’ notorious freak-offs — drug-fueled orgies held at his Star Island mansion and elsewhere — were a key element in his federal sex crimes trial.
The fallen mogul, 56, was ultimately cleared of the most serious sex trafficking charges. He is currently behind bars at Fort Dix in New Jersey after being sentenced to 50 months on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
