Aubrey O’Day Claims She Is Still Traumatized From Working With Diddy: “It Was Scary”

Danity Kane member Aubrey O’Day has had a lot to say about Diddy and the reprisal of his “Making The Band” reality series. Now in an interview with Variety, O’Day reflects on her time on the show and the behavior she experienced from Diddy that she believes he would “not at all” get away with these days.

O’Day and Diddy‘s relationship went sour during the series and eventually ended up with Diddy removing her and bandmate Wanita D. Woods from the group in 2008. The remaining members Dawn Richard, Aundrea Fimbres, and Shannon Bex continued on before eventually disbanding in 2014.

“Diddy’s a father, so hopefully he’s learned things about the way that you handle women and has more compassion for women now,” she said. But in the past, she claims he was not too nice to work with.

“Puff is a very difficult person to work with,” O’Day said. “Everything had to be perfect. I remember times where he looked at my toenails and was like, ‘What is your third toenail doing? Go get that sh– fixed before you walk into a room.’ Or we would be in rehearsals performing an hour-and-a-half set over and over, and he would walk in for five minutes with a camera and say, ‘Aubrey, why are you sweating? You look like a wet dog. You’re the hot one, so do you think anyone wants to see that?’”

She continued, “We were scared to death with what would happen with Puff each day. There was just no room for error. Diddy was one of the most intense people you could ever work with. I experienced everything from race [remarks] to sexism, and a lot of it was scary. I have a very strong mom who wasn’t necessarily a nurturer, and I remember one time as a kid I hit my knee and as it was bleeding everywhere, she said, ‘Suck it up, Aubrey!’ That was proper training for what I would experience on ‘Making the Band.’”

She also discussed the internal division that was put on the girls as they progressed through the music industry. “As we got bigger, there was a lot of division in the group because the men wanted to put the women in categories – the pretty one, the one who sings,” she explained. “But the pretty one wanted to be a singer, and the singer wanted to be known as pretty, so then you start disliking the people around you because of the boxes that the men want to put you in. And there were always cameras around, so we got used to not speaking openly with each other because we never wanted to make this show a battlefield for tantrums. We wanted to represent women in a good way.”

Despite the struggles of the show, O’Day said the experience taught her not to depend on anyone, but she is excited for its return. “I have so much joy for any opportunity for young, talented artists to have opportunities because it’s hard nowadays with record labels going under and independent music being so fast and furious,” she said. “The music industry has changed completely, so I’m happy they’re finally bringing the franchise back.”

O’Day also revealed she has been in pitch meetings with MTV, for a show concept, involving all five Danity Kane members, to put together a new girl group on television.

She said, “I really think you need females creating a girl band because women understand each other differently to men. When you have men in charge of female groups, they don’t know how to tend to the emotional sides – and the emotional sides are usually what break up girl groups. We would be on tour with the Pussycat Dolls, and they hated each other. They would all be in different vans, they didn’t like the lead girl, [one member] was hooking up with the boss.”