Jane Rosenberg
Appearances
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
I sometimes do an outline and then I never finish it because I don't have the time.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
Yes, I did that whole trial. So he looked very different then. It doesn't matter. There are no pictures of how he looks now with the gray. He has gray hair and a beard, very white beard, little goatee. He looks different. So the thing with a famous person, people always remember what they used to look like. He had signature closed crop, neatly angled hair, and he always had that black hair.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
And his beard shape changed, but now he does not look that way. And it's hard to get that likeness and have people know that's still him. So that's where I'm struggling with that.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
I had a little kid back then. Life was very, oh, I took my child and his friend to see that original Diddy trial. They were young kids. They got an autograph from him. I remember they were so excited being in the courtroom with a star. And then he told them, stay in school. I think I had a day off and I took my kid and his friend. His first trial was massive too.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
It was a state court, but it had a lot of coverage. He had very famous lawyers, Johnny Cochran, who represented the football guy, OJ. OJ, yeah. Yeah. He was his lawyer and Ben Brofman.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
I don't know. I don't have one specific hardest person. I'll say Diddy right now. He's hard. What makes him so hard? Well, he's very, I don't know, smooth. I'm hoping I'll get him better, but some people are just... I love crazy hair, like Sam Backman-Fried had a lot of crazy hair.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
You know, there are people when they cut their hair, like Sam Backman-Fried just one day came to court and his hair was all closely cropped. He had lost his curls. I was like, oh my God, is that him? It doesn't really look like him anymore. And Charles Manson, I didn't do that trial, but he shaved his head. He had this wild hair and suddenly came to court with a shaved head.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
Nobody knew that was him anymore. So I'll have to see how it goes.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
Harvey Weinstein asked for more hair. John Dottie asked me to trim his chin, but generally I don't speak to defendants. If it happened to be near me and they might say something, but nobody's, I get, I don't do social media. So a lot of criticism happens.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
So I was seated in the back of the room and he was out then. This was before the trial happened. He was not in custody. So he walked out during a break with his lawyers and I was sitting in the aisle in the back row and he looked over at my sketch. He said, can't you give me more hair? So he could see my drawing because he walked right by me.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
Trump used to walk by and see my drawings too, but he didn't complain about them. Although his son asked me to make him look sexy. Don Trump Jr.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
Junior. He said, make me look sexy. And he showed me an AI image of Sam Bagman Freed. And he said, look at this. And he said, you made him look like a superstar. Can't you do that with me? And I said, It's like, that's fake, the AI image. You know, somebody named Sam Backwood-Freen looked real handsome. You wanted to look real handsome too.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
biggest thing that I've learned that it's just a piece of history and then it goes news cycles are fickle you never know suddenly they're really into something and then nobody cares do you feel like this is a big responsibility when you're doing it or do you just crack on with the sketches I feel tremendous responsibility to do my best to be there on time to try to get a good seat.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
I'm a very responsible and reliable person, but I'm not really thinking about the world depending on me at that moment. That would just be too much. I'm thinking about me trying to do my best. That's what I do with my job. It's for me to do my very best that I can do to make a good sketch.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
My goal is to capture somebody else's emotion, not my own feeling about the person. So people think, well, aren't you editorializing? It's not that. I'm watching somebody else. And if they're... leaning back or looking pompous, a certain body language, arms crossed, or if they're crying or any emotion that whoever I'm drawing is depicting is what I'm trying to capture in my sketch.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
I'm not going for what I feel. It's not my opinion. It's the same thing for a writer or for any kind of journalist. You have to go for what is happening out there, not for what your opinion is.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
One time a terrorist was sitting with a bunch of terrorist defendants. They let me sit. This was a long time ago. And they let me sit inside the well. And one of them jumped over the railing to death. I don't really know if he's going to try to attack the judge or trying to escape the courtroom. That was a scary moment.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
The judge stood up and pushed a panic button and I got off my chair and squatted on the floor because marshals came running in and tackled the guy right next to me, smashed his head against the wall. That was a bit of a moment of a shocker for me. Very intense.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
John Gotti, Glenn Maxwell, Trump trials, Harvey Weinstein, everything that you can think of, I probably was there. How did you end up getting into this? I was always an artist. I loved drawing people. I was a struggling artist. After college, I did portraits. I did whatever I could for it to earn a dollar. I drew on the sidewalks with a hat out, did copies of Vermeer and Rembrandt.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
And then I saw another courtroom artist do a lecture. at the Society of Illustrators. And I thought, oh, I would love to do that. So I started to go to court and practice. I asked the court officers, where do the artists sit? What do they bring? I asked so many questions. They finally said, okay, come next week. We'll let you sit with the other artists.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
I did my sketch and there were only two other artists that I thought, ugh, I really should try to sell this. So I called NBC and said, come on in, let's see what you've got. And that's how it started.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
I don't know. If I've captured the energy that's happening and I happen to, if I have more time, I usually do better work. The initial sketches I do of somebody, you might not have enough time because an arraignment is really quick. It could be just five minutes or less for an arraignment.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
But then as a trial, there are pre-trial hearings that go on longer and it depends where I'm sitting and what my view is and how much time I have. That's what I have to deal with.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
At other people's, how about my own? I still got myself a lot. I go, oh God. And I try to fix it up for myself because everybody sends it out. You all see my bad ones. Too bad on me. So it's out there and I can't change what you see, but I can try to like struggle myself and go, oh, if only I had made his nose shorter or whatever. It's hard to get that to work out right from the start.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
I know I'm going to have to get the defendant. I know I have to get that likeness. And then if I have more time, I'll put in some lawyers. Like I just did Luigi Mangione arraignment. a couple of days ago. I did Diddy and Mangione on the same day. Boy, that was a rough day. But I knew I had to get him.
Diddy On Trial
The start of Diddy’s trial: What to expect
Then I threw in some lawyers next to him, which barely looked like the lawyers because the time ran out. That was it. So the same is true for Diddy. I have to get him. And I sort of try to compose in my mind how much space I've got on my paper and what I might do, but things happen. If something happens, if somebody jumps up and speaks, if anything happens, I try to get it depending on my time.