Duffy Sets Disney+ Documentary on Sexual Assault, Kidnapping

Duffy, the Welsh singer-songwriter who had a massive hit with “Mercy” in 2008 and then retreated from the limelight, is set to tell her story in a new Disney+ documentary.

The announcement was made at Series Mania on Wednesday by Angela Jain, Disney+’s head of content for EMEA, in a keynote address. In 2020, Duffy revealed in a social media post that she had stepped away from music in 2011 after being kidnapped and raped.

Duffy “disappeared off the face of the earth and hasn’t really spoken about what happened in that time, other than about five or six years ago in a social media post,” Jain said, calling the feature-length Hulu Original doc a “really powerful project.”

“She has entrusted us with her story, so we really have a huge responsibility to handle this with care and sensitivity, because she’s speaking about what happened to her for the first time,” Jain added. Production on the documentary, which will be directed by Gil Callan, is starting soon.

The doc “will be a retrospective film traversing Duffy’s life, from her upbringing in Wales, through to her meteoric rise to fame and her withdrawal from public life following her unfathomable experience,” a press release reads. “The original documentary film will be driven by new, unprecedented access to Duffy, along with a rich and nostalgic archive, and interviews with family, friends, and close peers in the music industry.”

After the initial revelation, Duffy shared details of the kidnapping in a 3,000-word post on her website. “It was my birthday, I was drugged at a restaurant, I was drugged then for four weeks and travelled to a foreign country,” she wrote. The perpetrator, whose name she did not reveal, “made veiled confessions of wanting to kill me.”

Duffy continued, “It didn’t feel safe to go to the police. I felt if anything went wrong, I would be dead, and he would have killed me. I could not risk being mishandled or it being all over the news during my danger. I really had to follow what instincts I had.”

She eventually did tell the police, but said in the post that she has felt “petrified” ever since. Of a potential return to music, Duffy said at the time: “I’m doing this to be freed, for all of me to be freed. What follows remains to be seen.”

The documentary is executive produced by Fernando De Jesus for Rare TV, who will produce the film in partnership with executive producer Matthew Worthy for Stellify Media. The film was commissioned out of the U.K. for Disney+ by Jain and Sean Doyle, VP, unscripted, EMEA. The commission follows a successful pitch through a previously announced development fund created by Disney+ U.K., in collaboration with Northern Ireland Screen, to help support and grow the production sector in Northern Ireland.