Disney+<\/a> and Hulu Original, with production set to begin soon. A press release promises \u201cnew, unprecedented access\u201d to the Mercy singer, who will tell her entire life story, as well as interviews with friends, family and music industry associates.<\/p>\nThe documentary\u2019s director, Gill Callan, said: \u201cDuffy\u2019s life has been shaped by success and fame, but equally by pain, defiance and an irrepressible sense of self. I\u2019m drawn to the tension between vulnerability and confidence in her story and how a person can be deeply affected by their experiences, yet still find a powerful, expressive voice that is unmistakably hers.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an Instagram post in February 2020, Duffy said that she was \u201craped and drugged and held captive over some days\u201d. She did not say when the attack happened, but said being reached by a journalist prompted her to share her story. She invited fans to send questions that she would answer in an interview, but none materialised.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s harder than I thought,\u201d the singer said a month later in a statement read out on Jo Whiley\u2019s BBC Radio 2 show as she unveiled Something Beautiful, her first new song since the ordeal. A second track, River in the Sky, came a few months later.<\/p>\n
In between, having deleted the Instagram post, Duffy detailed her experiences in an essay on her website. She said she was drugged at a restaurant on her birthday, then held captive in her own home and taken abroad. \u201cI can\u2019t remember getting on the plane and came round in the back of a travelling vehicle. I was put into a hotel room and the perpetrator returned and raped me. I remember the pain and trying to stay conscious in the room after it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the perpetrator made \u201cveiled confessions of wanting to kill me\u201d. She said that she escaped by \u201cfleeing\u201d and added that she \u201ccannot remember getting home\u201d. She indicated that the perpetrator was \u201cstill at large\u201d.<\/p>\n
After initially fearing contacting the police, she reported her story after someone threatened to \u201cout her\u201d. She said she was at \u201chigh risk of suicide\u201d after the event and had spent \u201calmost 10 years completely alone\u201d, estranged from her family. What happened to her, she wrote, \u201cstole a lot from other people too. I was just not the same person for so long. Rape is like living murder, you are alive, but dead.\u201d Thanks to a psychologist, she said, she was now able to \u201cleave this decade behind\u201d.<\/p>\n
Rape Crisis praised Duffy for sharing her story. \u201cRape is still a very under-discussed, misunderstood and underreported crime, so when someone like Duffy speaks out in such a powerful way it can make other survivors feel a little bit less alone and less ashamed \u2013 which is a very common emotion, no matter how unfounded,\u201d said the organisation\u2019s Katie Russell.<\/p>\n
[\u00a0Surviving sexual abuse: Hearing my case would not proceed broke me all over againOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\nAt a keynote address, Disney+ head of content for Europe Angela Jain said: \u201cShe has entrusted us with her story, so we really have a huge responsibility to handle this with care and sensitivity, because she\u2019s speaking about what happened to her for the first time.\u201d – Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a great music industry mystery: after becoming one of the biggest pop stars of the 2000s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10450,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-366295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-disney-plus","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}