Rewind back to the late Noughties, when Duffy was one of the biggest names in British music. The bluesy opening riff of her No 1 track “Mercy” – followed by those distinctive “yeah, yeah, yeahs” – was utterly ubiquitous; so were the rest of the retro-tinged singles from her multi-platinum debut album Rockferry, the best-selling UK record of 2008. She had a slew of Brit awards to her name, and was talked about in the same breath as Amy Winehouse and Adele.

But just a couple of years later, after a muted response to her follow-up album, this fast-rising star seemed to all but vanish. New music never materialised. She stopped attending showbiz events. Dedicated fans and casual listeners alike wondered what had happened to the young talent who had been dubbed a modern-day Dusty Springfield. Had she grown tired of the industry after her speedy ascent to the top? Had she simply decided to opt for a more anonymous life?

The answer to these questions was much darker than anyone would ever have assumed. In February 2020, Duffy revealed in an Instagram post that she had been “raped and drugged and held captive” a decade before, and had spent the ensuing time recovering from this harrowing ordeal. A few months later, she shared further details in a near-4,000-word essay posted on her website. The aftermath of the attack, she said, had “stolen one-third of [her] life”, and she doubted that she would “ever be the person people once knew”.

Following this startling explanation, Duffy retreated once again, and hasn’t spoken out since. Now, though, that’s set to change. Last month, Disney+ announced that the singer is set to share her story in a new documentary film, which will chart “her meteoric rise to fame and her withdrawal from public life following her unfathomable experience”, through interviews with friends, family, music-industry peers and Duffy herself.

It’s a huge move from a woman whose voice has been silenced for so long; naturally, there is already speculation that the film could mark the start of a return to the public eye – or even pave the way for a musical comeback. A release date is yet to be confirmed, but Disney exec Angela Jain noted that the streamer has “a huge responsibility to handle this with care and sensitivity, because she’s speaking about what happened to her for the first time”. The hope, surely, is that Duffy’s experience of telling her story will be a validating one.

That story began in North Wales, where Aimée Anne Duffy was born in 1984. Ten years later, her parents John and Joyce broke up, prompting Aimée to move to Pembrokeshire with her mother and two sisters. In 1998, when she was 14, the family suffered a huge upheaval when police discovered that her stepfather’s former wife had paid a hitman to kill him, prompting the authorities to move them to a safe house (her stepfather’s ex was later sentenced to three and a half years in jail for soliciting to murder).

It was an experience that left the teenager “terrified”, and she moved back to live with her dad. She then headed to Chester to study music production and performance, but one lecturer suggested she should drop out to pursue singing – which she did. Aged just 19, she won second place in the Welsh TV talent show Wawffactor. A few years later, she juggled part-time gigs as a waitress and working in a fishmonger’s with recording her first, self-titled EP, Aimée Duffy, which ended up hitting No 1 in the Welsh charts.

After meeting with Jeanette Lee of Rough Trade Records, who would later become her manager, Duffy swapped Wales for London. Lee introduced her to producer and former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, who helped to craft the singer’s neo-soul sound, presenting her with an iPod filled with the work of Sixties artists like Scott Walker, Phil Spector and Burt Bacharach to inspire her.

Released at the start of 2008, “Mercy” became Duffy’s breakout hit, occupying the No 1 spot for five consecutive weeks. Her album Rockferry, named after the Wirral town where her grandmother lived, followed soon afterwards, with reviews positioning her as the more mainstream (read: less scandal-prone) answer to Winehouse, boasting a similarly unique and before-her-time vocal style. “Rockferry is a fantastic album of burning blue soul,” a five-star Guardian review read.

Awards soon followed. Duffy picked up three Brits at the 2009 ceremony, and also cemented her international success at the Grammys that year, where Rockferry was crowned Best Pop Vocal Album. Perhaps the most Noughties proof of her all-conquering power? “Mercy” got the a cappella cover treatment in the first season of Glee.

In interviews, though, the singer was candid about the pressure of being catapulted to fame so quickly. “I’m borderline on a nervous breakdown,” she told the Western Mail. “Can I handle this? Do I want to disappear?” Not too long after her awards-season sweep, Duffy ended up parting ways with her manager Lee, with reports suggesting she had wanted to take her career in a different direction.

Her 2010 follow-up album Endlessly largely ditched Rockferry’s vintage sound – and earned more lukewarm reviews than its predecessor, eventually peaking at No 9 in the UK charts. A third record was announced, but never happened. Live performances were cancelled. She didn’t disappear entirely. In 2013, she performed at a tribute to Edith Piaf in New York, and she recorded songs for the soundtrack of the Tom Hardy gangster movie Legend a few years later. But this seemed like a drastic scaling back for a singer who had once had the music world at her feet.

What no one knew – and what Duffy would later reveal in that heartbreaking statement – was that while celebrating her 26th birthday in 2010, she was “drugged at a restaurant” and taken to a foreign country, where she was “put into a hotel room and the perpetrator returned and raped me”. The “perpetrator”, she said, “made veiled confessions of wanting to kill [her]”, and held her captive for weeks. She didn’t feel safe going to the police, but, she said in her account, she has since “told two female police officers during different threatening incidents in the past decade”.

The aftermath of this ordeal left her isolated, and she would eventually become estranged from her family, spending the next 10 years “almost completely alone”. Rape, she wrote in one particularly poignant line, “is like living murder, you are alive, but dead”. She toyed with the idea of disappearing overseas “so that [she] could put the past behind [her] with a new life”, and feared sharing her experience, as she had been led to believe that it would damage her chances of ever making music again.

Seeing a psychologist helped her to work through some of this horrific trauma – and to realise that “hiding [her] story was destroying her [life] so much more” than speaking out would do. And although she had been told she would be “scorned by the public”, her 2020 statement was met with an outpouring of support from fans and fellow celebrities alike.

The charity Rape Crisis also praised her bravery in coming forward, and speaking so openly about the long-term impact of her ordeal. “Rape is still a very under-discussed, misunderstood and under-reported 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,” spokesperson Katie Russell said at the time.

That year, Duffy shared a handful of new songs with Jo Whiley’s BBC Radio 2 breakfast show, but since then she has continued to keep a low profile. In 2025, however, she briefly re-emerged on social media to share a video lipsyncing to a new remix of “Mercy”. Recently it was revealed that she had legally changed her name to Duffy Jones, perhaps as a way of marking a new chapter. She has also signed with TaP Management, who represent the likes of Lana Del Rey and Dermot Kennedy, and who previously masterminded Dua Lipa’s rise to the top.

According to Gill Callan, the director of the Disney documentary, the film will explore “the tension between vulnerability and confidence” in Duffy’s story, “and how a person can be deeply affected by their experiences, yet still find a powerful, expressive voice that is unmistakeably hers”. We’ve missed that remarkable – and resilient – voice, and it seems the time is right for Duffy to use it to tell her story on her own terms.

Rape Crisis offers support for those affected by rape and sexual abuse. You can call them on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, and 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland, or visit their website at www.rapecrisis.org.uk. If you are in the US, you can call Rainn on 800-656-HOPE (4673)