‘No space for us to make judgments’

Marisa Abela still moves her head like Amy Winehouse, the doomed British singer she plays in the biopic Back to Black. It’s a small shimmy from side to side, as if she still has Winehouse’s music in her.

“I can’t help but go back to that place,” says Abela over Zoom from London. “Her music lives forever, and it is definitely still around. It plays, always, when you’re in cafes and shops. She’s in London. She’s in Camden. She’s everywhere here. So it’s amazing to be surrounded by her.”

Back to Black is the 27-year-old’s big-screen calling card after breakout roles in HBO’s finance drama Industry and the British political thriller COBRA, but it is not without controversy.

Ever since it was announced, the film, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and written by Matt Greenhalgh, has been side-eyed over concerns it was too soon to tell Winehouse’s story only 11 years after her death. Then, photos from the set showing Abela in costume, all messy beehive, tattoos and looking dishevelled, created a minor online storm.

Winehouse’s life was also the subject of Asif Kapadia’s acclaimed documentary Amy, which took a critical view of her father, Mitch Winehouse, painting him as someone who tried to benefit as much as he could from his daughter’s talent and struggles.

And while Back to Black hasn’t been officially sanctioned by Winehouse’s family, and the music rights were approved by Universal and Sony, it’s a fairly generous portrait of Mitch Winehouse (played by Eddie Marsan), who is shown as having nothing but concern for his daughter’s career or her ailing health.

Does Abela feel the film is an honest portrait of Amy and Mitch’s relationship?

“The film was honest about Amy’s perspective on her father,” says Abela. “Amy loved her father very much. And she loved Blake, and she loved her Nan. What we tried to do with this film was, rather than feel like we, as an objective bystander, were commenting on Amy’s life, we wanted to come back, to be right next to her as she was experiencing things and writing these two albums.

“So there was just no space for us to make judgments. Our job was to be with Amy, and her relationships are very personal, intimate relationships with these people in her life.

“Sam [Taylor-Johnson], when she was making the film, said that she didn’t want to make a film that needed approvals from anyone. So we were allowed to make the film that she wanted to make, and she was given the rights to the music before we started by the companies.”

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Even before she died, Winehouse’s story seemed made for the big screen. A talented musician from a young age, she was discovered at 16, her jazz vocals belying her youth, and signed by Simon Fuller – the man behind the Spice Girls – at just 17.

Her award-winning debut album Frank was released in 2003 when she was only 20. The Guardian called her the “next superstar”, praising Winehouse for not fitting inside any box: “Sounds Afro-American: is British-Jewish. Looks sexy: won’t play up to it. Is young: sounds old. Sings sophisticated: talks rough. Musically mellow: lyrically nasty.”

Winehouse’s troubles, however, were always close by. Drugs, alcohol, bulimia and a tempestuous marriage to fellow Brit Blake Fielder-Civil made her perfect paparazzi fodder. By the time her second, Grammy Award-winning album, Back to Black, was released in 2006, Winehouse looked to be on the mend. But despite stints in rehab and periods of sobriety, she died in her Camden flat of alcohol poisoning in 2011, empty vodka bottles strewn on the floor.

“The image that is lasting in a lot of people’s minds is that image, the paparazzi shots that we recognise now as a more of a tragic time in her life,” says Abela. “And of course, it was so much [in the] popular culture at that time [to see a wrung-out Winehouse], that those things do leave a lasting image.

“But the reason that we fell in love with Amy in the first place is because she burst out onto this scene, very honest and proud, as well as incredibly talented. That’s what I tried to do with this [film], was bring it back to that talent and be the girl who was unafraid and inspired and engaged with life.”

Although Taylor-Johnson said she knew Abela was the right person to play Winehouse from the moment she stepped into the audition, Abela wasn’t so sure. Yes, they had similar backgrounds – both Jewish girls from North London – but it was still a huge leap of faith.

“Anyone that hears, ‘Do you want to play an icon?’, let alone Amy Winehouse, I think you should take stock,” says Abela, laughing. “You should wait a second and start doing your research, you know? Is this someone that you can understand the person behind all of the iconography?

“I think anyone that hears something like, ‘Do you want to play Amy Winehouse?’ And just said, ‘Yeah, sure’, that’s such a huge leap. So I just really wanted to get into finding out more about the woman behind the music before I felt I was going to be able to bring something to this role.”

Before filming, Abela undertook an Amy boot camp, fine-tuning Winehouse’s movements, the way she performed on stage and held her microphone, and intensive singing lessons. “I had no experience as a trained singer,” says Abela. It wasn’t like I’d never opened my mouth to sing as a human. I could always, sort of, hold a note, but I would never call myself a singer.”

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The result makes the film. Abela’s vocals are used throughout the film, and she captures Winehouse’s rough-and-ready charisma and magnetic stage presence. She is vulnerable one minute, lashing out the next. She is a young woman lost to addiction but all the time longing for a child.

“There was an incredible rawness and strength to her,” says Abela. “And it was about discovering her intelligence and her humour and her willingness to have fun and be curious. It was all of these different complexities that made me amazed by her.

“And the fact that someone that is able to write this music, as well as perform it, as incredibly as she did, there’s an emotional intelligence there, especially at such a young age. I wanted to get to the root of what that means, who is the woman that can write a song like Love is a Losing Game, you know? Where does that inspiration come from?”

Even though she hesitated at taking on Winehouse, eventually Abela understood her.

“Being a girl in London who had a dream to do what it was that she loved and do it really well, that was actually the main thing that I started to recognise,” says Abela. “And the Amy that I resonated with, there was this real strive for being considered good at her craft. And I think that is different to just being lauded for whatever else. She wanted to be respected by her peers, and I really resonated with that.”

Back to Black is released in cinemas on April 11.

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