New biopic about life of singer Amy Winehouse
As filming begins on a new biopic of Amy Winehouse, her family and former entourage are working to secure her legacy.
Amy Winehouse would have been 40 this year. Despite the power of her voice, the enduring legacy of her two albums and the central role she played in noughties pop culture, the consensus is that hers was a life unfulfilled.
Though she often said she wanted to release more records and become a mother, Winehouse, who died of alcohol poisoning aged 27 in July 2011, has become a cautionary tale for the excesses of drink, drugs and rock’n’roll – as well as the subject of fierce rows about who was to blame for her demise. That debate is likely to be revived by a new biopic about her.
The film, Back to Black, with 26-year-old Industry star Marisa Abela in Winehouse’s signature beehive hairdo, traces the meteoric rise and equally rapid fall of one of her generation’s finest singer-songwriters. Directed by Fifty Shades of Grey’s Sam Taylor-Johnson, the film will see Eddie Marsan play Winehouse’s father, Mitch, and Lesley Manville her beloved grandmother, Cynthia, with whom she is buried in Edgware, north London.
Jack O’Connell, most recently seen rolling in the hay with Emma Corrin in Netflix’s adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, has been cast as Blake Fielder-Civil, Winehouse’s drug addict ex-husband. Fielder-Civil, then a video production assistant, once admitted he introduced Winehouse to heroin and crack cocaine, her dependence on which was ultimately devastating. The couple’s relationship was notoriously tempestuous and marred by violence (O’Connell was spotted with fake cuts on his face during filming last week to recreate a scene in the aftermath of an alleged fight with Winehouse).
The film, with a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh, who wrote Taylor-Johnson’s John Lennon biopic, Nowhere Boy, is sure to shine a spotlight, once again, on Team Amy: the friends, family, lovers and hangers-on who filled tabloid column inches for a few short years. The likes of Fielder-Civil, as well as Pete Doherty, the Libertines singer – who revealed in 2012 he had an affair with Winehouse – will watch with interest.
For the Winehouse family, the biopic provides an opportunity to correct what they say is a blot on the historical record. Despite winning an Oscar for best documentary, Asif Kapadia’s 2015 film, Amy, was slammed by the family as “destructive”; Mitch Winehouse, Amy’s father, said he had a nervous breakdown after being “cast as the villain”. Unlike Kapadia’s documentary, the new film is being made with the blessing of Winehouse’s family.
“The Asif Kapadia film was simply inaccurate and misleading. It caused a lot of pain and hurt to the family and Amy’s friends, who were painted as uncaring about her illness, when nothing could have been less true,” says Mitch, 72, a former taxi driver. “It was a terrible time.
“What is most important about this biopic is that it will concentrate on Amy, celebrate who she was and her extraordinary talent. And that’s the point: what remains is Amy’s genius, her songs, performances and recordings.
“Her story has highs and lows but what we are left with is this amazing music that will be remembered for ever.”
It could provide some form of closure too. For eight years after his daughter’s death, Mitch could not bring himself to listen to her records, and Kapadia’s film only served to reopen old wounds.
Janis Winehouse, Amy’s mother, and former husband Mitch have quietly been managing their daughter’s estate and running the Amy Winehouse Foundation, set up in her honour, which helps young people with addictions, provides recovery housing for women leaving rehab and lays on music therapy for children. Janis has been unable to work because of her multiple sclerosis. Mitch’s second wife, Jane, is the charity’s managing trustee.
Mark Ronson, 47, who produced much of Amy Winehouse’s second and final album, Back to Black, is a patron of the Amy Winehouse Foundation. He is said to be working on new music, as well as writing a memoir. Doherty, 43, released solo single Flags of the Old Regime in 2016 and gave the proceeds to the foundation. After years of struggling with drink and drugs, Doherty swapped cocaine for camembert and now lives in Normandy with his wife.
Amy Winehouse’s story continues to fascinate, and there is more to come. Kapadia, 50, has teamed up with Nick Shymansky, Winehouse’s first manager – whose efforts to get the singer to kick her substance abuse habit are said to have inspired her hit song, Rehab – and Jasper Waller-Bridge, brother of Fleabag star Phoebe, to create a Disney+ documentary series about the Camden music scene. Winehouse is sure to feature heavily – whether her family approve or not.
The Times