Trigger warning: this article references addiction, eating disorders and self harm.
There has been widespread backlash that the new Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black, is once again exploiting the late singer's tragic life. In the first instalment of GLAMOUR's Assistant Editor and Entertainment Director's new column, ‘Showtime with Emily Maddick’, in which Emily brings a unique perspective to the month's most hyped film or TV series, based on her two decades in showbusiness and entertainment journalism, she argues that Back to Black is doing even worse – it is sanitising Amy’s tragedy.
In July 2008 I attended Snaresbrook Crown Court in Essex to report on the trial of Blake Fielder-Civil, otherwise known as Mr Amy Winehouse. During the week-long trial, in which Amy's husband was sentenced to 27 months in prison for trial fixing and grievous bodily harm, Amy turned up on several days to support her ‘Blake incarcerated’ (as she would occasionally howl at him while he was sitting in the dock).
When Amy did attend court, it was always a scrum; a spectacle of photographers swarming around her, held back by police. I cannot tell you how frightening it was to actually witness this tiny, fragile, bird-like being, teetering along in her sky-high Louboutins, almost toppling over from the weight of that giant beehive, scratching at her arms and snarling at the paparazzi.
This was when Amy was at her very worst; both physically and mentally ravaged by disordered eating and self-harm and of course a vicious dependency on drugs and alcohol.
I remember seeing her skin up close and it was covered with lesions, spots and self-inflicted scratches, caked over with makeup.
On the final day of the trial, I listened as Blake’s Barrister, Jeremy Dean QC, told the judge that his client had a “long and wretched history” of substance abuse. Dean told how despite a number of past suicide attempts, Blake was determined to rebuild his life with his wife. "It's their ambition to divorce themselves from hard drugs, not to separate themselves from each other,” he said. "He knows that if he fails, an appointment with calamity awaits, not just for him but for his wife as well."
And we all know what happened next. While Blake was no longer in Amy’s life by the time of her death in 2011, aged just 27, it was alcohol intoxication that eventually took her life, despite having just completed a stint in rehab.
Marisa Abela transforms into the late star.
Unlike many other critics, as a cinematic experience, I actually enjoyed Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new film Back to Black. It’s beautifully made, full of nostalgia for the early noughties and despite already getting flak for her singing ability, I think that Marisa Abela delivers a magnificent performance as Amy. But is it an accurate portrayal of Amy’s life? Absolutely not. No, even worse – this is a sanitised fantasy of what was, in my memory as a journalist who reported on all Amy’s battles, a gruesome existence for many years.
I knew Amy and I witnessed her rapid descent first-hand. I wouldn’t claim to be a friend, but we would exchange the odd friendly DM message on Facebook and hang out at showbiz parties. A little known fact about Amy is that before she was famous, she used to be a celebrity reporter, working for an agency called World Entertainment News Network, so she would always, initially, have time for journalists such as myself.
We played pool together at the 2007 Brit Awards Universal after-party, when she’d just won Best British Female Artist and Best British Album, because she “couldn’t be f*cked” with all the fawning and industry schmoozing, saying she’d rather play pool. “It’s all bullshit”, she said before taking the piss out of Take That, who were across the other side of the room, relishing being fawned over. Mark Owen, I remember in particular, was a target of her brilliant and acerbic wit.
Amy was the most authentic celebrity I have ever met – funny, outrageous and one who couldn’t be bothered with PR nonsense. I’ll never forget her winding me up once at a party at the Maddox Club in Mayfair in 2007. This was the night she went public with Blake after getting back together with him following the release of Back to Black the previous year. She’d arrived earlier with mates and we were having drinks in the VIP area when a gangly bloke in a porkpie hat turned up. They were like two magnets, instantly drawn to each other. Introducing me to him with a cackle, she said, “Emily, this is my cousin, Blake”, before grabbing him in front of me, snogging his face off and dragging him into the ladies' toilets. It was classic Amy and made great copy for the magazine where I then worked. Her descent into drug-ravaged hell came rapidly after this.
Yes, I am now ashamed to say that I feel that I played a part in exploiting Amy in her life, by reporting on it week after week. And by writing this column, I know I could well be accused of exploiting her once again. But her tragic story – and however they try and dress it up in the film, it IS a tragedy – is now being picked apart all over again because of Sam Taylor-Jonhson’s much-hyped biopic.
In the near-13 years since her death, I’ve thought many times about the media’s role in Amy’s downfall. I was news editor at a magazine where we reported on her turbulent life on a weekly basis, reducing her pain and addiction to headlines for magazine sales. It sounds like a cop out now, but such reporting was symptomatic of the era, it's not an excuse, but as a young journalist I felt caught up in it and pressured to comply. I now truly wish I had questioned it more. I regret being involved in publishing the awful, now infamous pictures of Amy, her ballet pumps stained with blood, looking wild, terrified and out of her head, as she ran through the streets of Soho searching for Blake, who was covered in scratches after they had had yet another physical fight. It felt wrong at the time and it felt like a turning point for me in reappraising the way we wrote about women in the public eye. The gruesome scene is depicted in detail in Back to Black and it is perhaps the only time that the film gets as close as possible to the ugly reality of Amy’s existence at that point in her life.
But you only need to look on Youtube at videos of Amy at the worst of her addiction and the reality bears little resemblance to Marisa Abela’s Amy.
Sure, Marisa, controversially, lost a lot of weight to play the role, has a few spots on her skin by the end, and of course the film depicts the couple's drug abuse. But, as in one scene, where Blake and Amy are sitting in pristine fluffy white towelling robes at a five star hotel on honeymoon in Miami, whooping with laughter after opening burger boxes with crack cocaine inside them, it makes drug abuse look glamorous.
Let’s be clear: drugs and alcohol ravaged and ultimately killed Amy.
Anyone who remembers Amy and Pete Doherty's infamous home video playing with a litter of baby mice – uploaded by Pete to YouTube in 2008 – would challenge whether Marisa Abela's portrayal represents the real Amy of that time. The harrowing, haunting video of Amy and fellow addict Pete playing with baby mice, clearly high on drugs, shows a skeletal Amy, eyes as wide as saucers, lips chapped, her fingernails brown and grimy from drug use, mumbling almost incoherently into the camera. Watch the fantastic, 2015 Academy-award winning documentary Amy made by Asif Kapadia and tell me if the Amy you see in that film – made from real footage of the singer – at all resembles the Amy in Taylor-Johnson’s film?
On what would have been the star's 40th birthday.
In one of the final scenes of Back to Black, Amy wanders into the Soho jazz club, Ronnie Scott’s, and after an impromptu performance with a band rehearsing on stage, turns to her apparently hapless father, Mitch, and confesses she’s an addict and needs help. Again, this makes her pernicious addiction seem almost romantic or like a mild inconvenience.
When I interviewed Marisa Abela last week and asked about whether she thought the portrayal of Amy’s battles was accurate in the film, she said: “I think we felt, Matt and Sam felt, that it was time to put Amy back in the centre of her own story as a person rather than a victim of a tragedy. Of course, there were lots of tragic moments in Amy's life, but more than that, she was a human being. An incredibly powerful, impressive one.”
She added: “We know from just simply the name of the kind of places that try and help people deal with addiction, that they need anonymity to be able to get better. And unfortunately, Amy was never afforded that. So I think we didn't want to create something that added to this catalogue of intense pain and tragedy. I mean, you see it in the film. You see what she goes through. But what was most important to us was to leave the taste in people's mouths that it didn't eclipse her success and her talent again.”
But of course, the intense pain and tragedy did eclipse her success and talent – because it killed her. And had she not endured all she did, she would no doubt still be here today and her success and her talent would continue. Shying away from her troubled life and existence does not do justice to Amy, it doesn’t expose the true nature of the dark side of fame – especially for women in the early noughties – and it does not do justice to addicts; those who, like Amy, have lost their lives and those who are still with us, battling their own demons today.
Back to Black is in cinemas nationwide on Friday April 12.
For more from GLAMOUR's Assistant Editor and Entertainment Director, Emily Maddick, follow her on Instagram @emilymaddick.
If you're affected by any of the issues addressed in this article, UK charity Action on Addiction is available on 0300 330 0659.
