For her first “Back to Black” meeting in 2022, actress Marisa Abela made the instinctive decision to present herself as herself, rather than dressing in a way that hinted at Amy Winehouse's iconic look. She was the only one not wearing some kind of costume.
“It would be incredibly disingenuous of me to show up at that meeting doing some kind of trick, like I was chewing gum or putting out my cigarette before going in,” says Abela, 27, speaking at London's Ham Yard Hotel. on a particularly rainy day in April.
He doesn't look anything like Winehouse. Her energy is calmer and her British accent is more subtle. No one in the busy restaurant seems to notice her, even though her face is currently plastered on billboards and buses all over the city.
“I didn't want to make any kind of cliché,” he adds. “So I came in as myself and talked about how I felt about her.”
However, director Sam Taylor-Johnson was initially unconvinced. He had asked casting director Nina Gold to compile a list of actors capable of, as she puts it, “a truly authentic performance,” with a preference for someone relatively unknown. Abela, best known for playing Yasmin in the HBO drama “Industry,” struck the director as too sweet and shy. But when Taylor-Johnson looked at the camera, something changed.
“He looked into the lens, directly, and into my soul,” says Taylor-Johnson, 57, speaking from her London home via Zoom. “I grabbed Nina’s hand and squeezed it because I knew, in that moment, it was her. She had nothing to do with how she spoke and read the lines. “It was like a DNA change.”
Taylor-Johnson wasn't necessarily looking for a natural singer to play Winehouse, the acclaimed soul singer whose 2006 album “Back to Black” became an instant classic but who died on the cusp of stardom in 2011. Producer Giles Martin and music supervisor Iain Cooke had backup plans, including having the lead lip sync with Winehouse's actual voice. Abela, who had no musical training, was not even asked to sing for her audition. But she unleashed an improvised version of “Fly Me to the Moon” anyway.
“It wasn't for me, at that time, to think that I could sing like Amy,” Abela says, describing one of the film's first scenes in which Amy performs a duet with her father at a family party, a scene that was assigned to the actor for his audition. “Why should I leave that beautiful point of connectivity out of what I’m doing?”
Prior to filming, Abela spent four months working closely with vocal coach Anne-Marie Speed. At first, Taylor-Johnson simply wanted Abela to be able to lip sync to Winehouse songs with the correct facial movements. But while Martin was recording instrumental tracks with Winehouse's real-life band, known as the Amy Winehouse Band (who are played by younger actors in the film), at Abbey Road Studios, it became clear that the actor was a surprisingly fast study. .
Marisa Abela, left, and director Sam Taylor-Johnson on the set of “Back to Black.”
(Dean Rogers/Focus Features)
“When we started working with Marisa, someone who supposedly couldn't sing (or that's what she said), she was phenomenal,” Cooke recalls. “She had great rhythm, great phrasing and great tone, and she worked very hard. What she did is an extraordinary achievement.”
As Abela, who also learned guitar and worked with movement and dialect coaches, immersed himself more fully in the role, he understood there would be an “emotional disconnect,” he says, if he chose to lip-sync. He did not want to imitate Winehouse, but rather hoped to “get as close as possible to something that was recognizable as Amy's sound.” Ultimately, what viewers hear in the film is 100% Abela.
“That way he could keep his emotional life alive through songs,” Abela says. “For me it was very important to try. To me, these types of movies don't try to trick the audience into thinking they're seeing the real person. If there are times when you completely lose yourself in the emotional truth and psychological life of that person, then that's the point. Singing is just an extension of that.”
“Back to Black,” written by Matt Greenhalgh, focuses on Winehouse’s life across her two albums, 2003’s “Frank” and, three years later, “Back to Black.” Her tumultuous relationship with her on-again, off-again boyfriend and husband Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O'Connell) is at the center of the story, as are her connections with her grandmother Cynthia (Lesley Manville) and her her father Mitch (Eddie Marsan). Taylor-Johnson shot the film in reverse chronological order to ensure that Abela could lose weight for later scenes, when she is frail and addicted to drugs and alcohol, healthily under the supervision of a nutritionist and trainer. Abela did extensive research on Winehouse and spoke to members of her family and people who knew her.
“The difficult thing is deciding what the truth of the person you are going to play is,” says Abela. “If you ask my mom to describe me in three words, they will be three different words than my boyfriend or my best friend would use. So you have to take everything with a pinch of salt: this is how this person saw Amy.”
The production took place over 45 days in early 2023 at more than 50 London venues, including Camden pubs the Good Mixer and Dublin Castle, where patrons shared stories about the real Winehouse performing there. Abela sang live on set, sometimes doing 30 or 40 takes of a particular song. She added real electricity to the musical numbers, especially the recreation of Winehouse's famous Glastonbury concert. The festival's Pyramid stage was rebuilt in a studio, emphasizing, Cooke says, how essential Abela's decision to sing was to the stages.
“A big part of it was embodying the spirit of Amy's performance,” he says. “And that captures the spirit of a Glastonbury performance like you've probably never seen on camera before. “A lot of that is because it’s wild and chaotic and free.”
Filming on location, particularly around Camden and Soho, was a challenge because it meant Abela was on display while filming the biggest role of his career to date. Paparazzi followed the production of “Back to Black,” as they had done with Winehouse herself, and one even infiltrated the set by joining a group of extras dressed as photographers during one particular scene. For better or worse, it helped Abela understand the extent to which Winehouse was under the microscope.
“One time, while we were filming, one came up to me and said, 'You can't get rid of me. I'm like a bad smell,'” she says. “It was definitely difficult to continue at some points in the work because it's hard to pretend they're not there. But to think about what Amy must have gone through alone when she was 22 is very disheartening.”
Marisa Abela, photographed in West Hollywood in April.
(Ben Bentley / for The Times)
Abela previously had small roles in the films “Rogue Agent” and “She Is Love” (her cameo as Teen Talk Barbie was largely cut from “Barbie”) and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She acknowledges that she is not a Method actress. But during the six weeks of filming “Back to Black” she “had no sense of herself.”
“It was a physically and emotionally exhausting period,” Abela says. “Amy is such an intense life force. There are different types of characters: some are solid and if you put them in a box there is still a lot of space, and some are like a liquid and they move and you are there too. But some are like gas and fill any space they are in. That's what it was like to play Amy.”
Even before she was cast, Abela inherently understood something about Winehouse. She was a teenager when the singer died of alcohol poisoning at age 27, but even as a child, Winehouse's songs and image had captivated her along with her fans around the world. Abela grew up near Brighton in a Jewish family in a situation analogous to Winehouse's. Her father moved away when she was in elementary school, in similar circumstances to Mitch Winehouse, so she understood a young girl's compulsion to be the center of attention while trying to be special.
“For Amy, that was singing and being a musician,” Abela says. “And for me it is this. But it's not about being flattered in any way. It's more about doing something and doing it well. I saw that in her in pictures of her when she was young and I recognized it a lot. I think there is that struggle for perfection that can lead things to the unhealthy that I share with her. When I started reading and rediscovering all the information that exists about Amy and watching the videos and footage of her life, I felt this immediate connection with her.”
Abela only had one week off before leaving the set of “Back to Black” to film the third season of “Industry,” which premieres on HBO this summer. He didn't find it difficult because he says creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay offer a sense of freedom and joy to the cast. There's also less pressure, because the series, set in the world of London finance, has cultivated a more niche audience.
“It's like a club of people who love the show, and it's fun to be a part of,” he says. “I think it would feel different if it was another huge, explosive project.”
Next, Abela is filming the thriller “Black Bag” with Steven Soderbergh in London, an opportunity she is delighted to take because it meant creating a new character from scratch. And although her IMDb page is not extensive, she has already revealed her ability to shapeshift from one role to another.
“She's one of those actors who presents herself as one thing and then can literally transform in such a way that you forget who the original person was,” Taylor-Johnson says. “It's really strange. She took absolutely every opportunity she could and took advantage of it wholeheartedly.”
Looking back, Abela says becoming Winehouse for “Back to Black” felt strangely spiritual. He worked hard, of course, but without getting too attached to the final result.
“It came from a place of real honesty and rawness that I felt from what I could see of Amy, rather than trying to be her,” she says. “I was aware that I put everything I could into it. And I think her bravery became mine in those moments. “It was very liberating to be so shameless and live your own life that way.”
It's a feeling he hopes to retain even after leaving Winehouse behind.
