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12 Apr 2024, 12:59
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Eddie Marsan told Chris Evans about how he got into character for his role as Mitch Winehouse in the new biopic movie about Amy Winehouse’s life.
The award winning actor joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with webuyanycar ahead of the release of Back to Black, which landed in cinemas today (12th April). Of the new film, which was directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and written by Matt Greenhalgh, he said: “It's a beautiful tribute to Amy,”
He added: “The way Sam Taylor-Johnson has just moulded the whole thing, she's a real artist.
Regarding the real-life Mitch Winehouse, Eddie said: “I had lots of contact with him. He was my main point of reference. The way I act is, I always research things. I'm more of a researcher than an actor, really. So I just asked him a lot of questions about where he grew up, where he went to school, where his grandparents lived. I asked him about how he first met Amy's mum, Janis.”
The actor continued: “I asked him to make a playlist of his favourite music. I always do that. Any character I play, they’ve got to tell me what music they play, what aftershave they wear, and he even sung Fly Me to the Moon for me. He even recorded it, because I had to copy his voice. It was beautiful. A very interesting thing, when he recorded Fly Me to the Moon for me at the end of it, he said, ‘There you go... love you.’ And when I heard that it broke my heart. I've got four teenage kids, and every time they leave the house or go to school, I say, ‘Alright, have a nice day, love you.’ And when he said that to me, I realised his daughter's not there anymore. And he still has that feeling. He still has that love, but there's nowhere for it to go.”
Amy died on 23rd July 2011, aged just 27. “She comes from a very loving family, a very loving, supportive family,” Eddie said. “It's really interesting, when someone like Amy died so young, who is so brilliant and has touched their lives in such a profound way, there's a kind of collective trauma, and we try to make sense of it. And the way we make sense of it is we find someone to blame. And you blame the dad, or you blame the husband, but addiction doesn't need dysfunctionality. We all know addicts who come from the most functional, loving families, and people still die of addiction. So, she came from a very loving, supportive family, truth be told, but she still died of addiction.
“I've got four teenage kids, I love my kids, and I make mistakes all the time. Mitch was very honest to me about the mistakes he made, but you can't deny that he loved his daughter.”
Speaking about the first time he met Amy’s mum, the award-winning actor said: “I almost cried when I met her. Because although everybody has ownership of Amy, and it's something we all value, actually, you forget that she's someone's daughter. And when you meet the family they're there, and there's a massive premiere and people taking photographs, and these people are there and they’ve lost their daughter. I found that quite moving.
“She's an incredible woman, Amy's mum, she's got two degrees. she's a chemist. She's really intelligent, really bright woman. Fantastic.”
And going further into Amy Winehouse's family history, Eddie said: “Her Nan was one of the main reasons why she loves jazz. Her Nan used to go out with Ronnie Scott, when they were teenagers. And every time they had a big jazz singer at Ronnie Scott's, they used to get tickets. So the whole family were immersed in jazz. And Amy's nan loved jazz, Mitch loved jazz, and that's why even in the documentary, you see her as a young child with an incredible jazz-like voice, it’s because she grew up listening to it.”
Read more of what Eddie said about Back to Black here.
Eddie is also starring in brand new biographical drama miniseries Franklin, which is also released today on Apple TV+. Read all about it.
Back To Black is out today, Friday 12th April.
For more great interviews listen to The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with webuyanycar weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or catch up on-demand here.
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