Marisa Abela has opened up about her physical preparation for her part as Amy Winehouse in the Back To Black biopic for the first time.
The 26-year-old actress, best known for her role as Yasmin Kara-Hanani in the BBC’s graduate banker thriller Industry, was recently revealed to be playing the jazz great and has been working hard since.
The film, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, will chronicle Winehouse’s ‘vibrant’ London existence in Soho and Camden, which was cut short in 2011 when the Rehab singer died of alcohol poisoning at the age of 27.
On the first day of filming in early January, Marisa was observed wearing the singer’s distinctive beehive hair-do outside legendary jazz bar Ronnie Scott’s, alongside co-star Eddie Marsan, who will play Winehouse’s father, Mitch.
Following a few weeks of silence, the Brighton-born actress has now revealed how she prepared for her role in the film.
The actor was astonished that attempting to lose weight for the role of the late music legend had a “very beneficial” impact on her mental health.
The rising star revealed that she didn’t have a healthy relationship with her body as a child, and she was first intimidated by the prospect of reducing weight to represent Amy Winehouse in her latter, heady years.
‘I went to an all-girls school in Brighton and it was brutal… this really toxic environment, and it definitely seeped into how I felt about myself,’ the actor said on the Before The Lights podcast to hosts George Ashwell, Dave Hastie, and Josh Betteridge, the personal trainers working with her on the role.
‘I was anticipating [training for the role] being quite difficult in terms of maybe thinking, “This is how I should look when I’m at my skinniest”.
‘But actually, it’s the opposite’, said the star. ‘I almost see my body as a true instrument that I’m training for a job.’
Marisa believes the approach has made her relationship with her body less subjective, personal, and intense overall.
rsonal, and overall less intense than it was before.
‘I need to work at it in the same way that I’m practicing guitar. If I was practicing for the last four weeks and I still couldn’t play a song, I’d be scared,’ she said.
‘It’s separating my feelings around weight loss, which I think for me, in the long run, will be really positive.’
This will be Marisa’s once-in-a-lifetime job, and she has pledged to give it her all to get it right.
The ‘Amy boot camp’ includes guitar lessons, physical training, and two vocal coaches recruited to help the North Londoner acquire her’super distinct’ speaking and singing tones, according to Marisa.
‘Amy listened to people like Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Lauryn Hill. You can hear that in her music,’ explained Marisa. ‘That voice which is super low and full-bodied.’
Marisa found it difficult to relate Winehouse’s singing voice to her North London accent because the former seemed to come from nowhere.
‘That was part of her magic,’ she added.
According to the actor, Winehouse’s weight reduction in her final years transformed her singing voice in the same way that Austin Butler studied Elvis Presley for his award-winning performance in the recent biopic.
Back Until Black will follow Winehouse from the age of 17, when Marisa stated her voice was’so full,’ to the end of her life, when you can ‘hear’ her health worsening in her vocals.
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George Ashwell, who has been working closely with Marisa on her nutrition and training for the part, added: ‘Obviously the reason Amy was thin was not because of healthy reasons.
‘But that doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve that without being healthy in order to play her.’
But such a physical commitment to the character has its practical challenges, and the team will be filming in reverse, so Marisa will be portraying 18-year-old Amy on the final day of the production.
Marisa’s casting has been highly criticised by some fans, but in an interview with TMZ, Mitch defended the picture, saying, ‘Marisa’s a terrific pick for the character, even if she doesn’t look precisely like Amy.’
Jack O’Connell from Skins will play Winehouse’s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, and Lesley Manville from Mrs Harris Goes to Paris will play the star’s grandmother.
The release date of the film has yet to be determined, although filming is already underway.