Exclusive: Back to Black's Eddie Marsan on what he learned from Mitch Winehouse
Back to Black star Eddie Marsan has explained what he learned from Amy Winehouse's father Mitch Winehouse in preparation for playing him.
In the new Amy Winehouse biopic Black to Black, Eddie plays the late singer’s father Mitch, alongside Marisa Abela as Amy.
Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, the actor opened up about the time he spent with Mitch while preparing to play him on screen and what he asked about his life.
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"Sam [Taylor-Johnson, the film’s director] introduced me to Mitch," he said. "The family doesn’t have any artistic control over the film, it’s Sam’s film. But as soon as she introduced me to Mitch, I just hounded the poor man. I sat with him on numerous occasions, I asked him about every aspect of his life.
"His childhood in the East End, who his grandparents were, who his great-grandparents were, I asked him about where he went to school, how he first met Janice, Amy’s mum. I asked him to come up with a playlist that represented the music he listened to as a child. He gave me endless photographs of his uncles and aunts."
Eddie went on to call Mitch "very self-aware and candid and honest about the mistakes he made with Amy" adding: "One of the things that came over me, and it’s one of the reasons why when I was working on it, I wrote at the top of the script, ‘He’s a father’. That’s what he is, a father, and that’s exactly how I played him."
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Eddie is no stranger to portraying real people. In 2022 he played John Darwin in ITV drama The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe – and he explained whether his approach was different to when playing a fictional character.
He said: "My point of reference is always the script. You have to honour the writer. The writer has sat in a room for two years, three years, sweating over every word, every comma, every full stop, so you have to honour what the writer has come up with.
"When you’re playing somebody so iconic, you’ve got to make sure you don’t do an imitation. You’ve got to try to honour the physicality, the voice, the mannerisms, but don’t imitate. An imitation is not the same as an emotional authenticity."
Back to Black is released in UK cinemas on April 12.
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