Amy Winehouse's childhood friend says the singer would not have been happy with new biopic
Focus Features
- "Back To Black," a new biopic about Amy Winehouse's life and career, is set to be released on May 17.
- One of the late singer's childhood friends said he found the film "hugely triggering."
- Tyler James, who met the singer when they were just 12, said she "wouldn't have liked the film."
A childhood friend of the British singer Amy Winehouse has criticized a new biopic about the late star.
"Back To Black," which was directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and stars Marisa Abela as Winehouse, looks at the "Valerie" singer's life and career, from her journey through adolescence to her tragic final hours.
But Tyler James, who met Winehouse when they were both just 12 years old and studying at theater school, said he found the film "hugely triggering."
"Amy would have been pleased for Blake [because of his sympathetic portrayal], but she wouldn't have liked the film," he told The Times of London, referencing Winehouse's ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, who is played by Jack O'Connell in the movie.
"There is this sense of Amy being coherent even when taking drugs, but there was so much suffering," James said, adding that the film "avoids the uncomfortable" and "focuses way too much on Blake."
Winehouse and Fielder-Civil were married in 2007, and they continued an on-off relationship even after their marriage broke a few years later.
Fielder-Civil has previously opened up about introducing Winehouse to heroin, saying on ITV's Jeremy Kyle show: "I was smoking it on foil and she said can I try some and I said … I might have put up a weak resistance — the fact is whatever I said she did end up having some."
James was Winehouse's roommate in the Camden, north London, flat where she was found dead from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27 in July 2011.
Despite his key role in the singer's short life, there are just two small references to him in "Black To Black," The Times of London reported.
While Winehouse's estate officially sanctioned the film, Taylor-Johnson told Empire earlier this year that her family had "no involvement" in the film.