The Heartbreaking Way Amy Winehouse's Ex-Husband Found Out She Died

Blake Fielder-Civil was serving a 32-month prison sentence when Amy Winehouse died 15 years ago in July 2011. He and his ex-wife were exchanging phone calls and letters throughout his incarceration and were even discussing the possibility of getting back together ... until she suddenly stopped responding. When he tried calling her back, a prison officer came to his door instead.

They took him down to an office and showed him a news headline. He told them it was a hoax. They showed him another. He kept insisting it wasn't true until the weight of it finally became impossible to deny.

"My cellmate at the time was a really solid guy," Fielder-Civil recalled on the We Need to Talk podcast this week. "He'd seen it on the news, and gave me a hug. I burst into tears, he started crying too. It's strange: I got held up, as in supported, by somebody I'd known for a matter of weeks. That was the only comfort I had at that moment for losing a massive, huge part of my life."

'I Had a Part to Play'

In the same podcast appearance, Fielder-Civil addressed something he has long been reluctant to say plainly. "I've never shirked from any responsibility," he said. "I'm not OK — but I've made my peace with the fact that I had a part to play."

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Part 1: Blake Fielder on We Need To Talk, hosted by Paul C. Brunson. #weneedtotalk #blakefielder #amywinehouse #fullepisode

♬ original sound - We Need To Talk

He was careful to add nuance to that admission. He described himself not as a dealer but as someone who helped regulate how much the two of them used together, and he noted that some of Winehouse's worst periods of addiction came while he was incarcerated, not while he was present.

"Do people think I forced Amy to do drugs? That's just not what happened," he said.

Winehouse died from accidental alcohol poisoning in July 2011. She was 27. Fielder-Civil says the divorce, the arguments, the years apart — none of it had truly ended what they had.

"It was only her and I saying, 'Nobody understands this but us.'"