Is Marisa Abela Really Singing In The Amy Winehouse Biopic Back To Black?

In the best biopics, actors disappear within the performance, even if they look nothing like their subjects. According to "Back to Black" director Sam Taylor-Johnson, star Marisa Abela achieved this feat with flying colors. The "Back to Black" trailer dropped on January 11, ahead of the film's May 10 release date, giving audiences a first look at Abela's transformation into singer Amy Winehouse. It also teases the movie's vocal performances, leading fans to wonder if Abela is really singing. Taylor-Johnson confirmed that it is in fact Abela's voice — but that wasn't necessarily the filmmaker's plan.

"When we first talked about it, my first question to [Marisa] was, 'Can you sing?' And she said, 'I can't,'" Taylor-Johnson recalled to Empire. The director assumed she would dub the performances with Winehouse's real voice, a practice seen in biopics like "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and "Ray." But after her audition, Abela began vocal training. "Now she sings the entire movie, beginning to end," Taylor-Johnson added. "I mean, it's a huge feat."

The upcoming biopic documents the career of the late chanteuse, who died in 2011 at the age of 27. When it came time to cast the role, a number of actors arrived to auditions in Winehouse cosplay — but not Abela. "We'd seen some brilliant impersonations," Taylor-Johnson told Empire. "But [Marisa] managed to just bring every fibre of her being in alignment with who Amy Winehouse was, and is, to many people."

In some instances, biopics are more deeply scrutinized than other genres, owing to fans' emotional investment in the subjects. That's especially true of Amy Winehouse, whose downward spiral was extensively publicized and whose death still cuts deep. Following the release of the "Back to Black" trailer, Winehouse's fans took to Reddit to voice their complaints in a subreddit simply titled "Ugh no." One user, u/Upset-Lychee5038, wrote that the trailer "felt like a parody of Amy's life" and found it "unsettling." "The trailer grossed me out," added u/sireneyesneverlie. "...Feels very exploitive."

Still, fans agreed that Marisa Abela's voice is the silver lining to an otherwise questionable project. The original poster conceded, "I did think [Abela] had Amy's voice down pretty well though." U/andjason4all concurred, writing, "The only thing I think Marisa nailed really good was Amy's voice! It almost fooled me at the end of the trailer."

It's one thing to gain the approval of anonymous redditors, but more importantly, Abela impressed Winehouse's former collaborators. "Amy's original band got back together, and we all went into the recording studio," Sam Taylor-Johnson continued to Empire. "Dale [Davis] was there, her bass guitarist, and Ade [Omotayo, singer], and we just all stood there and just went, 'F***!'" Watching Abela embody Winehouse understandably elicited strong emotions in the group, who would come to set just to watch her perform. Added Taylor-Johnson, "It's such a multi-layer of feelings for the people who were close to her and worked with her."