Marisa Abela had to come off social media when she played Amy Winehouse.
Marisa Abela found it ‘difficult’ to deal with the sudden fame that came with playing Amy Winehouse
The 28-year-old actress starred as tragic singer Amy- who died in 2011 at the age of 27 – in the biopic ‘Back To Black’ and felt as if she was “jumping in at the deep end” as she was presented to the world as an on-screen version of the legendary singer.
She told The Guardian: “As an actor, my job was to quieten all the noise and get as close as possible to the human behind that mythology. At the time, I was off my phone and off social media. But I knew the conversation that was happening, and there were paparazzi; that was difficult. It felt like jumping in at the deep end.”
Meanwhile, Marisa has struggled with the advent of streaming television because it has meant that there is “too much choice” for general viewers these days and it can make it easier for certain programmes to be “cancelled” before their time.
She said: “There’s so much being made, which is great because there are so many jobs for actors. But on the flip side, there’s too much and people don’t know what to watch. Sometimes, if a show is on a big streaming platform, they can bury it and no one sees it, and it gets cancelled. If ‘Industry’ was on a streaming platform, not on a TV network like HBO, it probably would have been cancelled after season one, because it didn’t have the numbers.
“I mean, 90% of the shows I watch are guilty pleasures. I love every franchise of ‘Real Housewives’ – I’ve just finished ‘Beverly Hills’. If you can call that guilty?”
