Amy Winehouse’s former husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, has rejected suggestions he was responsible for her descent into addiction and eventual death at the age of 27.
Fielder-Civil, who has a history of dependence on heroin and crack, has often been accused of introducing Winehouse to hard drugs and being partly to blame for her early death from alcohol poisoning in 2011.
In an interview ahead of the release of a documentary about Winehouse’s life, Fielder-Civil insisted he was not the villain of the story.
“I don’t think I ruined her, no. I think we found each other and certain people need to realise that she did have other addictions before she met me,” he told the Times Magazine. “She wasn’t a happy, well-adjusted young woman … and I find it disrespectful to imply I was some machiavellian puppet master.”
Winehouse and Fielder-Civil were married in 2007 and continued an on-off relationship after their marriage broke down two years later. They were both lost and damaged people, Fielder-Civil said. The 33-year-old also claimed he was still in love with Winehouse, four years after her death.
“I’m in love with someone who is not here. I think about her every day,” he said. “I’m a bit stuck now, thinking, ‘How do I move on?’”
The long-awaited documentary, Amy, made by Senna director Asif Kapadia, will be released on 3 July. The film charts Winehouse’s life from her childhood in Southgate, north London, to her death in 2011, plagued by addictions, depression and bulimia.
Speaking to the Observer last week, Winehouse’s former manager, Nick Shymansky, said that he knew from the moment he met Fielder-Civil that he would be a bad influence.
“It was horrible to see her going from someone so tender and brilliant and warm to being kind of derelict and lost,” he said. “I’ve been very angry with [Fielder-Civil] in the past, but at the end of the day he wasn’t a grownup, he was a lost kid who had his own issues.”
Winehouse’s father and advisor, Mitch Winehouse, once described Fielder-Civil as “the biggest low-life scumbag that God ever put breath into”.
Fielder-Civil now wants to reconcile with his former wife’s father: “I’d like to speak to Mitch and genuinely, genuinely plea for his forgiveness [for any] parts I’ve played in what has occurred, but I won’t take responsibility for Amy passing away because it’s not fair.”
Fielder-Civil, who has been off drugs for more than a year, describes addiction as “just terrible” and appealed for more sympathy from those who still grieved Winehouse’s early death.
“I can’t sing, so therefore Amy’s life is the only one that is ever valid … But my family disintegrating, my children probably having to live with it, me getting spat at … it’s all par for the course.
“Since she has passed away nothing has really gone well. I almost feel like I’m being punished.”