Amy Winehouse’s Ex-Husband Blake Fielder-Civil Says He Shouldn’t Bear ‘Responsibility’ of Singer’s Death: Amy ‘Had Agency’

NEED TO KNOW

• Blake Fielder-Civil reflects on his relationship with Amy Winehouse and denies full responsibility for her death

• He admits to introducing Winehouse to heroin but says they became addicts together and she had personal agency

• Fielder-Civil is now sober and believes Winehouse would be happy to see him healthy

As Amy Winehouse descended into drug addiction and alcoholism in the years before her untimely death at age 27, much of the blame was placed on her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil.

Fielder-Civil, now 43, was thought to have introduced the beloved singer to drugs like heroin and cocaine, and was often viewed as the villain in her tragic life story.

In the years since Winehouse’s death in 2011, Fielder-Civil has largely remained out of the spotlight. But in a new interview, he’s speaking out for the first time in years on his rocky but loving relationship with Winehouse, and why he feels he should not shoulder the responsibility of her death.

“My stance now is that I know a lot of people, especially people reading media 20 years ago, would have an idea that Amy’s passing is my responsibility. As I’ve always said, I never shirk from any responsibility. If I’ve done something, I’ll put my hand up to it,” he said on the We Need to Talk podcast on Tuesday, March 17.

Fielder-Civil said that while he’s “made peace” with the fact that he “had a part to play” in the British star’s death, it’s unfair to place the blame entirely on him.

“Amy herself had agency. And that is in no way at all disrespecting her by saying that, but Amy did what she wanted to do,” he said. “And even though the drinking had started to hurt her, she carried on… She’s actually a very strong woman.”

In the wide-ranging interview, Fielder-Civil recalled meeting Winehouse at a pub in London circa 2001, and how he thought she was a “beautiful woman.”

When they met, neither were big into drugs, though they broke up for the first time after Winehouse’s drinking got to be “a bit much,” he said. Their on-again, off-again relationship inspired her breakthrough 2006 album Back to Black, and in 2007, they were married in Miami.

“These are memories which are hard for me to revisit. It’s hard for me, ‘cause she’s not here still. That was my best mate, and we were happy. And the drugs was a side of it, eventually,” he said. “[But] our love had nothing to do with addiction. And addiction had nothing to do with our love. That’s where it went. It wasn’t who we were.”

Fielder-Civil insisted in the interview that he was not an addict when he met Winehouse, and said he knows “for a fact” that the pair became drug addicts together.

He cited the fact that Winehouse’s drug addiction was actually at its worst when Fielder-Civil was in jail for a bar fight. Still, he did admit to being the one to introduce her to heroin, though Winehouse had allegedly “experimented” with other drugs on her own.

“I never blamed a person that gave me drugs for the first time. I’ve never tried to put that on anyone. Why would I?” he said. “I never understood, do these people think that I forced Amy to do drugs? That’s just not what happened… I’m not shirking responsibility, but this idea of daily facilitating, no. I wasn’t the dealer.”

Winehouse and Fielder-Civil divorced in 2009, though they remained in each other’s lives. When she died of accidental alcohol poisoning in 2011 — without any drugs in her system — Fielder-Civil was behind bars.

He said on the podcast that they talked regularly during his incarceration, and he had been worried about her in recent months after a number of increasingly alarming incidents, such as Winehouse falling asleep on her front doorstep. He told podcast host Paul C. Brunson that he “would’ve never in a million years have let her just sit and get drunk all day.”

The day she died, he’d tried calling her house twice to no avail, until finally prison officers told him what had happened.

“When I was in jail the first time, I’m not a religious person, but I used to pray every night. I’d say, ‘Please let Amy stay alive until I get out.’ ‘Cause I had this massive fear, like an absolute control fear, something’s going to happen to her and I’m in here and I’m not able to do anything or help or even be there,” he recalled. “My first thought was, ‘This is my worst nightmare. It’s not true.’… My head was swimming straightaway… I burst into tears.”

Fielder-Civil was unable to attend Winehouse’s funeral because of his sentence. He said that it took him a long time to grapple with the fact that he had not only lost his “best mate,” but was also being blamed for her death while mourning alone in jail and being “ostracized” in the press.

“I’m never, ever here to say, ‘Amy was bad.’ But I know Amy wouldn’t want me to still be sat here 20 years later saying it was all my fault,” he said. “She’d be saying, ‘Get it right, babe. Come on. Tell them the truth.’ We were just young addicts at the time. We weren’t to start with, then we were, and it could happen to anyone.”

Fielder-Civil is now clean and sober and in a happy relationship, something he said he thinks would make Winehouse “over the moon.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

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