Blake Fielder-Civil, the ex-husband of Amy Winehouse, has given his first long-form interview, discussing addiction, tabloid culture, and the blame he says he faced after the singer’s death. Speaking to Paul C. Brunson on the We Need to Talk podcast, Fielder-Civil said he hopes to “take control of [his] own narrative.”
Fielder-Civil and Winehouse met in a Camden pub in 2005 and had a turbulent relationship marked by substance abuse. He acknowledged introducing Winehouse to heroin, though he said she had already experimented with cocaine before they met. “The first time she did it was with me,” he said of heroin, adding that he had used it about six times before.
The couple married in 2007, shortly after the release of Winehouse’s Grammy-winning album Back to Black. Fielder-Civil described how the intense media scrutiny of the 2000s exacerbated their addiction issues. “It was so strange waking up and knowing that there's a hundred outside people waiting to take a photo of your sneezing,” he said. He also revealed that their phones were hacked as part of the phone-hacking scandal, with information used to tip off photographers outside rehab clinics.
Fielder-Civil spent several stints in prison during and after the marriage, including sentences for assault and burglary. Despite their divorce in 2009, he said they remained close and had discussed reconciling shortly before her death. “The week Amy passed, I was in jail, unfortunately, we were still very much talking about the possibility of reconciling again,” he said. Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning on July 23, 2011, at age 27.
