Blake Fielder-Civil has claimed that he and his late wife Amy Winehouse were victims of phone hacking.
Speaking to Paul C Brunson on the We Need To Talk podcast, he spoke highly of the 2015 documentary film Amy and the 2024 biopic Back To Black and said that neither portrayed him as a “villain”, contrary to his portrayal in the media while he was in a relationship with Winehouse.
His comments echoed those he made when Back To Black came out – he described the film as “therapeutic” and said it made him feel seen “in a more accurate representation”.
He then went on to discuss the increased media scrutiny the singer received as her fame grew. “It was so strange waking up and knowing that there’s a hundred people outside waiting to take a photo of you sneezing or looking a bit bedraggled so that they could say horrible things about you,” he said.
Fielder-Civil then claimed: “We got our phones hacked. I got interviewed by the police years ago about having our phones tapped, which is crazy to me,” and explained that the intrusion of the media made the couple more reliant on drugs.
“The fact that outside our window there were people trying to tear us down, as we saw it, made our bond stronger,” he said. “Add drugs into that and it did [get] to that daily addiction scale quite easily and quite quickly. And it was like, ‘This is our safety net.’”
Watch the full episode here:
Elsewhere in the interview, he looked back on the moment he was told that Winehouse had died. The couple were married from 2007 to 2009, and Winehouse died aged 27 on July 23, 2011.
At the time, Fielder-Civil was serving a prison sentence for burglary in HMP Leeds, and looked back, “My first thought was that it would be a hoax. I burst into tears. It was the only comfort I had at that moment for losing this massive, huge part of my life.”
He also said that Winehouse’s substance use struggles began before they met and that she used cocaine prior to them getting together. Though admitting to introducing her to heroin, he said: “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, and even knowing the drinking had started to hurt her, she carried on.”
Similarly, in 2015, he denied allegations that his relationship led to her death. “I don’t think I ruined her, no,” he told The Times Magazine. “I think we found each other and certain people need to realise that she did have other addictions before she met me. She wasn’t a happy, well-adjusted young woman… and I find it disrespectful to imply I was some Machiavellian puppet master.”
Though he’s largely stayed out of the public eye in recent years, Fielder-Civil has spoken out occasionally about his relationship with Winehouse. In 2018, he called out her family over plans to revive her image for a hologram tour – which was ultimately postponed.
‘Me and Amy only used drugs together, in maybe six months out of our marriage.’
Amy Winehouse’s ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil says their relationship was not fuelled by drugs. pic.twitter.com/gGLrQk7buH
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) December 11, 2018
Speaking on Good Morning Britain, he described the concept as a “moneymaking gimmick” and continued: “The idea that it’s anything remotely like Amy to me is misleading. It’s old footage. It can’t be anything new. It won’t be her interactions. It’s not going to be the same.”
And on what would have been Winehouse’s 40th birthday in September 2023, he reflected back on their relationship. “I was a 20-something-year-old drug addict and I had no idea how to make myself clean, let alone somebody else,” he said.
“I wasn’t going into that with an intention of this happening. I don’t think anyone that loved Amy, her family or her friends, would ever think that this is what I would have wanted. Equally, I think that they would’ve said Amy wouldn’t have wanted me to have taken the burden for the last 10-plus years.”