On the third flooring of the Version lodge in West Hollywood, three chairs had been pushed in opposition to a wall in a hallway, supporting a rotating solid of leisure journalists.
The interviewers made hushed small speak, ready for his or her turns with the director and star of “Again to Black,” a brand new movie in regards to the singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse.
A British man disclosed that he’d dreaded the film, as if watching it might give him battle flashbacks. He as soon as lived close to Ms. Winehouse in London, and so they shared mutual acquaintances.
An American lady held a notecard with a query that learn: “Muh reese uh” — the phonetic pronunciation of Marisa — “not solely was your portrayal of Amy past uncanny in each conceivable means, your efficiency was grounded in such reality and authenticity, and it was superbly humanizing. Are you able to speak about how that place of ample love and keenness was a north star of kinds when moving into her footwear?”
Marisa Abela would sit for 56 interviews that Monday. Even her lunch break was an interview — an hour with The New York Instances on a lodge patio, the place the solar drilled into her pores and her takeout field of sushi.
Ms. Abela, 27, spent the final month selling the movie, touring from London to Paris and Rome. “Again to Black” was launched on April 12 in Britain, the place it led the field workplace for 2 weeks (unseated solely by “Challengers”). The movie might be launched on Might 17 in america.
Principally, Ms. Abela has been greeted at these junkets in a well mannered way and reward. However beneath the speak of “ample love and keenness” have been powerful questions, too. Like, Must you even be doing this?
Early protection of the movie was cautious at finest. There was a way that Ms. Winehouse, who died in 2011 from alcohol poisoning, had already been exploited sufficient, as depicted within the 2015 Oscar-winning documentary “Amy.”
Ms. Abela all of a sudden felt much less like an actor and extra like a “diplomat,” she mentioned: “You develop into virtually a salesman slash politician for the film. Particularly for one thing like this that requires a number of sensitivity and data and thoroughness in your solutions.”
Social media outrage adopted every set photograph and teaser clip. Lengthy earlier than the movie’s launch, Ms. Abela was criticized on-line for not wanting or sounding sufficient like Ms. Winehouse.
However Ms. Abela was not interested by bodily impersonation. When she auditioned for the director Sam Taylor-Johnson, she was the one actor who arrived as herself, “a vessel,” she mentioned — no eyeliner, no beehive, no hoops.
“I don’t have to persuade those who they’re really watching Amy,” she mentioned. “I have to remind individuals of her soul.”
The audition story has been instructed many occasions on the press tour. It’s simpler to inform this story than to “put into phrases the quantity of emotion and psychological actual property” required by the function, mentioned Ms. Abela, who misplaced about 25 kilos to play Ms. Winehouse; wore a Star of David necklace that belonged to Ms. Winehouse; typically slept with eyeliner on simply to see what the streaks would have regarded like on Ms. Winehouse’s pillowcase; and spritzed herself with a well-liked 2000s fragrance (Alien by Thierry Mugler) to get into character as Ms. Winehouse.
“You additionally don’t wish to say that in a five-minute interview as a result of it could possibly come throughout so … I don’t know, odd.”
Up to now in her profession, Ms. Abela has appealed to administrators and producers on the lookout for unknown actors — recent faces who received’t instantly be related to every other character they’ve performed. Her largest function earlier than “Again to Black” was a younger funding banker named Yasmin on the HBO ensemble sequence “Trade.”
That part of her profession is over now — or relatively it’s ending in actual time. She is on the quilt of magazines. Paparazzi comply with her and her boyfriend on their walks round London. And he or she is already getting ready for her subsequent job: a Steven Soderbergh thriller reverse Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender.
“With each ‘Trade’ and this job, the purpose was to pluck an actor out of obscurity,” Ms. Abela mentioned. “You’ve by no means seen this particular person earlier than, and now right here she is.”
Right here she is. Visiting Los Angeles for the primary time, attempting out scorching yoga courses and the new meals bar at Erewhon, mugging together with her modestly sized billboard on Sundown Boulevard, swept up in an expert present, by no means much less well-known than she is correct now.
Attraction Defensive
One method to push by way of a difficult press tour: have what Mickey Down, the co-creator of “Trade,” referred to as “an enormous quantity of allure.”
The characters on “Trade” might be “heinous,” mentioned Mr. Down, who created the present with Konrad Kay. Yasmin is a fancy publishing heiress — entitled, vicious, likes to occasion.
“However Marisa, as a result of she’s such a captivating particular person herself, has introduced a number of allure and humor and vulnerability and empathy to a personality who on a web page might be learn a bit bit hateable,” Mr. Down mentioned.
Ms. Abela doesn’t power her allure. She smokes slim Vogue cigarettes and loves actuality tv. She is earnest about her craft. She smiles quite a bit and made the choice to smile quite a bit throughout early efficiency scenes in “Again to Black,” a movie that wishes to be extra of a celebration than an indictment or a tragedy.
The true Ms. Winehouse was extra recognized for her depth throughout performances and wickedness throughout interviews. She may very well be merciless, particularly to herself. She was a relentless perfectionist. Ms. Abela might relate to that.
“It all the time appears like there’s 2 p.c extra that you would be able to get out of a scene,” she mentioned. “I don’t like to observe what I do.”
She linked with the character in different methods. One early “set off,” she mentioned, was Ms. Winehouse’s affection for her father. (Whereas the connection was fraught — see the lyrics to “Rehab” — Ms. Winehouse had a tattoo that learn “Daddy’s Woman.”)
“It’s an attention-grabbing factor when a younger lady grows up with out a father as current as their mom — the necessity for that spotlight, and the place you resolve to get it from,” Ms. Abela mentioned.
She and Ms. Winehouse, raised within the houses of single moms, selected efficiency. They each needed to be “ok at one thing to encourage a loving response,” Ms. Abela mentioned.
Ms. Abela grew up in Brighton, England, however she was raised within the dressing rooms of regional theaters. Her mom was an actress who met her father, a director, whereas he was performing stand-up comedy on the Edinburgh Fringe Competition.
At 11, she earned a performing arts scholarship to a neighborhood boarding faculty. Directors pointed to her as a “success story,” she mentioned. She grew to become a strolling gross sales pitch to donors. It was her first lesson in public relations.
At 19, she enrolled within the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Artwork. By the point she graduated, she had filmed her first two episodes of “Trade.”
The present had its premiere in November 2020. Vogue printed an article to coincide with the pilot, calling Ms. Abela a “breakout star.” Her agent emailed her the hyperlink. It was the very first thing she noticed after turning on her telephone following an eight-hour surgical procedure to take away her thyroid.
Earlier that yr, at 23, Ms. Abela was recognized with thyroid most cancers; she had assumed her swollen sore throat was Covid, till it didn’t go away.
Folks typically say to her, relating to “Again to Black,” one thing like, “This have to be the craziest factor to ever occur to you,” Ms. Abela mentioned.
It’s not. What was crazier, she mentioned, was taking remedy that made her so radioactive that she needed to isolate herself in a lead-lined room, use gloves to the touch gentle switches and bleach her rest room after each use.
Ms. Abela has by no means spoken publicly in regards to the most cancers. It got here up in dialog solely after I discussed “She Is Love,” an improvised indie film that she filmed over six days in 2021. It was her first undertaking after being cleared to work. She felt extremely weak.
“That job was weirdly probably the most necessary issues I ever did,” mentioned Ms. Abela, whose character wore high-neck tops and equipment, hiding the lengthy L-shaped scar working down the aspect of her neck. “It simply received me courageous once more. You’ll be able to’t do that job for those who really feel scared.”
She has by no means been in a position to watch the movie.
‘She Simply Has It’
It’s a distinct pleasure to introduce a British particular person to the scorching, greasy, maximally indulgent dish of queso fundido. Ms. Abela needed to strive Mexican meals on her first journey to Los Angeles. So we sat in a lacquered pink sales space at El Compadre, an old-school Hollywood restaurant, ordered flaming margaritas and mentioned different musical biopics of latest years.
These movies could make stars. Rami Malek received an Academy Award for enjoying Freddie Mercury in 2019; Austin Butler received a Golden Globe and BAFTA for enjoying Elvis in 2023. With just a few exceptions, like movies about Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston, this style continues to be dominated by films about males made by males.
“Again to Black,” as Sam Taylor-Johnson has identified, was female-led in virtually each division.
“Had this been a narrative a few man, directed by a person, starring a younger unknown man,” Ms. Abela mentioned, “I don’t imagine anybody can be almost as able to criticize as they’ve been with ours.”
However her thought was interrupted. A person on the restaurant approached our sales space and requested if he might purchase her a drink. She mentioned no.
When he left — and he didn’t depart instantly — Ms. Abela continued, “I believe that if I used to be nonetheless talking as Amy Winehouse, for instance, everybody can be like, ‘Recover from your self.’”
(To be honest, individuals did inform Mr. Butler to recover from himself, however he was nonetheless nominated for each main appearing award, and few individuals complained that his singing voice didn’t measure as much as Elvis Presley’s.)
Ms. Abela has maintained that she doesn’t learn evaluations. So has Ms. Taylor-Johnson, a director who appears drawn to troublesome tasks like a moth to a film projector. Her oeuvre contains diversifications of “A Million Little Items” (a memoir with famously fabricated particulars) and “Fifty Shades of Gray” (whose writer famously battled her for artistic management of the movie).
Nonetheless, they’re clearly conscious that the reception has been “a bit barbed,” as Ms. Taylor-Johnson put it. (A publicist used the phrase “merciless.”)
Nevertheless, most critics have praised Ms. Abela particularly, giving her the identical appraisal that Ms. Taylor-Johnson and Mr. Kay of “Trade” individually provided:
“I’ve watched it three million occasions, and I simply can’t discover Marisa in there,” Ms. Taylor-Johnson mentioned.
“After some time, I finished seeing Marisa, stopped seeing Yasmin,” Mr. Kay mentioned. “And that is after spending hours and hours and hours within the edit sales space Yasmin and figuring out each inch of that efficiency.”
Season 3 of “Trade” will see an expanded function for Ms. Abela. The writers mentioned they leaned right into a traumatic new plotline for Yasmin due to Ms. Abela’s potential to search out lightness in darkish scenes and darkness in gentle scenes — “to by no means offer you a false second,” Mr. Kay mentioned.
“It’s a extremely onerous factor to say, as a result of individuals don’t actually like to listen to it,” Mr. Kay mentioned: “However some individuals have it and a few individuals don’t. Marisa, she simply has it.”
