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Marisa Abela felt ’empty’ after playing Amy Winehouse in Back to Black

Marisa Abela only had a week off between Back to Black and season three of Industry.

Marisa Abela was so “physically and emotionally exhausted” by playing Amy Winehouse in Back to Black that she felt “a bit empty” at the end of the shoot.

The Industry actress spent eight months playing the troubled Rehab singer in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic, which charted Winehouse’s rise to fame, her struggle with substance abuse and her tumultuous marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil.

Abela admitted to Elle UK that she threw herself into the role so fully that she was completely spent afterwards.

“I didn’t go method for Amy, but you just can’t help it infiltrating your life,” she shared. “There are so many important acts of self-care that you just forget to do when you’re working. So when I was done, I was just a bit empty. I had been working for eight months on the Amy film and I was physically and emotionally exhausted.”

Back to Black was released in April and received mixed to negative reviews, although Abela won plenty of praise for her portrayal of the singer, who died in 2011 aged 27. The film is now streaming on Netflix.

The British star revealed to the magazine that she only had a week to recover before she had to reprise her role as Yasmin Kara-Hanani in the third season of Industry.

Despite having such little time to rest between projects, Abela was grateful her next job was a familiar one.

“It couldn’t have been any other job (that followed so closely), it was very good that it was Industry and that it was Yasmin,” she stated.

Season three of Industry, which is already airing in the U.S., premieres in the U.K. on 1 October.

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