“The intersting thing in meeting all these people is you get a sense of what it’s like to be the person in the center” said Amy (2015) director Asif Kapadia in a recent interview. Both Kapadia and his producer James Gay-Rees spoke about what it was like to make the film Amy and its effect on their perception of her. “Everyone’s got a bit of guilt. Everyone felt they could have done more or someone else should have done more.” Kapadia talks about how, in making his previous film Senna (2010), it was amazing to make a film about somebody that was universally loved. “With Amy it was kind of the opposite. There were a lot of egos, a lot of people who wanted it to be about them….A lot of people felt why has she become well known? Why isn’t it me? There were a lot of wannabe musicians in Amy’s circle that felt, why wasn’t I the one that became famous?”

“She was just too far ahead of everyone. She’d get bored. That’s a recurring theme. School made her…she got bored it was too easy, and she was pretty much thrown out of every school she every went to” said Kapadia. Not only was Amy not in school most of the time, but at the age of 16 she entered into a relationship with a much older guy. “There were just no barriers.” “Her mother’s mom wasn’t motherly to her so she couldn’t be motherly to Amy” said Rees.

“It’s that classic case of an addict looking for someone worse off than her to look after so she didnt’ have to look after herself” said Kapadia in discussing Amy’s husband Blake. Blake was undoubtedly the main reason for Amy falling deeper into addiction and preventing her from recovering. “He was an easy scapegoat at the time. He was no angel, but at the same time it was very conveniant to say that he was the root of all evil…without him she would still be alive today or she’d be very happy, All her issues were there before Blake came into the picture” said Kapadia.

Clearly from a young age Amy arlready had some issues. In the film Amy’s long time friend Juliette stated that in Amy’s early teens she was already on anti-depressents. Much of these issues most likely stem from Amy’s mom not being a mother to her and letting her get away with everything as well as Amy’s father being absent most of the time. But as Kapadia mentioned, and is evident in the film, boredom was a recurring theme in Amy’s life which, according to Rees and Kapadia, stemmed from her intelligence.

Even after she matured these issues didn’t go away, just the opposite, they spiraled out of control. It seems evident from both the film and what the director and producer had to say that Amy didn’t have the best group of people surrounding her. A lot of her friends and members of her entourage were jealous of her fame, her mother could’nt discipline her, her father seemed only to be there when there was money in it for him, and her husband whom she loved deeply dragged her deeper into addiction. The only person who was able to steer Amy in the right direction was her paternal Grandmother who died just before Back to Black came out. Around that time is also when Amy really started to spiral downward. In the end it seemed to be childhood issues, a poor entourage, and chronic dissatisfatcion that killed Amy Winehouse.