The internet was aghast a couple of weeks ago when it was announced that Marisa Abela would be playing Amy Winehouse in an upcoming biopic about the troubled singer, mainly because she didn’t look anywhere near enough like her to play the role.

Featured Image VIA 

I’m not really sure if looks should play a part in casting when it comes to biopics/true life stories any more than the sexuality of the characters/actors should though and one man who has stepped forward to defend the casting of Abela is Amy herself’s father, Mitch Winehouse. TMZ managed to get a hold of him for a comment on the biopic, where he said the following:

Marisa’s a great choice for the role, even if she doesn’t look exactly like Amy.

People tend to focus too much on looks when it comes to biopics.

There’s too much emphasis on looks… because there [are] plenty of Hollywood examples of actors not looking like their real-life characters.

Not sure if Mitch has a vested interest in promoting the movie as he’ll be getting a nice pay day from it or if he is just being safe about Marisa Abela here, but either way I doubt he had to come out and say that so it’s pretty nice of him to do so. Of course, Eddie Marsan is portraying Mitch in the movie, which is a bit of a glow up for the guy considering that Eddie’s almost 20 years younger than Mitch at the moment and looks considerably skinnier than him too. Guess these things can go both ways – take a look below and see what you think:

Yeah, I reckon Mitch is definitely on the side of the fence that says actors don’t necessarily need to look like the people they’re playing, don’t you? In any case, if they really wanted to do that they could just deep fake everything these days anyway, but what would be the point of that? Grow up with all your dumb criticism.

For more of the same, check out when Neil Patrick Harris made an Amy Winehouse corpse cake. Whatever was he thinking there?