With her new biopic hitting cinemas on May 17, 2024, Neil Patrick Harris‘ Amy Winehouse cake is doing the rounds again on social media. The How I Met Your Mother star was slammed by fans in 2011 for a “distasteful” Halloween dessert depicting the “Rehab” singer who’d passed away months before.
Winehouse’s life is the subject of a new biopic Back To Black directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. The movie showcases her journey in writing her iconic album of the same name, which won five Grammys in 2008; as well as her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil. “She was out and she was at pubs and at restaurants and, you know, singing when she shouldn’t have been sometimes. And also when she should have been,” actress Marisa Abela, who played the star-studded singer told AP.
Winehouse died in July 2011 at age 27 of accidental alcohol poisoning after years of battling various substance abuse, mental health struggles, and an eating disorder. Given the timing of Neil Patrick Harris’ Amy Winehouse cake, many fans thought it was a “grotesque” decision that caused them to “loathed that man ever since”.
Neil Patrick Harris’ Amy Winehouse cake
For their Halloween 2011 party, Buzzfeed reported that Neil Patrick Harris and his husband, David Burtka, presented a cake labeled “The Corpse of Amy Winehouse” just three months after the singer died. Jesse Tyler Ferguson and his now-husband, Justin Mikita, were guests at the party and Justin shared a photo of the platter to Twitter at the time.
The tweet, which was swiftly deleted, read: “Look who showed up @ActuallyNPH & @GourmetMD’s Halloween party last night. Looking good.” (Out of respect for Amy we’re not going to share the image but you can see it for yourself here).
The image of the gruesome cake first resurfaced in 2022 when writer Ashley Reed illuminated a new generation to its existence. “I cannot believe how many very online people over the age of 25 are just now finding out about Neil Patrick Harris’s disgusting Amy Winehouse cake,” she tweeted. “Yea Neil Patrick Harris quite literally had a cake mimicking Amy Winehouse’s corpse for Halloween soon after she died. I’ve loathed that man ever since,” wrote in a follow-up.
On the subReddit FauxMoi, fans shared their collective disgust. “I think people forget how widely she was mocked during her life and after. Honestly until the Amy doc came out I feel like most people just wrote her off as some drunk junkie,” one wrote.
Another wrote about how it changed their opinion of the Doogie Houser child star. “I’ve never been able to look at him the same way after this. I think it shows his real character and it’s just so horribly grotesque,” a fan observed.
Another added, “Society is way overdue for a discussion about the way Amy Winehouse was treated in the early 2000s and 2010s by the misogynistic celebrity media machine and the people who were a captive audience to it. Neil Patrick Harris’ f—ked up corpse cake is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Winehouse has been open about her struggle with addiction to alcohol and drugs. Her mother said after her death, “Her body couldn’t cope with that amount of alcohol after three weeks of abstinence. It was the lack of consistency, the stopping and starting again. Everyone wishes for a peaceful death. My only comfort is that Amy’s was peaceful. I like to think she went to sleep and just didn’t wake up, so I hope she didn’t suffer.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, help is available. Call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for free, confidential support.
