NEW YORK (AP) – It was after one particularly emotional premiere of the new biopic about his life that Robbie Williams resolved he couldn’t be “the crying guy” at every screening.
Better Man, which chronicles the life of Williams, the British pop star and former Take That singer, can hit him differently at different times. Jet lag is a factor. So is who’s in the building. One screening with his band, he said, was “healing”. But he’s self-conscious enough about all the emotion that he can be defensive about it.
“In real life I don’t cry that much,” Williams said and then smiles. “You have a biography about you and have the world go, ‘I’ve seen you and heard you’ and come tell me how you deal with it’.”
One twist? The Williams heard in Better Man is Williams, himself. But the Williams seen in the movie is a computer-generated chimpanzee. Michael Gracey, who directed the 2017 musical hit The Greatest Showman, had the novel idea that Williams should get the big-screen biopic treatment, but with a monkey. Relying on Weta’s motion capture technology, the actor Jonno Davies stands in for Williams.
In Better Man, that makes for a compelling spin on the music biopic, partly because it’s still a quite R-rated journey through the ups and downs of mega pop stardom.
Williams, who met a reporter last month on a stopover in New York, also hopes it will expand his footprint in America, where he’s famously less famous than he is in Europe.
“If I want to phone Macron, I phone Macron. If I want to phone Keir Starmer, I phone Keir Starmer. If I want to phone Trump, he’s not taking my call,” Williams said with a laugh. “Maybe he would, I don’t know.”
“Maybe this film moves the needle for me,” Williams, 50, added. “Or if it doesn’t, I’ll do something else.”
What both a conversation with Williams and Better Man have in common is a frankness about the experience of fame.
Williams, now, though, is a reformed bad boy – a family man with four kids with all kinds of plans, like building hotels and buying sports teams.
“At the moment,” he said, “I have the wide-optimism of a new artiste.”
AP: DID YOUR IDENTIFICATION WITH MONKEYS PREDATE BETTER MAN?
WILLAMS: Well, let me know, in the biography of your life, what animal would play you?
AP. I DON’T KNOW. A CHIPMUNK?
WILLIAMS: I asked my friend this morning, Joey McIntyre, from New Kids on the Block, and he said, “an owl”. And I agreed with him. An owl would be good for him. Did this predate? I guess so, subconsciously. My MO has been cheeky. What’s more cheeky than a cheeky monkey? I’ve been a cheeky monkey all my life. There’s no more cheekier monkey.
AP: DO YOU THINK IT’S EASIER FOR AUDIENCES TO EMPATHISE WITH A MONKEY THAN FOR YOU?
WILLIAMS: We care for animals more than we care for humans, most of us. I guess there is a removal, as well. It’s very much a human story but if you’re watching it and someone’s playing Robbie Williams, you’re thinking: Does he look like him? Does he act like him? Does he talk like him?
AP: FAME, AS YOU DESCRIBE IT, WOULD SEEM CLEARLY UNHEALTHY. BUT DOES SOME PART OF YOU NEED IT?
WILLIAMS: It’s different now. I love it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’m 50 and I’m incredibly grateful for fame. It facilitates everything that I need and want to do with my life. I was just too young to receive it, and I wasn’t surrounded by good people. And I wasn’t good people. But now I can’t speak highly enough of it. (Laughs) – Jake Coyle
