I’ve known of Robbie Williams ever since the Take That, the British boy band, burst onto the music scene in the 1990s. Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and Williams took the U.K., Europe and most of the world by storm, but they didn’t crack America.
When Williams broke away from the band, he launched a solo career. American success eluded him, as he continued to sell out stadiums and garner more awards. Somehow audiences stateside didn’t bite.
Maybe the third time is a charm for Williams. Enter filmmaker Michael Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”), whose latest film “Better Man” is a biopic about Williams with a twist. Jonno Davies plays Williams as a CGI monkey, with WETA FX doing all the motion capture to transform the actor. “Better Man” (now playing in theaters) is Williams’ story. It is a movie musical where if you don’t know who Robbie Williams was before, you’ll know who he is after.
It’s the day after the Golden Globes. Williams attended the event, where his song “Forbidden Road” was nominated. He lost to “Emilia Perez” songwriters Camile and Clement Ducol.
He was briefly on the Oscar shortlist for original song before the tune was disqualified. He’s not bitter. “Rules are rules,” Williams says, feeling honored to have been invited to the party, even if it was for a brief time.
When I walk into his suite at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, he’s delighted that the last interview of the day is in person. Williams has spent the entire day on Zoom doing back-to-back interviews, promoting the film and giving the American press a chance to know him. The film has also been shortlisted for VFX.
We had met a few weeks earlier for an Academy Q&A, and I’m a familiar face. He is excited to meet again. “My new mate is the head of Variety,” he grins, referring to our co-editor in-chief Ramin Setoodeh. He’s not kidding — the two met at the Globes. Williams pulls out his phone and snaps a selfie of us so he can send it to Setoodeh. At the end of our conversation, he sends Setoodeh a voice note with comments.
Williams admits that he’s tired and jet-lagged, but for an hour, we sit and talk as I, both a Brit and someone who has followed his career, try my best to answer the question: “Who is Robbie Williams?”
Robbie, what are you feeling right now?
It’s a fucking lot at the best of times, with enough sleep and no jet lag, yeah, and not being somebody that suffers mental illness, it would be a lot to deal with. There has been so much promo for this film, and I’ve left no stone unturned. I have leaped into it, knowing that there will be burnout and semi-nervous breakdowns and being grumpy with my wife and the kids.
At the time, I was getting on the expectation train of what this could mean to me and my life and career — the third act. Mix that with not being famous in America and that being part of the conversation. Being in L.A., Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sydney, Melbourne, back to L.A. to do the Golden Globes, all that in the last 12 days, it’s a fucking lot.
What has that been like where you’re in Sydney one minute, performing for 12,000 people on New Year’s Eve, getting mobbed, and then you’re in L.A and you can walk around freely. Is that freeing for you?
Freedom for me is the ability to derive joy from situations where I could find none. That were supposed to be magical experiences. Freedom is the conversation in my mind being more positive than negative. Freedom for me only exists in my mind. It doesn’t exist outside of my mind. It doesn’t exist because I can walk around unnoticed in L.A. or I can walk around in London, not as freely. All the freedom that I’m going to find exists in this space between these two ears.
Let’s go back to young Robbie. You’re in school, about to get your GCSE results, you don’t do well, and then you find out you’re going to be in a boy band. What do you remember about that moment?
We have our options in our third year (of school). What l learned to do in the fourth and fifth year — and there were active participants in this — was to avoid detection that I was not doing anything that needed to be done, such as coursework. In lessons, I chose woodwork, and you had to come up with a project, so I bought this long stick of wood, and I remember bringing it down the hill to go to school. This perfectly encapsulates my last two years at school, but I stood by a sander and sanded this long piece of wood for two years to make it look as though I was doing something. The best thing about my school life was the laughter that was elicited from my friends. I don’t think I’ve laughed that much since.
The worst thing about my school life was the lessons and not understanding that I’m neurodivergent, I’m on the spectrum and I am dyspraxic, dyslexic and have dyscalculia. I just thought I was dumb, and then receiving the news that I got nothing higher than a “D” was the combination of my work or lack thereof. So it was scary because I have a very terrifying mother with high expectations. She didn’t need or want an errant son that had not applied himself to the task at hand. We’re all being told at this time that the next two years are the most important years of your life. I would like to say, “Fuck that. Fuck you. How dare you tell me that at such an impressionable time in my life, in anybody’s life, your future lives — and dies on this set of information that you’re being asked to retain. If you have an inability to do that, education is not for you, not that kind of education.”
Not experiencing or acquiring success at school was the most important bit of fuel that I will ever have received, because what I couldn’t apply myself to, I apply myself to the opposite of that 100 percent of the time my life depends on it.
Were you always a creative person?
1970s and 1980s England was not well versed in showing you a world where your meager talents could be expanded on. You were either a great artist, and you could do what the masters did, or you were nothing. You weren’t supposed to be in the entertainment industry. This was a dream that was not for you. It was for special people who have been touched by the special unicorn. I’ve had to be auto-didactic and learn how to shine the light on all creative aspects of myself, and I’m learning that I’m capable of way more than I ever thought I was, or way more than it was expected of me or shown that I could be.
Take That happens and you’re in the biggest boy band in the country, but you’re also 16 years old. What is your life like and how are you navigating this being just a teenager?
I leave school and I’m 16, I joined a boy band, and this is what happens within the boy band. Gary Barlow is a proven songwriting talent. I think Nigel Martin Smith recognized that he needed a bit of help when it came to stagecraft and personality at that point in his life, so he put four other boys around him. He didn’t want and couldn’t understand why he needed us four Muppets. Nigel Martin Smith, from what I feel, was only managing Gary Barlow. There was a divide and conquer where none of us were made to feel as though our jobs were safe, because we were told that our jobs weren’t safe.
Jason Orange came from five brothers and was trying to have his voice heard, and was now with five other brothers where his voice wasn’t heard. You’ve got Mark Owen, who was ignored, Gary Barlow who was lauded as the prince, and you’ve got Howard Donald, who was quite happy to go along with the ride and appreciated everything that he was given. On the other hand, I was the whipping boy who was told, “I was wrong that I wasn’t getting it right, that I was lazy, that I didn’t deserve my place and I could be replaced at any time.” So I felt vulnerable, sensitive and not loved and not seen at the same time.
At home, there was a contract out of me to kill me. My life changed very quickly. I had a mother who suffered from mental illness. Her mental illness, sadness and depression came at the same time as being both parents to two children, and also having her hopes and dreams and business that she had to tend to and work all the hours that God sent. She was exhausted from this and had no energy other than being sad. When I came into the house, I didn’t know which version of my mom I was going to get. It’s no coincidence that I learned how to gauge a room and act appropriately from every limited living moment of my experience of growing up with my mom and trying to act accordingly to win favor. I now do that for a job.
So I’ve got this unsafe home life where I’m trying to placate a sad mom. I’ve also got an outside life where everybody is not happy with my success, so much so that I’m not safe anywhere that I go. I’ve got a work life where there’s a divide-and-conquer situation going on, and I’m not safe there, so I’m not safe anywhere. At the same time, I’m learning to be a human. I’m learning to be an adult whilst being thrust into a spotlight where the spotlight is telling you who and what you are, and all of those things combined are quite potent.
You talked about not feeling safe. At what point in your life did you feel safe?
I think that there is an embracing and acceptance of fame and my job. When Teddy, our first child, arrived, I had to do things instead of needing to do things to fix me. I was looking at the industry to fix me. And it did the opposite. Once Teddy arrived, something happens intrinsically inside, and maternally and metaphorically, I’m building a moat, I’m filling it full of water, I’ve got to build this castle and I’ve got to protect us. That was the biggest gift because it stopped being about me and it started being about them.
Michael Gracey was fascinated by your story and “Better Man” and was inspired by your conversations with him. Was it therapeutic to talk to him?
I can’t see it was out of the goodness of his heart that he just wanted to come around and record me telling him stories, but that’s what he said was happening. At some point, he had the idea to do a biopic, but he must have had half an idea to do it anyway. He kept coming to my house and asking me things, and then he did. And because I’m a professional attention seeker for a living, it was too good of an opportunity to turn down.
Were you ever going to appear in “Better Man”?
I was going to be in it, I was going to be the lead. But it was during COVID, when you didn’t know what was happening next. I have a very fearful wife, and she didn’t want me to be away for three months. I agreed to it, and I didn’t want that for our marriage. So Jonno steps up to the plate and does an incredible job.
What was it like seeing this version of your story?
Before it was pieced together, I’d seen scenes and they were profoundly the greatest hits of your grief, one by one. They were all the triggering moments of your life being shown to you over a matter of months. I’m not saying I processed it by the time I saw it together as one piece, but the first time I watched it, I just hoped that it wasn’t shit. And then I was blown away by it. I instantly thought, “Can I believe my senses when it comes to how good this movie is?”
Now that it’s out there — and the overwhelming amount of texts and emails that I’m receiving are lengthy tomes about what a profound effect this is having on people — I believe it is a piece of work that I thought it was when I first watched it, which is very special.
One scene that so many people are talking about is “Rock DJ.” That song was a sexual awakening for many in the LGBTQ community What does that mean to you? To be loved within that community?
It means the world to me because I know what that community and its people have meant to me and the artists that have come out of that community. My world has been massively shaped by the Black community, the gay community and the heroes that have come from there. Also, as a 16-year-old, I spent the first 18 months of Take That doing gay club after gay club, and the safety that I felt there and the acceptance that I felt there was directly opposed to the contract out me to kill me, and all the pubs and clubs that I couldn’t go into in Stoke-on-Trent or the rest of the world. So I have a massive fondness. And I think that I am queer in every aspect, other than not finding men sexually attractive. I’m like an asexual, straight gay guy.
I know you’re tired and jetlagged, but in between interviews, are you able to tap into that creativity and write a lyric or two?
I’ve been doing drawings on the plane, and my latest bunch of drawings is a series called “Radical Honesty at the Social Event.” I’ve managed to do 15 drawings on the plane from Australia to Los Angeles.
I drew me, and underneath it says, “Yes, I didn’t want to come. And now I don’t want to be here.”
OK, so who is Robbie Williams?
Somebody who understands that positive thoughts reinforce positive thoughts. Somebody who is on a trajectory of happiness. Somebody who causes less chaos in a place where only chaos existed. Somebody who has an understanding that there was a higher version of myself that I could live up to and try to achieve.
I’ve been in a relationship for 19 years with my wife that’s monogamous. I never thought I’d be able to be in a relationship that long and also keep my dick in my pants as well. I am somebody on an upward trajectory, where feeling peaceful is not only something that I can look forward to, it’s something that I’m currently enjoying. I also am somebody who realizes that being Robbie Williams in the world and what that means is far too important to me, and I need to do something about that. I need to exist outside of a place without people telling me I exist. That’s the next thing to attack.
Where would that place be?
Professionally, I’m just swinging from trying to get success. It’s not fame, it’s success. I’m going from one vine to another. And, you know, if the door is locked in this one place, then I pivot and look at another place. And I’m trying to figure out whether pivoting is the most successful and gratifying thing to do whilst I keep searching, or whether I pivot into a place of emotional security and intelligence, and learn to do that instead. But that didn’t pay the bills.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
