Why Robbie Williams is played by a chimpanzee in his new biopic

Saturday, 7 December 2024

Robbie Williams is simply undeniable.

Nobody wanted to like a British boy band ejectee attempting to mount a solo career. But the songs were just too damn good, and the swagger was just too damn persuasive.

The guy who’d spent the first half of the 90s as “the cheeky one” in Take That, formed as England’s answer to New Kids on the Block, emerged in the latter part of the decade as one of the most popular singers of all time, driven by massive hit singles like Angels, Millennium and She’s the One. You’re humming them right now, aren’t you?

Long before Justin Timberlake and Harry Styles legitimised the boy-band-to-solo-popstar trajectory, Robbie Williams forged an unlikely path to become an all-timer.

And we bloody loved him. Still do. Like MacGyver, jandals and singer-songwriters who surf, Robbie Williams over-indexes in New Zealand. I have no data to support this assertion. But you know it in your heart to be true, dear reader. We’ve always lapped up his specific combination of insouciant shamelessness and pure pop power.

The unnatural sway Robbie Williams has over Kiwis first became fully apparent to me at the Bruce Mason Centre on Auckland’s North Shore in July 2000. Several hundred media industry types had been invited to a private promotional showcase on a weekday afternoon at which Williams was due to perform a few songs.

Most of the crowd could have reasonably been characterised as eye-rolling cynics still holding on to their Smash Hits magazine photo shoot-derived perceptions of Williams as someone not to be taken seriously. But within seconds of his first song (I think it was Rock DJ), we were all on our feet screaming like the front row of a 1964 Ray Columbus concert. Robbie Williams had instantly reduced a theatre full of Auckland coolies into a quivering heap of devoted fandom. He was simply undeniable.

Williams has had many ups and downs in the decades since then – he even got back together with Take That at one point – but most importantly, he’s spent the majority of that time prioritising his mental and physical wellbeing, a process he has been admirably forthright about, and now lives in England with his wife of 14 years, American actress Ayda Field, and their four children.

He remains popular in New Zealand, having performed two sold-out concerts at the Mission Estate Winery last November, just when he was re-entering the zeitgeist somewhat thanks to the release of his four-part Netflix documentary series.

And now his life is the subject of a new big screen popstar biopic called Better Man, in which Williams is portrayed by a CGI chimpanzee.

Everything else in the film is “normal”, but the cocky kid from Stoke-on-Trent is represented by a photoreal digital chimp along the lines of the modern Planet of the Apes movies. And like those apes, is the creation of Wellington’s own Wētā FX.

This movie, and that chimpanzee, is the reason I’m on a video chat with Robbie Williams at an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning. But before we get onto the film, he volunteers that he really felt the love at the aforementioned Mission Estate concerts.

“[The winery shows] were on fire, do you know what I mean?” the 50-year-old intones with an entirely undiminished Northern laddishness. “Just the energy there and the love and the appreciation of me as a person was f…ing incredible. Because not every gig in every country is incredible, and on the last tour, New Zealand was definitely a highlight.”

Only Robbie Williams could get away with such shameless pandering. But when I subsequently enquire about breaking out so quickly and intensely in New Zealand, I am reminded of his affection for candour.

“It blew my mind. [But] back in the day, I was going through an awful lot of very bad mental illness where I couldn’t derive joy from any situation. So I don’t have much fondness for any parts of my career where I was being successful, because it was making me want to kill myself.

“So if I can answer that question fully, my real response is this: it blew my f…ing mind that New Zealand cared. That’s what I remember. Per person, I was more successful in New Zealand than I was anywhere in the world. Just that… it’s a reality-breaking stat…”

There are some fond memories of that time, however.

“… and while I was there, I played loads of golf, and I really enjoyed it. And I slept with a few people. And I think even still today people probably know who I slept with.”

Well, I wasn’t gonna bring it up, but he’s right. If you’re not sure what he’s referring to, ask the person next to you what Robbie Williams did on his first tour here.

Anyway, the chimpanzee. The concept came from Better Man’s director Michael Gracey, who got to know Williams when he consulted on Gracey’s Hugh Jackman musical The Greatest Showman.

The pair became friends, and responding to his sense of storytelling, Gracey began interviewing Williams about his life, forming plans for a movie. Listening back to the audio, the director took note of how often Williams casually referred to himself as a monkey. Inspiration struck, and a visual metaphor was taken to new extremes.

“I thought it was an incredible idea that I didn’t think twice about,” says Williams. “Before it was mooted at the end of the sentence when Michael Gracey was telling me, I was like, yes, I’m in! But I am dumbfounded why people would find it confusing.”

Although conceptually onboard, he says he was trepidatious when he first watched the finished product.

“As the movie titles started, I was overwhelmed with: ‘Oh my God. What if it’s f…ing shit?’. It turns out that my mind was blown by it. This comes from somebody that can’t really say a decent thing about themselves, and mean it. This film, it’s f…ing incredible. And I don’t think anything I’ve done is f…ing incredible.”

Although it’s a biassed opinion, he’s not wrong. Against hard-to-determine odds, Better Man works. Williams’ incredible songbook helps, but the novel conceit at its core helps set it apart from the “anodyne” (Robbie’s word) popstar biopics that have flooded theatres recently.

“I’d given up on biopics, to be honest with you, for that very reason. I saw [the] N.W.A [one] and I saw Bohemian Rhapsody, and I haven’t seen one since.”

They’re “flavourless and sanitised” says Williams, after asking me what anodyne means. “And the people they’re depicting in these movies are the opposite of that. So I reckon that throwing the monkey into the mix is a hand grenade, and I’m very glad and grateful to be leading the charge with the hand grenade with my hand.”

He has the boffins at Wētā FX alongside him too, and in depicting Williams’ famously hedonistic rise, they break significant new special effects ground.

“It is not until you have animated an ape snorting lines of drugs that you can truly say ‘This has never been seen before!’,” VFX supervisor Luke Millar told me via email.

A young actor named Jonno Davies performed motion-capture for “Robbie” on set, and Williams himself narrates. Millar says Williams was a trusting collaborator, and that the trickiest part was finding the visual balance between chimp and Northerner.

“We ended up leaning into Robbie’s actual eyes and eyebrows,” said Millar. “We created a 1:1 digital match based on scans and reference photos, before letting the chimp features appear stronger in the rest of the face.”

The tenderest thread in the film is young Robbie’s fondness for watching legendary skit show The Two Ronnies with his beloved nan (played by Alison Steadman), a scenario that’ll feel very familiar to many New Zealanders.

“I think the thing that Brits and Kiwis have, we don’t take ourselves seriously,” theorises Williams. “There is a wonderful aspect of revelling in silliness and the gentleness of The Two Ronnies…”

He proudly displays his The Two Ronnies tattoo.

“…it’s ingrained in our DNA. It’s always confusing when you meet somebody that’s pretentious from either country, because you’re just like: how the f… have you missed the memo?”

The film also explores the dynamic between Robbie the popstar and Robert the person. I ask if the desire to express that duality to the world was why he participated in the film. Turns out, not.

“Look, I’m a professional attention seeker. Without attention, I cease to exist. I need these things to facilitate the third act of my career. So I suppose, the cynical version of why this, why now? There is a need for oxygen to be facilitated to the lungs of my career.”

As our brief time together comes to an end, Williams returns to his wellbeing.

“At one point, I wanted to be the most f…ed-up person in any room. I want to now be the wellest motherf…er in the room and have that be the energy that propels me forward.”

I ask him for any final thoughts.

“Well, what is interesting on my journey is how much I’ve got wrapped up in being Robbie Williams. I think you would have to be some sort of Buddhist monk to be able to separate the ego and the want and the need and the desire to be successful, and have what success means…”

He trails off.

“…I don’t know really what I’m trying to say. All I’m trying to say is this: please watch my movie. Because if you don’t come, I don’t exist.”

Like I said, undeniable.

WATCH: Better Man is in New Zealand theatres on Boxing Day.

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