British pop superstar Robbie Williams’ meteoric rise to fame with the boy band Take That, his dramatic fall and eventual record-breaking solo comeback get an imaginative and wildly entertaining treatment with Paramount Pictures’ musical biopic Better Man.
The film carves new ground in the well-trodden biopic genre with a unique casting for the role of Robbie Williams. Following the groundbreaking success of The Greatest Showman, Australian director Michael Gracey returns to the musical genre with his lead portrayed by a CGI Monkey, played by Jonno Davies.
With his experience working on animated films and incorporating visual effects, Gracey achieves stunning results for the unconventional portrayal that adds an unexpected, moving layer that captures the surrealness of Williams’ own story.
“My background is in animation, so I feel very comfortable animating ideas and seeing if they’re going to work,” explains Gracey. “When I delivered the two [songs that] bookend the film, I thought, “Oh, man, I’m actually feeling something from a bad plastic render.””
Gracey’s journey with Better Man began in an unconventional way—by listening to, and ultimately recording, Robbie Williams as he told his stories. The film blends fantastical elements with an unfiltered intimacy, set against the backdrop of Williams’ iconic pop songs like “Angels,” “Let Me Entertain You,” and “Rock DJ.” These songs are given new life and are reaching a fresh generation of fans.
“This is completely and utterly exciting on a career level,” says Williams. “If there’s any therapy in it, it’s me noticing how grateful I am for this opportunity.”
Michael Gracey and Robbie Williams spoke with Awards Focus about Jonno Davies’ remarkable portrayal of Robbie, the challenges of revisiting the past, the creative decisions that shaped their unique biopic, and their favorite moments from the film.
Awards Focus: I love an origin story that starts with Hugh Jackman. Could you please share how you first got to know Robbie Williams and started recording him telling his life story?
Michael Gracey: Hugh Jackman, bless him. Rob made a video for him during a moment in ‘The Greatest Showman’ when Hugh wasn’t convinced the music would be good enough. That’s when I really first spent time with Rob—pitching him ‘The Greatest Showman’ and then recording a video of him telling Hugh that he had spent the last year and a half working on an album that he would abandon to sing these songs. That’s what he said in the video message.
He then went on to say that if the two of them were having a cup of tea, he would bludgeon Hugh to death with the teacup in order to play P.T. Barnum.
As I was recording it, I thought to myself that if I had scripted this and told Rob what to say to convince Hugh Jackman that the music was good, I would never have come up with anything as brilliant as what he did off the top of his head, with no notice. Fifteen seconds before I hit record on that video, he didn’t even know I was going to ask that of him. And yet, off the top of his head, he could not have been more convincing or original. I guess that’s the excitement I felt doing a series of recordings with Rob.
So, that started a year and a half of me just dropping by his house whenever I was in LA. We’d sit and chat on the mic. At the time, it wasn’t for a film — I just really liked his way of telling stories. He’s very engaging, very original, a true showman, even when he’s just telling a story. In those early months, it really was just me, someone who loves great stories, wanting to capture it.
AF: Robbie, I am curious about building that trust with Michael and ultimately allowing him to tell your story.
Robbie Williams: The first moment I met Michael, I knew he was a very special man who could tell a story. He told me a story in the hallway at a party, and he sold me on a film he never got to make. As soon as he finished explaining it, I wanted to see the film. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth” is a saying we have in England. It means never turn down a great opportunity. So, when Michael Gracey, the director of ‘The Greatest Showman,’ who can tell an amazing story, says, “Do you want me to make a biopic about your life?” you say, “Yes.”
Then, the best thing you can do is get out of his way and let him do everything he wants to do. I’ve never made a movie before, so I wouldn’t know what to do — he does. That’s where the trust comes in.
AF: We have to talk about the monkey of it all. Michael, was there a specific moment when you knew that having a CGI monkey portray Robbie Williams actually worked on an emotional level?
Gracey: There were two key moments. I did previs with Weta—plastic, computer game-style animation—to help block out the musical numbers. I did the same on ‘The Greatest Showman.’ It allows me to work out the camera moves. My background is in animation, so I feel very comfortable animating ideas and seeing if they’re going to work. When I delivered “Feel,” the first musical number, and “My Way,” the two bookends of the film, they were the first ones we did. When I watched them, I thought, “Oh, man, I’m actually feeling something from a bad plastic render.”
If I’m getting emotional watching a previs, I know 100% that it’s going to work when we do it in live action.
AF: Robbie, did you give any notes on the monkey or get to choose how the monkey looks like?
Williams: Fortunately, Jonno Davies has an award-winning—it should be an award-winning ass. He moves so well; he’s a sexy man, in great shape, and he represents me so well in parts of my life where I wasn’t in great shape. So, I’m grateful for this revisionist history of me and my weight.
Gracey: From teenage Robbie to all the way through to the end of the film, it’s Jonno Davies’ performance. He is just so courageous in his performance and his study of Robbie and what makes Robbie who he is from those early teenage years where he’s got a really high-pitched voice to all the way through to the guy who’s standing on the stage at the end – there is such an evolution that he goes through, and it’s extraordinary.
AF: Robbie, did the two of you spend any time together as Jonno was preparing for the role?
Williams: Oh, no. He grew up with me, it seems. He sent me a video of him doing karaoke as me before he was even asked to play me. He’s done an amazing job.
Gracey: Jonno just did such a deep dive on every interview, every music video. Even Rob and I would look back at footage and just say, “Damn, that’s you.”
AF: When I was watching the Royal Albert Hall scene at the end of the film, I found myself thinking that maybe you will switch over to actual Robbie at the very end, so I’m curious if that option was ever on the table?
Gracey: That became a conversation for quite a while. It was something I never wanted to do. It’s about emotional investment. For people who know Robbie Williams, there might be some satisfaction in it, but the truth is that the person we’ve followed throughout this film is the monkey. So, at the very last moment, I just wanted to stay with him. If the final number of the film is about him finally making peace with his father and then with himself—after fighting himself through drugs and alcohol, or physically at Knebworth, through all these different incarnations of self-loathing—he’s never at peace. In that one moment where he finds peace to go to someone else? I felt like it wouldn’t work.
Many people pitched it, and many producers wanted it, but I was very sure that the power was in staying with the character the audience had invested in.
AF: Was this a form of therapy for you Robbie? Did you gain something from looking back?
Williams: The great want and the great need haven’t subsided, and no matter how much I dig with my spade to try and fill this hole, it’s not filling up—and it won’t. The great need and the great want take away the therapeutic value; I need this for my career and I need this for my life. The therapeutic value will be realized at some point after the film comes out. Right now, as it stands, this is completely and utterly exciting on a career level. If there’s any therapy in it, it’s me noticing how grateful I am for this opportunity and finding joy in it where there once was no joy.
AF: How has the film been received by the people closest to you?
Williams: Triggering, in both the best and worst ways. The unknowns—because there are people in the movie who weren’t given a script and don’t know how they’re represented. I’m sure I’ll find out through lawyers.
AF: How did you go about re-recording some of the songs with Robbie Williams and getting the new versions to match the emotion of the scene? Did you show him clips or sequences?
Gracey: There was a lot of re-recording, and it was always done in bits. We’d put together scratch tracks where we could play with the emotion before bringing Rob in. There’s an incredible Australian singer and piano player named Rai Thistlethwayte, and we would try so many different versions of how best to get in and out of the songs with Rai. We used those scratch tracks while cutting together previs, until we finally said, “This is the right way to sing it, this is the right time to go back to a Robbie recording.”
Because that was the other thing: once you get into the song and you’re feeling the emotion, by the time you hit the chorus, you want to be back at that level—the power of the song, whether it’s “Angels” or something else. Whether you’re spacing things out while singing and leaving time to tell a story, then singing the next line and leaving more time— all those things were worked out ahead of the shoot with these scratch tracks.
So, when we got Rob into the studio, we were very specific about it: “Sing from here to here, because by then we can go back to your original recording.”
Music was a completely different thing. For something like “Rock DJ,” the entire song is made up of the original vocals. There are a lot of live vocals as well—the performance at Knebworth is the original live vocal—but in every case, the song production is completely new. The musical production, the way we get into the song, the scale of the orchestrations, the influences—there were many more iterations on the music production side than there were on the vocal side.
AF: Robbie, what was it like for you seeing the whole film for the first time? Did you see it in little pieces before that?
Wiliams: Watching my grandma’s funeral was deeply traumatic, and there was grieving, but I’m glad I got to experience it in jigsaw pieces instead of seeing the whole thing at once. When I did eventually watch the entire thing, I could just watch it as an audience member. By then, I had already done my crying and processed how it made me feel before seeing the whole thing.
AF: Michael, did you raid Robbie’s closet at any point to use some of the real clothing items?
Gracey: Rob doesn’t have a lot of those clothes anymore, which really annoyed me. I wish he’d kept them all. We had to raid archives, call up Jean Paul Gaultier’s archives, and have shirts sent to New Zealand for scanning. It was a real fashion tour de force, to be honest, trying to find some of those pieces—original British Knights jackets, for example. There was a crazy amount of attire from that era we had to track down, and credit goes to Cappi Ireland, who did an amazing job on all the wardrobe.
AF: The movie tackles themes like addiction, fame, mental health, but also the vulnerability it takes to write your own lyrics. How do you approach that process now, Robbie? Has it gotten easier over the years?
Williams: It depends on who I’m in the room with, so I always choose to be with people I’m comfortable around. If there is competition, ego, or if I don’t trust the people, I can’t do it. But if I’m with nurturing people that I feel comfortable with, I find it very easy.
AF: Michael, I’d love it if you could talk about how the line, “Songs are only valuable when they cost you something,” came about. It’s a wonderful scene between Robbie Williams and Guy Chambers.
Gracey: I wish I could take credit for that line; I really do. It might be my favorite line in the film, but I’m pretty sure Simon Gleeson wrote it. It’s interesting— in a very short space of time, we had to show that the collaboration between Rob and Guy Chambers was essentially the launch of his solo career and the source of some of his biggest hits. You meet a character who challenges Rob in a way that shows the magic of what it is for the two of them to work together.
It’s a very difficult scene because, in films, when you show songwriting happening in real time, it often doesn’t feel believable. It can feel like two people faking their way toward something they already know. But it’s a credit to the writing that both Simon and Oliver [Cole] did in this moment. That scene was written really late in production, and I remember it was one of the ones I was most worried about.
When I saw it assembled roughly, I thought, “Oh, no, this works.” Actually, I tried to cut it even shorter, and it lost some of the magic. It’s a credit to the editor who just said, “You need this—it’s a real moment.”
Him standing by the window before he gets the confidence to start singing; that shot of him by the window maybe my favorite shot in the film. Someone who’s trying to find the strength to expose themselves emotionally, it’s a very complex thing to do and I think Jonno nailed it, and I think the way Weta represented it was perfect.
AF: Robbie, do you have a favorite scene from the film?
Williams: I do. My favorite scene is when my father walks into the lake to talk to me, as I’ve passed out on a door that I’ve ripped off its hinges in a moment of anger and frustration. It’s not because I recognize myself in it or my dad in it; I just see two great actors delivering a wonderful script, and it’s very powerful.
Paramount Pictures releases ‘Better Man’ in select theatres on December 25, 2024, and nationwide on January 17, 2025.