Any cinema lover knows that a Boxing Day release usually means two things – a masterpiece of a film and huge box office sales for the people who made it. The date is reserved for the industry’s biggest and best offerings, and comes before the “dump months” of January and February, when sales slump. This year, the UK list includes a perhaps unlikely contender: Robbie Williams’ semi-autobiographical film, Better Man. In it, the former Take That star is portrayed by a chimpanzee, but voiced by the singer, and it tells the raw and honest story of Robbie’s life from childhood to pop stardom.
Chatting to OK! about what audiences can look forward to and what it means to him to be the star Monkey business of a $110m production, which was led by The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey, Robbie is, in his own words, buzzing. “I’m buzzing, I’m absolutely buzzing,” he says, with no less enthusiasm than we’ve come to expect from him. “I am immensely proud and immensely grateful for this opportunity. The amount of warmth, empathy and genuine goodwill that this whole project has fostered has been warming for the soul – and I love that I’m now in a place to receive it without pushing it away and belittling it. In many ways, it already feels like a win before the movie’s even come out.”
At the time of going to press, Better Man hadn’t been given its official age rating, but the most recent trailer was assigned as PG in the UK. According to Robbie, it’s an unflinching look at his life so far, highs and lows (no pun intended). It doesn’t shy away from his experiences of addiction and mental health, but, as Robbie puts it, that’s what makes it such a “human story”. “Of course my story isn’t unique,” he says during a media panel at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. “Everybody that experiences a bright amount of fame, an omnipresence… nobody comes out of it the other side going, ‘And I’m still a well-rounded individual.’ Something happens. The world warps you, and you warp it, across the board, you don’t get to escape it. If you’re lucky enough – through self-examination, help and the right people around you – you can come out the other end, like I have, right now, as a 50-year-old.”
With the recent tragic death of Liam Payne (after which Robbie publicly backed a petition calling for legislation to protect the mental health of artists in the entertainment industry), it’s possible the film will be seen through a much more nuanced lens, and possibly a more empathic one. Back in the 1990s, Robbie was labelled (not necessarily unfairly) as the wayward member of Take That, which he joined at 16 alongside Gary Barlow, Mark Owen, Howard Donald and Jason Orange. Robbie revealed in his 2023 four-part docuseries that back then he was “ingesting everything he could get his hands on”. Alongside a concoction of ecstasy and cocaine, he drank a bottle of vodka a night before rehearsals – every night.
He’s now been sober for around 25 years – and married with four children – and has clearly spent a lot of that time reflecting. “So, there’s the allure and the glamour and the idea that fame is going to fix you, because I think that’s what 90% of people are subconsciously thinking when they come to it. It’s, ‘If I get all of these things, I will be whole and I will be fixed.’ And what it does is it actually gives you an existential crisis that is unbelievable. “Like I say, through self-examination and help, you can come through it. What I’m currently experiencing as a 50-year-old at the other end of that arc is what the glamour and the applause and the excitement should have meant. I am on my journey in the most namaste way – and I make no apologies – healed, healing. I’m in a separate place to where I was.”
Better Man focuses heavily on Robbie’s relationships with other people – including former bandmates, family members and a famous ex-fiancée. And what is abundantly clear is that he hasn’t hidden anything (well, apart from his face). The film includes difficult elements of his relationship with ex-fiancée Nicole Appleton, who was in the band All Saints (in which he admits he was the “villain”). “She had the worst version of me, but she is a good person,” he says. “I struggle every single time [I think about it] because there’s still some shame about those relationships you have in addiction; mine, not hers, because she wasn’t an addict or an alcoholic. That’s the most difficult bit.”
His relationship with his dad, stand-up comic and singer Peter Williams (aka Pete Conway) also plays out on screen. Interestingly, Robbie says the only part of the final cut that makes him uncomfortable is the “unsympathetic” role his dad plays. “It’s about how it was and what it felt like, but the version you get in the movie is my mum’s version of what happened,” he shares. “My father has my father’s version of what happened and I feel sad that there are things I haven’t talked about with my dad that are going to be seen on screen. It’s a really odd feeling.
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“In many ways, I don’t want him to see it. In other ways, I want people to know this about my dad: he is the most charming person you’ll meet and nobody that’s met him has not fallen in love with him. And that’s the truth about my father.” Of course there’s also a smattering of Liam Gallagher, with whom Robbie endured (and maybe enjoyed?) a prolific feud in the 1990s. While there’s definitely been a softening in recent years, with Liam sending “love n light” to Robbie on Twitter in 2020 when Robbie revealed his dad had Parkinson’s disease, it remains a fascinating part of this story, especially to those who remember it playing out.
Of Liam’s role in the film, Robbie tells us, “Liam is an 11 and the way that Liam is portrayed is a 10,” but it’s what he goes on to say about Gary Barlow that really fascinated us. As he describes their current relationship as “fixed”, it begs the question: should the past remain exactly where it was, and not on a cinema screen? “You know, books, films and documentaries… they sort of rip open scars again,” he muses. “There’s no pointing of fingers because we’re both grown-ups and we both love each other, but when Gaz received the script, he said to me, ‘Rob, I come off worse than Darth Vader in the first Star Wars,’ which made me laugh.
“There are so many difficult aspects about this for me. I know what happened when Rocketman [Elton John’s 2019 biopic film] came out and the subsequent news articles from family members – but I’m just going to put my head in the sand. “Look, good things are coming from this already and I know there’s more in store.” His optimism and hope is no doubt in part due to the impressive reviews from film festival screenings, and also because, he admits, he still “dramatically needs to be loved”. While he’s not as brittle as he once was, he says he isn’t, and will never be, “properly fixed”.
But one thing that has undoubtedly given him the strength, confidence and, quite frankly, the professionalism to be part of such a major release is the presence of his wife Ayda Field, 45, and their four children, Theodora (Teddy), 12, Charlie, 10, Coco, six, and four-year-old Beau. “Did the gift of grounding and sense of perspective arrive once I got married and had children? Yes,” he says. “Without them, I don’t know who or what I would have been, or whether I would be here. “As soon as Teddy arrived – the first one – it was not about me. And for a raving narcissist like myself, this was startling news. We all want to be seen, we all want to be heard, we all want to be loved and we all want nice things to happen for us. Where I am on that scale is a lot better now. “Where I came from was a deficit of brokenness. It’s better now. And it’s getting better and better every day thanks to the grounding of my children and my wife.”
