Robbie Williams: “At Sanremo I was stoned, I don’t remember anything”
“We’re tired of all these biopics. There are too many films about the lives of singers. And what’s more, they are all cleaned up, all patinated. Enough”, says Robbie Williams. For his biopic, the former Take That wanted to do something unusual: in “Better Man”, this is the title of the film, which the 50-year-old British singer-songwriter presented today in Rome (it will arrive in Italian cinemas on 1 January ), Williams he chose to be played by a monkey. Not a real chimpanzee, eh, but a primate created by transforming the actor Jonno Davies into the animal on the computer through the CGIacronym for Computer generated imagery, technology used in films such as “Avatar”, the live action version of “The Jungle Book” and “Pirates of the Caribbean”.
In the over two hours of film, described as a “musical” (it is no coincidence that the director is .Michael Graceyalready behind “The greatest showman”, the 2017 film with Hugh Jackman which grossed 459 million dollars worldwide), the “ape” version of Robbie Williams does everything that the voice of “Angels” does – or did – during his reckless life: “My biopic isn’t as polished as some, although maybe it should have been. For me it wasn’t a problem to explain who I am and do it with the utmost sincerity and authenticity. Why did I decide to be represented as a monkey? Because that’s how I see myself. I wanted the audience to see Robbie the way Robbie sees himself.”
The tale follows Williams’ journey from childhood, from his debut as the youngest member of the boy band Take That to his extraordinary successes as a record-breaking solo artistwith all the challenges that stratospheric fame and success can bring. The singer-songwriter had already told himself without filters last year in “Robbie Williams”, a Netflix docu-series in which he had retraced his human and artistic parable from his beginnings until today, between triumphs, crises and rebirths. A whirlwind descent into hell began when something got stuck in the mechanism of Take That, 45 million copies sold worldwide: “In Take That everything revolved around Gary Barlow. I was envious of it. I lost control. As if that wasn’t enough, I downed whatever came my way: ecstasy, cocaine, alcohol. I had gone so far as to drink a bottle of vodka the night before rehearsals”.
“My life appeared to me like performing a tightrope walk without a safety harness. I feel like I can fall at any moment and many times I do”, he says today, a year later, returning to tell his story through a genre, that of the biopic, which has been popular in cinema for years. “I didn’t make this film out of altruism, to give it the value of perhaps being able to help other people or arouse empathy and understanding. I did it for purely careeristic reasons. .This film is to prolong my career. I seek attention. And if I can’t conquer it, I don’t exist. Here, I wanted to draw attention to myself once again”says Williams, with complete frankness. He takes his cell phone out of his pocket, opens the video camera and asks the journalists summoned to a well-known Roman hotel to say hello: “It’s for my daughter, I’ll show it to her: she doesn’t think I’m that important”, he smiles.
In the soundtrack of the film, which will be released digitally on December 27, in addition to hits such as “Feel”, “Rock DJ”, “Come undone”, “She’s the one”, “Angels”, “Let me entertain you”, there are also unreleased like “Forbidden road“, which Robbie Williams sang last night on X Factor as super guest of the final in Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples: “I love Italy and I have a long relationship with your country. Hosted with Take That at the 1994 Sanremo Festival? I was stoned, who the fuck remembers. But do they still do it, Sanremo? I would like to be invited. I enjoy the chaos that goes on backstage at events here in Italy. I also noticed it last night on X Factor and I understood even more what Italy is like. When you’re backstage at a show in the UK everything is so organised, precise. Here, however, there are those who run, those who scream, those who scream. But when you watch what’s on air, you find everything perfect.”
2025 could be the year of return to the recording scene for the former Take Thatwhich hasn’t released an album of unreleased songs for eight years: the latest is “The heavy entertainment show”, released in 2016 and followed three years later by the Christmas album “The Christmas Present” (the collection “XXV” was released in 2022 , with which he celebrated his first twenty-five years of career). Williams has not yet announced any projects for release in 2025, but the news of the pop star’s imminent release of new music was “burning” Tony Iommiformer guitarist of Black Sabbath, who last September announced that he had participated in the recording of a piece of the singer-songwriter’s new album.
The new European tour will start from Edinburgh on May 31st.will stop in Italy on 17 July, for a single date hosted by the Nereo Rocco Stadium in Trieste: the ideal successor to “The heavy entertainment show” could arrive just in time for the debut. “The film was something liberating. If it doesn’t become a success, it will become the exact opposite and then… go to therapy”, quips the pop star.
