Why Robbie Williams says being portrayed as a chimp in 'Better Man' is 'genius'

Robbie Williams calls himself a “professional attention seeker.”

He isn’t aw-shucks-ing his way through this self-diagnosis as a way to categorize his immense success in Britain, first as a member of stadium-packing boy band Take That and, since his 1997 debut solo album, as a superstar with dozens of Top 10 hits in the U.K.

No, Williams is correct. He craves attention. And for decades, his persona as the Bad Boy of Pop was intertwined with serious real-life issues including drug and alcohol abuse and extreme depression.

Williams dissected his demons in an eponymous Netflix series in 2023 that was sometimes painful to watch as he wrestled with his self-esteem with raw reactions and stinging honesty.

His complicated, colorful life has been cast in a more fantastical way in “Better Man,” the new film directed by Michael Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”) that opens in theaters on Friday.

The movie contains plenty of music biopic tropes, but they happen to be true: A small-town kid is dabbed with fate's wand, becomes immensely successful, can’t handle success, caves to addictions, goes solo, fills stadiums with hyperventilating fans enraptured with his sublime pop anthems, tries to earn the love of his cabaret-singing dad, and adores his primary supporter, his grandmother.

But there is a variation to “Better Man” that immediately spotlights its unconventionality.

Williams is portrayed not as a human, but as a chimpanzee.

Robbie Williams says the chimp depiction is 'genius'

In a recent video chat, Williams – still boyish-looking at 50 and fit in his sleeveless white T-shirt exposing his numerous tattoos – says he was “completely and utterly obsessed” with Gracey’s idea that his musical biography depicts him as a monkey (well, technically a chimpanzee because the character has no tail.)

“I’m just like a performing monkey,” Williams would often tell Gracey, with whom he became friends during “The Greatest Showman” period.

Gracey credits Williams for not asking for anything to be cut from the film, even the more unscrupulous parts of his story. Gracey also notes he was never concerned with the way his man-as-chimp idea would be accepted by audiences or film studios, but understands why “Better Man,” which took more than five years to complete, might be a hard sell.

“With any musical, the real world is not people walking down the street and breaking into song,” Gracey says in a separate video call. “So basically you have the first 10 minutes of a film to set that contract with the audience. You need to have someone break into song so they understand this is the contract we’re setting … we were setting the contract that it’s not just a musical, but also a monkey, and once you’re on board, you don’t think about it.”

Williams “thought it was genius," he says. The perplexing choice "has done what it was supposed to do, which is to get people talking and be contentious. I would say it’s about eight to 12 minutes where the audience is going, ‘What?’ and then you completely forget and you’re taken on a ride that you’ve never seen.”

Who plays the chimp in 'Better Man'?

While the singing in “Better Man” is all Williams - “Let Me Entertain You,” “Feel” and his biggest stateside hit, “Angels,” make appearances – the chimpanzee symbolizing Williams is all Jonno Davies, with the help of Wētā Workshop.

The British actor known in the U.S. for his role in the TV series “Hunters” spent his time on set in a jumpsuit studded with performance capture markers as well as 101 “dots” on his face and a helmet camera to catch every eyebrow raise, chin stroke and rubber face pulled as Williams’ embodiment. The performance was augmented by some computer-generated images with a high-resolution digital scan of Williams' eyes being placed over Davies' in post-production.

Davies, who saw Williams in concert with his parents as a 9-year-old, never spent time with his real-life counterpart. But studying videos and simply growing up with Williams’ aura invading pop culture informed his performance.

“It was hard not to be a fan of his as a kid,” Davies, 32, says in another video call. “But it was the essence of him that I really wanted to capture. Because it’s a chimpanzee, we didn’t have to ask the audience to go for his likeness. It was more about filling space like he does; the way he enters a room and the energy changes.”

Davies also had to participate in choreography, most notably in the film’s most spectacular segment, a roving romp through London’s Regent Street set to the throbbing pop-funk of Williams’ 2000 hit, “Rock DJ.”

The scene took a year and a half to manifest, as Gracey needed the blessing of the Westminster City Council, the Crown Estate (Regent Street is royal land) and permission to close a bus route for four nights.

The cast, including 500 dancers for the production, rehearsed for a week in a studio space recreated to model the famous London street and was ready to film when Gracey received a call. Queen Elizabeth II had died and the shoot was off.

“All of the money we paid and the shops we booked and the crew and everything, that money was all gone,” Gracey said. It took five months to raise additional funds and much arguing with studio types more versed in arithmetic than art who suggested Gracey simply cut the number.

“I said, 'You don’t understand, this is the centerpiece musical number of the film,'” Gracey says, adding the delay also led to a postponed release of “Better Man,” which debuted in December in Gracey’s native Australia. “There were such enormous obstacles to this film ever seeing the light of day that every time it plays I grin and think, ‘People have no idea how close this came to never happening’.”

Robbie Williams talks new album

Williams is aware that despite the echelon of fame in his homeland that almost leveled him many times, America has always been a difficult market to conquer.

“Many people already know my story and lots of people are reviled by me, not many are indifferent and some really love me,” Williams says. “So (in the U.S.) it’s going to be incredibly interesting how we get this story across. People have been telling me there have been fights on TikTok about whether I’m allowed to join the pantheon of great artists who have never cracked America or not, which is exciting and bewildering at the same time.”

Along with gamely plowing through extensive promotion for “Better Man,” Williams is also finishing a new album – he declines to name a release date “because I haven’t got one yet” – that includes a high-octane rocker with legendary Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi and Deep Purple alumnus Glenn Hughes.

And though he performed a well-received residency at Wynn Las Vegas in 2019, Williams is ambivalent about his next moves.

“I did those shows at the Wynn as a busman’s holiday and to scratch an itch. But the plan was to grow it and COVID came along and my concentration and other projects came up and off I went,” Williams says. “I’d love to show off for everybody in (the U.S.) to a greater extent than I’ve been able to. But if my movie is yet again met with indifference, then I will find it very difficult to have the enthusiasm to do anything.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Robbie Williams as a chimp in 'Better Man' biopic is 'genius'