Robbie Williams: 'I’ve been a cheeky monkey all my life'
The Robbie Williams heard in “Better Man” is Williams, himself
NEW YORK (AP) — It was after one particularly emotional premiere of the new biopic about his life that Robbie Williams resolved he couldn't be “the crying guy” at every screening.
“Better Man,” which chronicles the life of Williams, the British pop star and former Take That singer, can hit him differently at different times. Jet lag is a factor. So is who's in the building. One screening with his band, he says, was “healing.” But he's self-conscious enough about all the emotion that he can be defensive about it.
“In real life I don’t cry that much,” Williams says and then smiles. “You have a (expletive) biography about you and have the world go, ‘I’ve seen you and heard you’ and come tell me how you deal with it.'”
One twist? The Williams heard in “Better Man” is Williams, himself. But the Williams seen in the movie is a computer-generated chimpanzee. Michael Gracey, who directed the 2017 musical hit “The Greatest Showman,” had the novel idea that Williams should get the big-screen biopic treatment, but with a monkey. Relying on Weta's motion capture technology, the actor Jonno Davies stands in for Williams.
