The British pop singer hopes his new biopic will help put him on the map in North America
By Nick Krewen
Special to the Star
December 26, 2024
It took a while, but in September, Robbie Williams finally returned to Toronto.
Before performing a short set at the Shangri-La Hotel during the Toronto International Film Festival, the last time the British pop superstar and former Take That member played the city was in 1999.
Williams, who launched a massively successful solo career in 1996, delivered two shows here just before the turn of the century: one at the Opera House and another at the Guvernment.
They were part of a promotional push to break the bold and beguiling singer’s The Ego Has Landed album in Canada — and particularly the song “Millennium.”
Although he made three other Canadian appearances that year and the single did well, album sales fell short of expectations.
But rather than focus his efforts on solidifying his fan base across the Atlantic, Williams instead avoided courting North America — and particularly Canada — up until TIFF, where he premiered “Better Man,” his outlandishly entertaining biopic directed by Michael Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”).
There was a reason he steered clear of Canada — and, to a degree, the U.S.
“It was a question of choosing to remain anonymous in a part of the world where I realized that overwhelming fame is no good for your psyche,” Williams, 50, told the Star during an interview at the Ritz-Carlton, the day after the film’s Canadian premiere.
“I made an adult decision a long time ago when a lunatic was driving the car. I’m glad I made that decision because I wouldn’t be alive. But now, I’m ready for it.”
His explanation makes sense once you see the film: “Better Man” is an engaging two-hour-plus tale of a brash, charismatic, randy and impetuous youth who ensnares his dream early on, but mistakes fame for happiness and is emotionally ill-equipped to handle the fallout.
Feeling trapped, he repeatedly turns to alcohol and drugs to numb the agony.
For this writer, the film was a full circle moment, bringing up memories of a conversation I had with Williams for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record back in 1999, in which he candidly discussed his struggle with fame.
It was then that Williams — who had already sold 20 million albums in England alone and was three years away from signing a monster record deal with EMI worth approximately $160 million — admitted that he felt uneasy about pop stardom.
“I feel a lot of guilt around success, which is a big thing for me,” he said at the time. “It was supposed to fill a void for me, give me self-worth. It hasn’t.
“Fame has become an irritating byproduct. At some point, I feel like I’ve sacrificed my soul. It’s all right when you’re young, because you don’t really use it on the weekends. But I’d like to get it back now, please.”
“Better Man” is a culmination of those years, with director Gracey expertly dramatizing the numerous pressures of stardom: artistic frustration; cruel and greedy business decisions; personal dysfunction; and a physical manifestation of those defeatist, guilt-tripping voices that repeatedly play on one’s insecurities.
Now, in 2024, Williams says his outlook has changed.
“I think that (to achieve fame) at a period in your life where you’re not even sure who you are and the world tells you who in its warped way — you’re inflicting mental illness upon yourself,” he said. “It’s very difficult to derive any joy or understand the fortunate position that you’re actually in when you’re fighting against it, because it’s overwhelming. It comes at you like a tidal wave, whether you want it at a particular time of day, or not.”
Now, he has a different perspective.
“My fame facilitates absolutely everything I want and need to do for the third act of my career,” he added, “and I’m very, very fortunate to have it. I don’t want to not have it.”
To maintain his sanity, he found the sanctuary he needed by relocating to California, where Williams has kept a residence since 2000. In 2010, he married actress Ayda Field and they’re raising four children, as chronicled in last year’s four-episode Netflix docuseries “Robbie Williams.”
As for his sobriety, Williams credits two factors.
“I exhausted every loophole that I could with narcotics in one way or another — and once I’d realized that there are no short cuts and the only answer is abstinence, my life got better from there,” he said. “Also, my life got better once my first child arrived: Teddy.
“That changed everything. It wasn’t about me. It was about her. And then, what I do for a living became a job: Daddy provides for the family, and Daddy goes away and works. And because of that, (fame) makes total sense to me.”
Before, he looked at fame as “a healing aid,” which it wasn’t.
“Now, I have a much better perspective on who and what I am, what it is I do and the gift that it is.”
It’s one of the questions that is fully answered in “Better Man,” which also offers a number of innovative twists that levitate it above your standard biopic: it’s part musical, part fantasy — and, in one particular stroke of genius, part CGI monkey, which is how Williams, in different periods of his life, is portrayed throughout the movie by actors Jonno Davies, Carter J. Murphy and Asmara Feik.
Williams said he was smitten with the idea as soon as Gracey suggested it.
“Before he got to the end of the sentence explaining what he wanted to do, I was totally in,” said Williams, who serves as the film’s narrator and executive producer.
“The most important thing about that idea was how highly unusual it was. And it’s in an age where highly unusual things are ceasing to exist because of the nature of the entertainment industry. There’s less of the pie to go around, so people are taking less risks. Because of that, films seem to be made by AI before AI can make the films. They ‘moneyball’ it out of all eccentricities.
“So, to have the opportunity to take such a massive swing and inhabit something so unusual really appealed to me.”
How did he feel when he saw the final cut?
“Relieved,” Williams said. “I tried to not have so much resting on this movie, but it’s impossible, for what it can mean for me, my career and my family. Once I’d seen the last scene, I —” He let out a long exhale. “And relaxed.”
Williams is banking that “Better Man” will help him break into the territories that he’s sidestepped — including Canada.
While there are some Canadian connections in the film — the Paul Anka-adapted “My Way” frames the dysfunctional relationship between Williams and his fame-starved father, and Williams’s first serious relationship, with Hamilton’s Nicole Appleton, of the pop group All Saints, is dramatized — Williams said it’s only recently he’s come to appreciate the country.
“The last time I came, I didn’t know anything about Canada or its people,” he conceded. “But I now understand the heart and the soul and the spirit of Canada, because I’ve seen so many references about you guys in movies, music and in print. I’m able to notice that this is not America; this is something completely different.
“I am overwhelmed with the spirit of kindness that is here. It’s not lost on me that it’s different, it’s special. I haven’t been back because it costs so much to ship your gig over to only do two or three venues. The gig ends up costing you. So, hopefully, this (movie) will mean that I get to bring my stadium show — at least to an arena.”
And he’ll have plenty of music to bring with him. The singer revealed that he has “a bottleneck” of material.
“I’ve got all of these ideas and things that I want to do, but it’s all dependent on the success of this movie. Albums have been ready to go and have been forever and ever.
“We’re just on the tarmac waiting for the plane to take off.”