Robbie Williams Asks If We’re All Watching the Oasis Reunion Hoping for a Crash (Exclusive Video)
Let’s talk about the monkey in the room.
Like, literally.
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“Better Man,” Paramount’s new Robbie Williams biopic that premiered at TIFF 2024 this week, had a surprise in store for filmgoers: Williams is portrayed by… a monkey. Not a metaphoric monkey. Not an occasional dream-sequence monkey. An actual CG monkey. For the entire movie. For every stage of Williams’ life. No human actor. Just a simian.
This is a bold choice. (It sprang from Williams telling director Michael Gracey that he felt like a performing monkey; The Greatest Showman helmer ran with it in a bid to upend the musical biopic.)
Of course, the choice comes with some benefits too.
“When people will say ‘that didn’t happen here and that didn’t happen here.’ Well I’m not a… monkey, either,” Williams told THR in Toronto.
Beyond keeping the truth-squadders at bay, the movie (out late December) will throw a light onto a life that has had more twists than the A456 west of Newnham Bridge. Raised largely by a single mom and grandmother in a working-class town in the West Midlands, Williams joined the boy band Take That in the early 90’s as a teenager, was run out of the group a number of years later for not falling into line, then ended up with a solo career to rival Oasis and Blur. Along the way there was swagger, fame, addiction, trauma, failure, redemption, reunion and resurgence. And that Angels song, which you probably have heard 100 times without realizing you’d heard it, and in fact may be hearing in your mind right now.
Williams and Gracey got together at Toronto to talk about the movie, the pop star’s (sort of) mellowing at 50, how Williams is part of the reason Hugh Jackman ended up in Greatest Showman and, of course, that little matter of the reunion of one-time rivals the Gallagher Brothers. Here are some highlights. You can watch the full interview in the exclusive video above.
On disappointment:
WILLIAMS I thought [about a decade ago] he was coming to pitch me to be the the lead in Greatest Showman… then he said, “Can you call Hugh Jackman and ask him to do it?”
On the, um, animalistic approach:
GRACEY Rob would refer to himself as a performing monkey and I just thought to myself, “That’s what i would love to watch. To not only have Rob tell the story but to tell it from his point of view and to see him not as we see him but how he sees himself.”
On his demon-wrestle with impulse control:
WILLIAMS “It’s better than it was. Way better than it was… But it’s wonderful that the film doesn’t wrap it up for you in a bow. Because that’s not… life. That’s not what happens.”
On what Williams wants from the next stage of his career:
WILLIAMS I want another bite at the apple…It [would] give me the opportunity to experience omnipresence and success in a way that I didn’t experience it before when there was minus joy, where there was nothing derived from it other than money…a better prison to be locked in.
On why a musical suited this story:
GRACEY My rule is you sing when words no longer suffice so it tends to be in moments of extreme euphoria or depths of despair… The amazing thing about Rob’s life is there’s no shortage of depths of despair or moments of euphoria.
On how Williams feels about the monkey:
WILLIAMS It’s a massive swing. There was some focus group in America and it came back, “Why the monkey?” And I was like, “Oh yeah… why the monkey?”
On professional evolution:
GRACEY Showman was my first film and you’re constantly trying to get what’s in your head up on the big screen. That is an enormous journey fraught with a million obstacles. And you just get better at it. This is much closer to what’s in my head up on the screen.
On the Gallagher Brothers Summer 2025 concert tour:
WILLIAMS The fascination with this whole reunion is a bit mawkish… It’s like Evil Knievel. Everybody wants to see him jump the busses but maybe he won’t… [And] how do you ensure a tour like that?… Is there insurance you can get for unresolved childhood trauma?
On whether he’s put away his beef with the Gallagher Brothers:
WILLIAMS Here’s one thing you wouldn’t have had on your bingo card in 1999-2002: “The most evolved Gallagher brother will be…?” You would say Noel. [But] Noel is still Noel. Liam’s a different Liam. He’s changed, and he’s changed for the better… he’s a sympathetic character.”
One last thought on the monkey:
WILLIAMS I’m a big fan of not everything making sense anyway.
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