While Robbie Williams is being depicted as a monkey in his new biopic Better Man, his emotional journey throughout the film is anything but inhuman.
© AlamyWhile Better Man depicts his loving relationship with his grandma who has since passed away, then the conversation with his parents might have been tricky to navigate, although sadly this is now a non-issue.
"My mum's currently got dementia - like my nan in the film - and my dad's got Parkinsons and can't get out of bed. So I'm in a different part of my life right now," he says.
© GettyBut clearly, his father - for all his flaws - was a big influence in young Robbie's life, introducing him to the world of entertainment and the showmanship of yesteryear stars like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr. But Better Man gives father and son a happy ending that the young Robbie craved as a child.
"We're all survivors of childhood trauma, and you spend the second 20 years of your life, sorting out the first 20 years," he says. "Why did I want to feel real love? And all of my songs are autobiographical, so I guess it's all about processing the events that happened when I was younger and the events that still carry on. So it would make sense that it would be cinematic in some way, because I spoke the story, I sang the story. And I know that this will touch a lot of people."
As we sit down to chat in Los Angeles Robbie, 50, recalls how director Michael Gracey – the man behind The Greatest Showman and Rocketman – pitched the concept to him, reasoning that a monkey would have more of an emotional impact than merely casting an actor.
© AlamyAs director Michael explains: "I think we're very cinematically numb to seeing human suffering, but when we see an animal hurting, there is something very uncomfortable about that."
Adds Robbie: "And also you don't spend the whole movie, constantly going: He's doing a good Robbie Williams there - the monkey takes that aspect away."
Robbie, who appears in the BBC documentary Boybands Forever, in which he reflects on his feud and rivalry with Gary Barlow, reveals he also sent the Take That frontman a copy of the script.
"So he phoned me up. We're mates now, and I love him, and our relationship is 95% healed, and there'll always be a scar, but he loves me. I love him," says Robbie, who quit Take That to go solo in 1995, months before the band split. "But the first script was different, right? And he phoned me up and he went, 'Rob, I can't believe this script. I come off worse than Darth Vader in the first Star Wars.'
© Getty"I was like, 'Just try to see from my point of view.' So we did curb a few things, but that's the awkward thing about my life, and what I need to have the wind in the sails for the third act of my career. What it was like when I was 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and how I thought and spoke when I was that age is very different from the 50-year-old me. So some of it was tempered down but the process of these things can rip the scab off the wound and it starts weeping again," he says.
To read the full interview, pick up the latest issue of HELLO! on sale in the UK on Monday. You can subscribe to HELLO! to get the magazine delivered free to your door every week or purchase the digital edition online via our Apple or Google apps.
