Robbie Williams: Discovering the Journey of an Icon

Robbie Williams: A Biopic Journey

Most people don’t know it, but Robbie Williams is a major reason why The Greatest Showman exists. Michael Gracey, who directed that 2017 movie, says English pop star Williams was Hugh Jackman’s main inspiration while playing the ringleader at the center of The Greatest Showman. “During all of production, his reference time and time again was Robbie Williams,” he says.

But just before filming began, Jackman was so full of doubt about the movie’s songs that he nearly pulled out of the project. So Gracey, through his lawyer, found Williams’ number and called him up. He showed him the songs for the film and begged him to help convince Jackman it was worth sticking around for.

Even though Williams didn’t know Gracey, he did just that. “He literally said that he'd been working on an album and he would ditch that album to sing these songs – that's how good these songs were,” says Gracey. “And he then went on to say that if Hugh wasn't going to play the part, he would play the part.”

Jackman stayed on The Greatest Showman – which became a massive box office hit, earning $435 million worldwide and an Oscar nomination for best original song – and Gracey and Williams formed a friendship that would last years.

Through their conversations about Williams’ path to fame, Gracey thought there might be a story worth telling in a film. So he asked Williams if he could record their conversations, and ended up with 18 hours of tape. “Rob has the art of storytelling in spades, and I also couldn't believe that he remembered so many details about a life that was so fueled on drugs and alcohol,” says Gracey.

Those tapes became the backbone of Better Man, the Robbie Williams biopic that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on Friday. The Paramount Film is in some ways a traditional biopic that traces Williams’ childhood days, tough family life, rise to fame in the boy band Take That, massive solo career, and battles with drugs and alcohol. Gracey has interwoven some of Williams’ most iconic songs throughout the narrative.