why is Robbie Williams depicted as a monkey?

The biopic genre is particularly popular with the public, who can discover the sometimes little-known life of an artist they admire or a public figure about whom they know nothing. However, it is a genre that sometimes struggles to renew itself from the point of view of staging or artistic choices. This is certainly not a criticism that can be made of Better Manin theaters on January 22, 2025. And for good reason: to tell the story of Robbie WilliamsBritish singer of Take That who later went solo, director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) chose to depict him as a monkey.

Unusual choice therefore in the history of biopicswho often favor actors made up to perfectly resemble their models. The choice of Better Man is therefore surprising: it is the actor Jonno Davies who plays him, coupled with special effects. Speaking to Variety, Robbie Williams provides a first explanation, confiding that he always felt “less evolved” than his peers. But director Michael Gracey explains his desire to stand out in this fairly codified genre.

But it was his interviews with Robbie Williams that gave him this idea: he then noticed that the singer constantly compared himself to a monkey. “After a while, I said to myself that it would be great to represent Rob as a monkey in the film”, underlines the filmmaker to franceinfo. “When you put a monkey in a scene, you can’t help but be drawn to him, even if he doesn’t speak. And that’s how you understand what it’s like to be a star. You can’t look away from this person. A strong choice of staging which perhaps did not pay off in the United States (where Robbie Williams is not the star he is in Europe), but which will perhaps arouse the curiosity of spectators on our lands.

Synopsis – The rise of the famous British singer and songwriter Robbie Williams. Becoming a star with his group “Take That” in the 1990s, the latter gradually plunged into artificial paradises before finding solo success in 1997 with the song “Angels”…