Robbie Williams hopes being depicted as one other species will assist audiences see his humanity.
Within the Michael Gracey-helmed musical biopic Higher Man, premiering Dec. 25 in theaters, the 18x Brit Award winner’s story is instructed by actor Jonno Davies, within the type of a CGI chimpanzee, as Williams defined his “MO has been cheeky.”
“What’s extra cheeky than a cheeky monkey?” he mentioned to the Related Press. “I’ve been a cheeky monkey all my life. There’s no extra cheekier monkey than the coke-snorting, sex-addict monkey that we discover within the film.”
Williams added, “We take care of animals greater than we take care of people, most of us. I assume there’s a removing, as effectively. It’s very a lot a human story however for those who’re watching it and somebody’s taking part in Robbie Williams, you’re pondering: Does he seem like him? Does he act like him? Does he speak like him?”
The Take That alum beforehand instructed Deadline referred to his primate avatar as “a really particular magic trick,” explaining, “It desensitizes and sensitizes you all on the identical time. Now we have deep empathy and compassion for animals, far more than we do for people.”
Robbie Williams attends a Higher Man particular screening on Nov. 13, 2024 in New York, New York. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Photographs for Paramount Footage)
Gracey additionally recounted to Deadline how the concept arose to depict Williams as a chimp after interviewing him a number of occasions over a yr. “I simply felt there was a extra inventive means of getting into into this specific story,” he mentioned of Higher Man in comparison with different musical biopics.
“So I went again to these recordings, and after I was listening to them, I discovered Rob saying typically that he was simply dragged as much as carry out, like a monkey, or it didn’t actually matter,” mentioned Gracey. “He was simply up the again performing like a monkey. And he mentioned it sufficient occasions that I used to be like, ‘Oh, that’s how he sees himself. He actually sees himself as a performing monkey.’ And I believed, ‘That might be superb; I’d like to see that movie.’ That’s the place the concept got here from.”
