‘Better Man’ Director Michael Gracey Explains How Robbie Williams Saved ‘The Greatest Showman’

Australian writer-director Michael Gracey was already several years into developing “The Greatest Showman,” his grand and ambitious musical biopic that took the filmmaker eight years to realize, when his star Hugh Jackman started having cold feet.

“Hugh was losing a bit of confidence in the music,” Gracey recalled in a recent conversation with IndieWire. “When we were really close to going into production, other people started getting in Hugh’s ear about the music not being good enough.” At the time, Gracey was a respected and prolific director of music videos, with deep roots in VFX and animation, as well as music. But he had not yet made his feature filmmaking debut. Feeling like he was losing the power of his voice with Jackman, he thought, “What if it wasn’t just me telling him the songs are actually good? What if someone like Robbie Williams told him that?”

The former “Take That” superstar, who’s now the subject of Gracey’s splendid musical biopic “Better Man,” didn’t just randomly cross his mind as a credible voice. Jackman was vocally a big fan of the multi-hyphenate musician, with an enthusiasm for his showmanship that he often articulated during conversations with Gracey. “Hugh was fixated on Robbie as a real-world reference to what it was to be a great showman,” Gracey remembered. “Whenever we talked about P.T. Barnum, I would say, ‘P.T. has the audience in the palm of his hand.’ And he’d be like, ‘Yeah, like Robbie Williams in a live concert, just holds the audience in the palm of his hand.’ He continued referencing him musically, for choreography, for swagger… Every reference was Robbie Williams. It became kind of a joke amongst all of us working on the film.”

Eventually, it was no other than Williams who convinced Jackman to keep with the project, building a gradual friendship with Gracey at the same time. Here is how it unfolded towards the realization of “Better Man,” a gorgeous, audacious concoction of music, dance, romance, and tragedy, told in a triumphantly epic scale an scope. The most surprising part? A chimp plays Williams—a chimp brought to life by the same performance-capture method used in “Avatar.”

Alright, so please give me the further details about that first meeting with Robbie Williams. You decided to reach out to him hoping to convince Hugh Jackman. Then what?

It’s not like Robbie and I were friends, but I met him once at a party at my lawyer’s house and my lawyer’s daughter was really good friends with Ayda, Robbie’s wife. I called my lawyer and fortunately he pulled it off and I ended up knocking on Robbie’s door. He answers in his boxer shorts, looking like he’s just woken up. “What do you want?” And I’m like, “Thanks for agreeing to meet me. I’d love to just tell you the story of this film I’m working on and play you the songs. The music’s very theatrical and pop. I would love your thoughts on it.”

I could see he was enjoying it, tapping his foot and starting to get into it. I said, “Look, the only thing more bizarre than me showing up to your house on a Sunday is what I’m about to ask you now. It’s one thing for me to tell Hugh Jackman what you think of the music. It’s another thing entirely for you to tell him yourself. If you could just talk into the camera as if you’re talking to Hugh Jackman.” That video is what I sent to Hugh. Rob is literally saying, “You know, I’ve just spent the last year working on my latest album, and I would ditch that album to sing these songs.” It’s better than anything I could have written if I had written a speech of him being effusive. “If the two of us were having a cup of tea and no one was looking, I would bludgeon you to death with the teacup to play P.T. Barnum, so that I could sing these songs.” Hugh immediately caught me up and went, “Okay, let’s do it.” If Hugh wanted to start again on the music, the film would’ve gotten shut down — too risky making an original musical with a first-time director. I credit Rob for saving the film.

You’re clearly a big lover of classic Hollywood, and the Golden Age musicals that I also love. That spirit shows in your work, including “Better Man.”

I should have been born in the MGM era or at least been around when Bob Fosse was making films. They’re the films that I just love the most: “Cabaret,” “All that Jazz” … And then there are the classics, “Mary Poppins,” “Singin’ In the Rain. When you watch musicals as a young kid, they stay with you for the rest of your life. And all you want to do is grow up and have kids of your own, so you can then play them the musicals you used to love as a kid. What’s wonderful about musical storytelling is it bypasses the cerebral and it hits you here [points to his heart] when it’s done well. 

And so I think the emotion, the joy that you feel when you watch a great musical is so captivating. And [musical storytelling] doesn’t necessarily have to be “break into songs”. I think Quentin Tarantino films are musically driven films. He writes while playing those songs. And it shows because the scenes have a rhythm to them. I just love music driven stories, when the score is instrumental to storytelling.

‘Better Man’©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

So…why a chimp? What went into the vision of having Rob portrayed by a chimp in this musical, other than him articulating that he feels like a performing show monkey?

I wanted to find a creatively interesting way into the story, but not for the sake of having a gimmick. I wanted to honor the way that Rob sees himself. In the recordings that we did over the course of a year and a half, he mentioned himself as a performing monkey time and time again. There was also a statement that he made: whatever age you get famous is the age that you stop evolving. So, everything just pointed to the monkey. And on another level, I wanted to explore both his external and internal life. 

The thing is, if you do a musical, you are already starting in a place of heightened reality, having people break into song, which is more theatrical than real life. As long as you set that contract with the audience, they will go along with you. But if you add a monkey on top of that, it’s even more heightened and theatrical. I always knew that I wanted to slip in and out of inside Robbie’s head, which, in some scenes, is quite fantastical. And so it’s a much easier transition when you’re in this space of heightened reality to go into fantasy — quite fluid to go from theatrical reality to pure fantasy. And it also makes you question: As he’s singing something like “Come Undone,” is it when he drives into the fog that he’s going into his mind? Is it that when the world lights up with flares and everything turns red, that he’s going into his mind? Is that when he sees the bus with his dad on it, or when he hits that wall of water and is confronted with the paparazzi? All of this is happening when he’s 21. And it just allows you to take steps into his internal spiral visually and quite seamlessly. I genuinely think the monkey allows us to see more of Robbie.

You let Robbie Williams tells his own story here through the recordings you mentioned. How did you and your co-writers Oliver Cole and Simon Gleeson to transpose his story into your vision?

I genuinely think everyone’s got an amazing story. People don’t think they’re amazing, but everyone has an incredible story. When you’re with people and they’re telling you a great story, you just hit record on your iPhone and capture that narrative because you never remember all the little details. And it’s the little details that are so fascinating. Because Rob is such a showman, he delivers his story in the same way that he delivers lyrics in a song, in a wonderful, unique perspective.

Knowing that he has a recording studio at his house, I just said to him, “I don’t know what this is for. It might literally just be for you to listen to in a nursing home one day. But wouldn’t it be great if we just captured you telling your life story?” Over the course of a year and a half, I would just sit with Rob and we would just talk. We recorded all those conversations. After about a year, I started taking little clips from our conversations and reordering them, like a radio play, and those recordings became the basis for the script. Then reading a bunch of autobiographies and talking with Nicole Appleton—she’s a deeply personal part of Rob’s life that he was very protective of. And he just said, “Anything you want to say about me? Go for it. I don’t care how dark or honest it is. What you can’t do is tell any of Nicole’s story unless she’s comfortable going there.”

So Nicole read the script and she looked at a lot of the rehearsals as a lot of her story is told in dance. She couldn’t have been more supportive, an absolute delight and incredibly generous to let us tell that part of Rob’s life.

‘Better Man’©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

And on that note, the dance sequence on that yacht between Robbie and Nicole, when they meet for the first time, is breathtaking. I know everyone wants to talk about the Piccadilly Square scene. But for me, this was the showstopper.

I’m with you. “She’s The One!” That’s the musical number that we rehearsed the most. So we shot that out in rehearsal, cut it together, shot it out again, cut it together. The number of times we iterated on that dance number is more than any other number in the film. Credit goes to Ashley Wallen, the choreographer and Jenny Griffin, choreography assistant. The two of them would dance that number out with Ashley playing Robbie and Jenny playing Nicole in rehearsal time and time and time again. And then we’d cut it together with Patrick Correll, one of the creative producers on the film, over and over again until we had every transition, every moment, making sure that the camera caught her smiles in the moments of joy, her devastation in moments of despair. That number is really special. Because of the subject matter, I wanted to make sure that we were doing justice to the storytelling. We were playing out in real time on the boat, two people falling in love, while at the same time flashing forward in their relationship. So at the end, you have mixed emotions because you are so happy that he’s found someone to love, and you’re so devastated for what they have in front of them.

Could you tell me a little bit about the technicality of bringing the chimp to life? Is it through the same performance-capture method as in something like “Avatar”? And how instrumental was your background in VFX and music, and working with those muscles in the process?

I am very much a product of those two muscles. A background in VFX and animation and music. I don’t think I would’ve otherwise had the confidence to embark on something like this. Performance capture is at the heart of those characters in “Avatar: that you’ve mentioned. Also, “The Lord of the Rings” and “Planet of the Apes.” You can really see the progression of technology as they push themselves with every film, getting better at translating these incredible live action performances into digital characters. This was no exception. I mean, Jonno Davies gave the most breathtaking performance, and it’s a real shame that no one’s going to get to see his face. At the very end of the film after “My Way” plays where the audience is clapping, there’s actually a close-up of him in the crowd clapping himself.

Davies was onset in a gray wetsuit with tracking markers on him, with the dots on his face, with the camera [capturing] his expressions. There are certain scenes where Robbie would say, “You’ve used me there, haven’t you?” And I’m like, “No, that’s Jonno.”

So did you capture both Robbie and Jonno, and then mix?

We captured Robbie only as reference. We only shot with Jono. 

And then there is also Carter J. Murphy, who plays young Robbie.

He’s incredible. We went to Stoke-on-Trent and shot him in the opening sequence. He sings “Feel,” the first number, when his dad’s driving away from him. He’s like a little Robbie, this little kid. The first day I met him during rehearsals, he walks in and goes, “Are you the guy who did ‘The Greatest Showman?’” And I said, “Yeah.” And he asked, “Is there going to be a ‘Greatest Showman 2?’” And I said, “I don’t know, probably not.” He’s like, “If there is, can I be in it?” And I said, “Settle down, mate. Let’s see how this goes first.” And he goes, “Fair enough, but can you get back to me within the week?” He’s so much fun, this little kid. You just fall in love with him. He has the exact same attitude as Rob, and he lives in the same part of the world as Rob grew up.

‘Better Man’©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection

Robbie Williams is obviously huge in the UK, in Australia, and much of the world. But I don’t think American audiences are as familiar with his music. Were you at any point concerned about that? In a way, that feels like an opportunity, too.

I love the American audience because they’re going to watch the film like they watch “Showman” — in that, they will be hearing the songs for the very first time. So for them, these songs will always be associated to these moments in the film. And I think that’s so powerful. I mean, I love that outside of the US, we’re giving a new context to songs that people already know. But inside the US it’s truly exciting that they’re hearing these songs for the first time in the film.

Given Robbie Williams gave you near-full creative license as you’ve mentioned — let you go as honest as you wanted — curious what his reaction was when he saw the film?

He signed off on the script. But it’s one thing to read a script, it’s another thing to watch it up on the big screen. And you’ve seen the film—there are certain scenes where he comes off rather unfavorably, which, to be honest, is the power of the film. And so it really annoys me when reviews say, “Without the monkey, it would just be another musical biopic.” And that’s actually not true. The exploration of a star’s internal fights as much as his external fights or battles… it goes to those dark places. I think “Ray” was probably the last time [a musical biopic] went to those dark places . When you watch the sanitized version of someone’s life, you don’t relate to it. Because we all have things that we’re ashamed of. We’ve all said things we wish we never did. And when you see someone’s life story portraying those moments, you can relate to it. What you can’t relate to is the glorified, perfect person that never did anything wrong, said anything wrong and never hurt anybody. 

When Rob watched it for the first time — and I didn’t want to show him anything until there was a monkey in for every shot — he sat here and I sat here and I did not watch the screen at all. I just sat there staring at him for two hours, terrified that he was going to say at the end of it, “Take that out,” or “please don’t show that.” To his credit, he didn’t make one edit to the entire film. The film that I showed Rob is the film that you are all watching. And I have so much respect for him for allowing me to go to those places.

What about Hugh Jackman, clearly the biggest Robbie Williams fan?

He saw it and loved it. He was incredibly taken with it.

A Paramount release, “Better Man” opens in select theaters on December 25 before expanding nationwide on Friday, January 10.