As the remarkable and innovative Robbie Williams musical biopic Better Man expands to cinemas across the United States on Friday, January 10th, the 18 Brit Award-winning international pop superstar speaks exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann in Los Angeles. During the conversation, Williams shares his impressions of the gay clubs that he regularly played at during the early 1990s as part of the five-member, hugely successful British boyband Take That, before he embarked on his record-breaking solo career. It is a chapter in Williams’ life that is evocatively depicted in Better Man, co-written and directed by The Greatest Showman filmmaker Michael Gracey, in which Williams is compelling rendered as a monkey throughout, played by Jonno Davies.
“It was the best”, Williams shares with The Queer Review about that period of playing gay clubs in the early years of Take That. “I come from a working class city in the middle of nowhere. No one in England knows where it is to be honest with you. We do two things really well—kindness and violence—and you don’t know which one you’re going to get. And sometimes you get both.”
“You’re surrounded by psychos, and when you go out, you’re not safe”, Williams continues. “You go clubbing, you’re not safe. If you go to the pub, you’re not safe. And then all of a sudden, as a 16 year old, I’m introduced into this magical world of safety and acceptance and you didn’t have to worry about getting your head kicked in. And instantly, I’m sold. I’m in. This is my tribe. We did gay clubs for 18 months solid and my love for it, that experience, has lasted with me for a lifetime.”
“I’m from a place—the 80s and a Northern industrial town—where to be gay was leveled against people as a slight”, Williams adds. “So to actually leave school, join a band, go into the gay world and go, ‘these people are the best people’, is something that has stayed with me all my life. I think that there’s a few ways you can go when you feel like an outsider—and everybody feels like an outsider—you can react to that with misery, violence, or you can react to that by joining in with all the other outsiders and make yourselves feel as though you’re in a safe place. That is my relationship to that period of my life and to this day if I go clubbing, I go to a gay club.”
Watch the full interview with Robbie Williams and filmmaker Michael Gracey below:
Watch our exclusive interview with Better Man stars Jonno Davies and Raechelle Banno who portray Robbie Williams and Nicole Appleton in the film:
Better Man is playing in select theaters now and expands nationwide across the United States on Friday, January 10th, 2025.
