Self-doubt and anxiety aggressively permeate Better Man, layering the stardom Robbie Williams found as a member of Take That with complexity and adding a touching poignancy to the biopic's triumphant conclusion. Director Michael Gracey underscores these themes by scattering multiple Robbies around the film, variations of the singer from his past snarling at him in the present.
For a brief moment, however, this volatile disdain gives way to a moment of passion, yearning, infatuation and everything in between when, after being ousted from Take That, Robbie meets fellow singer Nicole Appleton on a New Year's yacht party.
Speaking with Exclaim!, Williams celebrates Appleton as the "right person at the wrong time."
He says, "It's been a huge opportunity to come back into her life and go, 'I'm really sorry I was that guy. I learned so much from you and because of us, and I'm truly grateful you are an empathic, compassionate, smart, funny, beautiful human being.'"
The montage of their relationship in Better Man tells a story deeply personal to Williams and Appleton, and it doesn't hold back on showing the hard times the couple endured, from Appleton being forced to have an abortion by her management team to Williams's infidelity, drug use and petulant jealousy about Appleton's success.
Williams acknowledges, "She met me at a time when I was learning to be a human and a grown-up, and doing a very, very bad job at it. She didn't deserve the boyfriend she got then; she didn't deserve the fiancé that she got then."
In Better Man, their connection is instantaneous with literal fireworks filling the sky, and we're taken on a beautiful yet tumultuous journey of their love in a rousing sequence that underscores how Better Man upends the biopic formula concerned with dates and accuracy for one that translates feelings instead.
"There's something really breathtaking about the yacht moments," Australian actor Raechelle Banno, who portrays the All Saints singer, tells Exclaim! in a video interview. "The sequence and the whole dance really captures what falling in love feels like. It's whimsical. You're on a yacht with a hundred people, but you're the two only people there and the stars are falling."
"It comes off the back of a really low point for Robbie," adds Jonno Davies, the English actor behind Robbie's chimpanzee portrayal in the film. "It's one of the rare numbers in the film where you don't have a version of himself looking back at him with disgust or embarrassment. He actually is really present in the moment."
Better Man, out in theatres now, shows Robbie twiddling his thumbs — stuck in a phase of purgatory, unsure of what his next move will be. In reality, Williams and Appleton met two years after he'd left Take That and Williams's career was on an upswing, having launched his solo career with his first album Life thru a Lens, which included his career-defining single "Angels."
By rearranging the chronology of events, Gracey emphasizes the space Appleton occupies in Williams's life: the woman who saved him. Taking it from the audience's perspective, Davies describes the sequence as coming at a time where we "literally need to come up for air," much like Williams needed; and just as Banno's presence and performance does that for viewers, Appleton did for Williams.
"They were both such a sense of light to one another," adds Banno, remarking on how taken she was with the way the script, Appleton's memoir Together (which she co-wrote with her sister Natalie) and Williams himself all characterized their relationship.
Although Banno didn't meet Appleton prior to making the film and relied heavily on the book as her primary resource to Nicole's perspective, Williams ensured that Gracey was acquainted with the singer throughout production.
"Rob was very particular that anything that told Nicole's part of the story had to be shown to her," Gracey explains, exemplifying the respect and reverence Williams pays to Appleton. "I had the opportunity to spend time with Nicole; I would show her rehearsals of the dance sequence, just to make sure that she was okay with it. She is everything Rob says. She's such an incredible person. You fall in love with her within talking to her for one minute, and she was incredibly supportive."
What's moving about the dance sequence isn't the honesty or transparency, but rather the thoughtfulness given to their relationship. In keeping with Banno's observations, the film makes clear that the light Williams held for Appleton continues to exist today, nearly 30 years after the couple broke off their engagement and separated. For Williams, revisiting this relationship in Better Man has been an act of catharsis.
"There was a meeting on this movie where I learned that I was forgiven, and I became very grateful that I was forgiven," he says. "Another rock in my rucksack was released."