Interview: Director Michael Gracey (‘Better Man’) on Taking Big Swings and Turning Robbie Williams Into a Monkey
If it wasn’t for Robbie Williams, “there may not be any Greatest Showman,” says director Michael Gracey. The world-famous British pop star who got his start with a tumultuous time in the boy band Take That was constantly on Showman star Hugh Jackman’s mind and eventually he sent Jackman a video message about the film’s music that helped Gracey through a key moment in that film’s production. After that, the two became close, with Williams regaling Gracey with “really unique and incredibly engaging” stories that the director begged the musician to let him capture. These informal chats, held in Williams’s home recording studio in Los Angeles, eventually became the basis of Gracey’s new film Better Man, a biopic of Williams in which he’s portrayed as an anthropomorphic monkey that represents how Williams has always seen himself.
While everyone around him was concerned about whether this idea would work, Gracey himself was always “supremely confident.” “I knew that if we had the right person portraying Robbie, that realizing him as a digital character is something that we could 100% deliver on. And I guess that’s both my background in animation and visual effects, but it’s also the people we were working with,” he says, referring to the wizards at Wētā, who were on board right from the very start, creating a demo reel that Gracey used to shop the film around to potential backers, most of whom said no. When they found Jonno Davies, a British actor recommended by Australian cast member Kate Mulvany, Gracey knew he had the other most important piece of the puzzle. At the height of COVID lockdowns, he and co-writer Simon Gleeson conducted multiple Zoom calls auditioning Davies, but “we still couldn’t give him the role until we’d seen him in person. So he flew all the way to Australia, not knowing whether he was going to get it or not… and within 30 seconds, you go, ‘This guy, he’s amazing. He’s in.’”
Despite his embrace of digital technology for the film, Gracey remains wary of the advances in AI that are starting to permeate the film industry. “It’s going to change the industry. There’s no question,” he says. “For me, you talk to any director… the collaboration is the reason you do it, you know?” Gracey is passionate about working with other people, seeing the choices they make and how a performance can evolve through multiple takes. “I think there’s many things that AI can do, it can’t do that. It can replicate, it can take inspiration from, but that spark, that magic, that chemistry, you know, we’re never losing that. And I don’t want to, I have no interest…. The joy of being a director is interfacing with another human.” Read on to hear more of Gracey’s thoughts on AI, how he conceived of the film, and who the truly greatest showman is.
Daniel Bayer: Michael, you got your start as a director, working on music videos for some of my favorite pop artists, like Sugababes, Natasha Bedingfield, Alesha Dixon, all these incredible people. And now, you’re directing a musical biopic of Robbie Williams, one of the great pop artists of the 20th century. Did that feel, at the time, like the logical next step in your career?
Michael Gracey: Probably not. It’s funny, I mean, I haven’t shot those artists in forever. I mean, that’s like another lifetime ago. But it’s true, really early on, you get these breaks with artists… If it wasn’t for the Sugababes, I would’ve never had a career in commercials, because that was the music video that got me signed with Partizan. And, being someone from Australia, being flown over to Paris and London to shoot commercials was like, it’s something I couldn’t even dream about. It was amazing. So yeah, I mean, it’s not a logical step to go to Robbie Williams. It came about in a very odd way, mainly thanks to Hugh Jackman, who kept referencing Robbie Williams the whole time we were making The Greatest Showman.
DB: Oh, wow! Okay.
MG: Yeah, so that’s kind how the Robbie connection came, because Robbie did a video message for me, talking about the music for The Greatest Showman to Hugh Jackman. And it was a key moment in time… without that video message, there may not be any Greatest Showman, so he really helped me out. And then, from there, we started talking and catching up socially, and he would just tell these stories that I just thought were really unique and incredibly engaging. And at that point, I didn’t even want to make a film; I just wanted to capture the stories.
And so when I was in LA, because I don’t live in LA, but whenever I came here, I would just go over to his house, because he’s got a recording studio in his house, and we would just sit in his recording studio and just talk. And I just said, “Look, you know, these might be just for you to listen to in a nursing home one day, but we should capture, while you still remember all these details, these stories just as audio.” And so it was just that. It was just the two of us sitting there and chatting. And that is what formed the basis of the first draft of the script, was those conversations.
DB: Yeah, and when you started the process of writing it, was it always in your head that this would take the form of a traditional musical?
MG: It was always going to be a musical. Obviously, if you’re telling a narrative about someone’s life as a pop star, then it makes sense to be a musical. And I think the part that was more unique was that I wanted to frame it in a way that just allowed us to come at the story in a different way, to sort of lens it from the point of view of how Rob sees himself, rather than how we see Robbie Williams. And so I came up with this conceit that he would be portrayed by a performing monkey.
DB: Which I absolutely love, and I loved hearing you talk about this at the film’s TIFF premiere, about where this idea came from. And it’s something that’s completely never been done before, it feels completely new, but I am curious if it was always your idea for him to always be a monkey – even as a kid?
MG: Yeah, like when you talk to him and when you listen back to those recordings, you kind of realize that he’s always been performing. Like in Stoke-on-Trent, he wasn’t as tough as the other kids around him, and so he was always making out that he was tougher than he was. There’s this beautiful story that I wanted to begin the film I could never find… There’s so much story to get through that I couldn’t put this story, but his nan had an account at their newsagent, where basically the paper that got delivered to her house would go on her account. But when Rob figured this out, he would say to the other tough kids, “What do you want? I’m going to go and shoplift.” And they would all give him their orders of what they want, like a chocolate bar and whatever they wanted him to steal. Rob would then go in, and then just put it all on the counter, and charge it to his nan’s account, and then he would come out with it under his jacket, as if he’d stolen it.
DB: Wow!
MG: And the beautiful thing about that story is his nan never called him out on it. His nan, who did not have a lot of money, always paid his tab.
DB: Oh, my gosh.
MG: And never brought it up, never mentioned it to him. So he was always putting on a performance. And so it made sense – whether it’s to his dad, who he wants to impress, whether it’s to his other mates, who he wants them to believe that he’s as tough as they are – he’s always that performing little monkey, you know?
DB: Yeah, absolutely. And I was thinking about this a lot since seeing it, because between the presentation of Robbie as a monkey throughout the whole movie and the depiction of an audience that is hungry for more, and more, and more of him, even as he rages against it – he battles audience members at the Knebworth concert – were you ever concerned throughout the process of like, “Maybe we’re going to alienate the audience”? And how did you mitigate that while writing and filming it?
MG: I think the truth is, for me, that I think we empathize with animals more than we do humans, particularly in cinema. Cinema, we’re so numb to seeing people in pain, and when you have an animal in pain, I don’t know, there’s something about your heart that really goes out to them. And so I always thought it would be more powerful. And I also thought, strangely, there’s something to depicting Rob as a monkey that feels more honest than him just being played by an actor, so I don’t know. It’s interesting.
Obviously, we owe a lot to Jonno Davies, who did such deep [work on the] mannerisms, and you really see Rob in that monkey, and that’s Jonno, who’s a beast of an actor. He is incredible. And you know, for a guy standing on set with dots on his face and a gray wetsuit with tracking markers, he just gave a performance like you would not believe. I mean, even Robbie was sitting there looking at Jonno’s performance, going, “Holy shit, mate.”
So yeah, a lot of credit goes to him, and obviously, the team at Wētā in New Zealand who just came over and set up in Melbourne, Australia, so that we could make this film, because we had to do it with the assistance of the Australian tax rebate. And so they set up a studio in Melbourne, Australia, and that studio is staying in Melbourne. So we were set up for the film, but they’ve now got a permanent studio in Australia, which to me, as a kid who grew up in Australia, working in visual effects, that is the coolest legacy of this film. Having one of the world’s greatest VFX companies in Melbourne now is just amazing.
DB: That’s incredible. The other thing that I remember from the TIFF premiere is that you said that you had worked with Wētā on a proof of concept, like a test reel of this. Were you ever worried that it wasn’t going to work, either in terms of just the execution, or in terms of showing it to people and getting the backing to make the full feature like this?
MG: No, I think that was everyone else’s worry. [laughter] I was supremely confident. I mean, when it comes to performance capture, there’s no one better than Wētā. You’re trading off the R&D of what James Cameron has done with Avatar. You’re trading off the Planet of the Apes films, you’re trading off all the way back to Gollum in Lord of the Rings. There is such a history of translating amazing actors’ performances into digital characters. And so I knew if we had the right actor that Wētā 100% would deliver on that performance capture, and [would make] me feel something, make me feel engaged, and emotional, and connected.
So, I was never concerned. It was the concern of every single investor that we approached, which is why the majority of them said no. But it was never my concern. I knew that if we had the right person portraying Robbie, that realizing him as a digital character is something that we could 100% deliver on. And I guess that’s both my background in animation and visual effects, but it’s also the people we were working with. I mean, credit to Luke Miller, the visual effects supervisor, and Andy Taylor, the visual effects producer. This film wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for those two people. They dedicated like three years of their lives to this.
DB: Yeah, and like you said, Jonno Davies, is incredible in that role. What was the casting call for this part? How did you find him? Were you looking for dancers, actors who could move?
MG: Yeah, everything. We wanted it all, we wanted a triple threat! I mean, Jonno got cast really late. We had a really hard time finding the right person to play Robbie, and Kate Mulvany, who actually plays Robbie’s mum in the film, who’s an incredible actor in Australia, she’s just phenomenal, well, she had worked with Jonno, and she suggested that we look at him. She was like, “You really should check this guy out. He’s British, he’s amazing. He can do it all.” And we’re like, “All right, yeah.”
So we jumped on a Zoom, myself and Simon Gleeson, who was one of the co-writers of the script. And we met this guy, and we were like, “This guy’s really good.” And then, it’s during COVID time, so it’s really hard judging people over Zooms. And we’re obviously over the other side of the world, we’re in Australia, and he’s in London. So we did multiple Zooms, like long sessions, where we played scenes, and we really went through it all with him. And then, at that point, we still couldn’t give him the role until we’d seen him in person. So he flew all the way to Australia, not knowing whether he was going to get it or not.
DB: Oh, gosh.
MG: But we were like, “Can we just bring you out here?” and just all hoped like hell that it worked. And within 30 seconds, you go, “This guy, he’s amazing. He’s in.” It was that quick, he is just a remarkable performer.
DB: And it comes up seamlessly in the film, too. He’s incredible. And the monkey, frankly, looks great, looks real all the time. You began your career in film as a visual effects artist, like you said. After all the work that you’ve done with that, the work on this film, what is your feeling about the recent wave of AI technology and how it’s being used in art, specifically in cinema, but just even in general from your background?
MG: Yeah, I mean, it’s going to change the industry. There’s no question. It’s just, I think people are a little bit… Look, I never don’t want to be standing on set with actors. I think that the magic of cinema, as a director, is what the actors bring to it. It’s the spontaneity, it’s the choices. You think back to all the greatest films that you ever watched, they’re not derivative performances of something else you’ve seen. They are standout, they are unique, they are bold, and they are unexpected. And that can be the chemistry between two actors that you put together in a room. You know, how one actor plays a role is completely different to how another actor…
The ingredients that makes a great performance, and I look at this in Better Man and I go, “That scene would not be the same scene had we not had Steve Pemberton and Jonno Davies.” It just wouldn’t. And those performances, those moments, they’re unique, and they’re unique for a reason. I’ve had the privilege of watching multiple takes of what those choices made by those actors in that moment, what transpired. And I think there’s many things that AI can do, it can’t do that. It can replicate, it can take inspiration from, but that spark, that magic, that chemistry, you know, we’re never losing that. And I don’t want to, I have no interest.
For me, there’s something about the spontaneity of a performance, and to lose that and expect that that can just be generated by AI, I just think is… It’s not even a question of… But people like to say, “Oh, but one day, it’ll be able to do that. One day.” And you go, “Yeah, but I don’t want to interface with AI in that way.” The joy of being a director is interfacing with another human. It’s that human connection, and it is the creative minds that come together… that is what we call film. That’s what we call cinema. I look at the work… you can name 20 other directors, and they all have a singular vision, and they all go about their craft in a unique way, but what they’re doing is a result of the people they choose to collaborate with. And that collaboration, that’s the magic. For me, you talk to any director, the collaboration is the reason you do it, you know?
DB: Absolutely. So, we have one last question, and I have to know who is the true greater showman: P. T. Barnum or Robbie Williams?
MG: (laughs) I mean, if you ask Robbie, he’ll say Robbie Williams.
DB: (laughs) Of course he will.
MG: That’s really funny. I thought you were going to say, “Hugh Jackman or Robbie Williams?” and that would’ve been a much harder answer. (laughs) No, no. I think Robbie Williams, and… yeah, definitely Robbie. Because I’m not going to get a phone call from P. T. Barnum, am I? (laughs)
DB: He is no longer with us, so there is that. (laughs)
MG: But yeah, I’ll stick with my answer.
DB: Michael, thank you again so much for talking with us today. It’s been a delight.
MG: It’s been great, Daniel. Thanks, mate.
Better Man opens wide on Christmas Day from Paramount Pictures.
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