Robbie Williams, review: the pop star bares all in extended Netflix therapy session
It’s a boom time for celebrity documentaries. David Beckham and Coleen Rooney currently have their vanity vehicles. Now we have the four-part Robbie Williams (Netflix), a deep dive into the former Take That star’s tortured psyche. The first thing to say is that it’s far more honest than the Beckham and Rooney series, because Williams has always been candid and has nothing to hide. He doesn’t even put trousers on for most of this documentary.
Each episode involves Williams looking over old video diaries and behind-the-scenes footage, and then providing commentary. The clips are well-chosen, capturing the craziness of fame and the star’s mental unravelling. Williams is articulate and thoughtful. But the format has an anaesthetised quality. The endless shots of Williams pacing around his house, or his face bathed in the glow of a laptop screen, are deadening. It plays out like an extended therapy session.
Still, it’s an insight into the many downsides of fame, from jealousy of bandmates (“Who did you hate the most and why?” asks Williams’ 11-year-old daughter, Teddy, when she walks in on filming; the answer, of course, is “Gary”) to the relentless touring and promotional schedule.
Williams was always the cheeky, fun-loving member of Take That, but all that goofing around masked an insecure character. He was 16 when he joined the band and diagnoses himself now as being emotionally stunted by the experience, denied the normal process of growing into adulthood. Once Williams left the group, his troubles became plain, but perhaps all the joking meant we failed to take his problems seriously.
There is an old interview, painful to watch now, in which Williams says exactly how he’s feeling. He is promoting his forthcoming concert at Slane Castle in 1999. The interviewer asks how he’s doing. “I’ve been in a black depression for the last five weeks,” he answers truthfully. The interviewer, sounding exasperated, demands a retake. Asked the same question again, Williams plasters on a smile and says: “Biggest gig of my life – it’s going to be a wonderful experience!”
At the end of each episode, when you think things are about to take a sunnier turn, we’re warned that they won’t. “Can you tell me what lies ahead?” the filmmaker, Joe Pearlman, asks at the end of episode two. “The acute breakdown of me as a person,” Williams replies. “What happens next?” asks Pearlman at the end of episode three. “My psyche eats itself. The worst is yet to come.”
There are plenty of little details for Williams’s fans to enjoy – footage of him with former girlfriends Nicole Appleton and Geri Halliwell, a peek into his lovely home. There are two great love affairs here: with Ayda Field, the wife who helped to save him from addiction, and with Guy Chambers, his former writing partner. The latter is fascinating – Chambers comes across in the old footage as patient, calm, a thoroughly good egg, and it’s a shortcoming of the film that it features only Williams in the present day. Other contributors, including Chambers, would provide a more rounded picture.
Robbie Williams is streaming on Netflix from Wednesday 8 November
