Better Man director reacts to pushback depicting Robbie Williams as a monkey

And speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, the filmmaker detailed just how hard it was to convince people that this was the right approach to tell Robbie's life story.

“I mean, they loved the idea of the director of The Greatest Showman telling Robbie Williams’s story – that was a home run," he explained.

"The monkey aspect of it, no one wanted to hear about. It was the reason that it took so long to finance this film. And there's a great quote, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's anything of great importance, can't help but go unrecognised as it bears no resemblance to anything already known.

"And I think that's the problem. When you're pitching something that people are not familiar with, it's very hard for them to go, 'Oh, it's like this, you know'."

Robbie added that he "was like that with The Masked Singer" thinking that there was no way the concept would work before he sat down to watch the popular ITV reality show.

"I mean, you've reduced it to The Masked Singer now," Gracey laughed. "But anyway, the point is that it was incredibly difficult. People didn't really want to hear it.

"And fortunately, because it's an independent film, so we are reliant on people believing in it, it was definitely too out there a concept to be a studio film. And eventually we found the right people to put it together.”

Williams added: “Can you imagine the person – actually imagine the person – that invested millions and millions of dollars or pounds into that idea and what they look like? Absolutely incredible. Thank you, thank you, thank you! But in my mind, I'm just like, 'It's a what? Yeah, monkey? Go, take my money!" Whoever they were. God bless you.”

Although he appears as a monkey throughout, there was an actual human actor playing Williams before his appearance was changed in post-production, and star Jonno Davies admitted that he had a hard time explaining the idea to people when he was first cast.

"People are like, 'You mean, for a scene, right? OK, it's a monkey, but like a flashback or a dream sequence?'" he explained. "No for the whole thing, and it's because he's a cheeky monkey, and that's how he sees himself as a performing monkey, etc.

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"And I think unless people know [special effects company] Weta's work, they can't picture the level of detail and the kind of the realness that would come out. You know, I think a lot of people expect it to be 2D and so it's been kind of hard to bite my tongue for this amount of time knowing how good the final product would be."

He added: "But, you know, if you tie in Michael Gracey, who's got such a musical background, but also a VFX background, he's the perfect person to tell Robbie's story in the way that he's told it. And I think, it's one thing to come up with a concept, it then takes incredible taste to make that concept work. And I think that's what he's done so brilliantly, is that he's never leant into the gimmick of the monkey.

"It's very much a grounded portrayal and story and really kind of warts and all telling of Robbie's story. And I think that's what makes it different to other musical biopics as well, that it's very exposing.”

Better Man is released in UK cinemas on Boxing Day.

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