How Jonno Davies turned a monkey Robbie Williams

It is 2001 and nine-year-old Jonno Davies is standing within the crowd as Robbie Williams entertains 65,000 folks on the Milton Keynes Bowl.

“He was simply this image of cool, and that caught with me for a very long time… He was just like the rock star of the day for me,” he recollects.

Now 32, Davies is showing in cinemas around the globe in Higher Man, a musical biopic by which he performs his childhood hero.

However he’s removed from recognisable, partly due to his arduous work learning and recreating William’s voice and mannerisms, however principally as a result of he is represented on display as a computer-generated chimpanzee.

“I’m the lead. I’m Rob. Rob is me. Simply with a monkey layering on high,” he explains.

Director Michael Gracey, who beforehand made The Biggest Showman, says the choice was impressed by conversations with Robbie Williams the place he described himself as a performing monkey.

On set, Davies was wearing a efficiency seize swimsuit, and later he was reworked right into a primate by Weta FX – the identical firm behind Gollum in Lord of the Rings.

Davies says: “I play Rob from the age of 15 proper the way in which by way of to the tip of the movie… It is full physique, voice, dancing – the entire shebang.”

He provides: “I really feel the viewers aren’t watching it going: Do I imagine that is him? Does that look sufficient like Robbie? Does that sound like Robbie? As a result of there is a monkey, we have already gone past that concept of comparability.

“It meant I did not should be useless. I wasn’t wanting on the monitor going ‘Oh god, the double chin’… It was nearly being truthful to the storyline.”

That stated the actor says his face may be seen for a “tiny break up second” on the very finish of the movie: “Kudos to anybody that truly sees that.”

The Chesterfield-born actor was solid because the Angels singer a couple of week earlier than manufacturing was resulting from start.

Actor Kate Mulvany, who performs Williams’ mom Jane, advised Davies after having labored with him on the Amazon Prime sequence Hunters.

When The Biggest Showman director phoned Davies inviting him to audition, the actor was working a “facet hustle” acting at youngsters’s events as PT Barnum – Hugh Jackman’s character from the movie.

He recollects: “I used to be sort of going ‘Okay, this can be a bizarre however fantastic flip of occasions'”.

Auditions passed off in Australia, the place he ran scenes with Raechelle Banno who performs All Saints singer Nicole Appleton within the movie.

He recollects: “I believed I mucked it up. Then a couple of hours later [Gracey] known as me into his workplace and he stated ‘look we might love you to play Robbie’.

“You realize, you dream of those roles. You dream to guide productions like this, to be in such big scale movies. However as quickly as that penny drops, and that you’re truly the one to do it, there is a sense of strain.

“They’re gonna truly discover out that I am garbage. And all this time I’ve simply been kind of lucking by way of it. And that is truly one thing that Rob feels lots. And so, it was a extremely helpful connection for me to have.”

In 2022, Davies is rehearsing for a scene on stage on the Royal Albert Corridor when Williams, who he has not met but, is within the viewers.

“I used to be about to sing and in he steps, plonks himself in the midst of the entrance row,” the actor says.

“Wow that is Robbie Williams, that is who I am taking part in, do not mess it up. I in all probability did as a result of voice was going and knees have been buckling.”

He did not mess it up. Not based on Williams himself who describes the performer as a “incredible human being”.

The musician says: “He is such a beautiful individual, and he is immensely gifted. Watching him do his factor – which is my factor – was very attention-grabbing, complicated, fantastic, and a bizarre factor to look at. He is wonderful.”

Davies, who grew up in Milton Keynes, attended Bedford Faculty between 2001 and 2010.

Whereas attending he took half in musical productions of Bugsy Malone, Fiddler on the Roof and Historical past Boys.

He says: “If it wasn’t for Bedford Faculty, I do not suppose I’d’ve grow to be an actor.

“I used to be making use of for college and our head of drama approached me and stated ‘I do not suppose that is what you need to be, you need to be an actor’.

“Having any individual say that basically made me suppose it could be a risk… I feel lots of people had that assist, it wasn’t only a one off.”

Now the actor’s title is on one of many seats on the college’s theatre and he likes to return to go to the pupils.

“Something I really feel that I can study I might like to go on to them,” he says.

“Possibly we will do like a movement seize day in some way. Do some animal research, because it have been.”

In the identical yr he began at Bedford Faculty he went together with his mother and father to look at Robbie Williams play at Milton Keynes Bowl.

“I used to be simply wanting on the epitome of cool strutting about, giving it giant,” he recollects.

“I simply thought that’s somebody that exudes confidence and I sort of need to be a bit like that.

“So, then assembly him, working with him on this piece, after which being the one to have the privilege of taking part in him- it is nuts how life can sort of come round in bizarre circles.”