Robbie Williams has revealed the moments that didn’t make it into his new tell-all Netflix documentary.
The four-parter, titled Robbie Williams, will arrive on the platform on 8 November.
Netflix has promised that the show, directed by Joe Pearlman (Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now), will be “the first of its kind to explore the real human being behind the salacious headlines”.
The documentary charts Williams’s rise, from joining the band Take That at the age of 16, to becoming the most successful UK solo artist of all time.
Along the way, it explores his struggles with mental health, his time in rehab, his good press, his bad press, his career highs and his public humiliations.
Speaking in a new interview in The Times Magazine, in relation to his openness about his mental health issues, Williams, 49, said: “There was a line I wanted to have in the documentary, which we had to lose in the end. ‘I moaned, so Lewis Capaldi could wail.’ Stonking!
“But that is what I was. Lewis Capaldi without the tic.”
Capaldi was diagnosed with Tourette’s in his late twenties. Tourette’s syndrome is a condition that causes a person to make involuntary sounds and movements called tics.
Robbie Williams— (Getty Images)
Williams also joked that he had made up a jingle for the Netflix documentary, which goes, “Trauma watch!/ Trauma watch!/ Have a trauma watch!/ I was in Take That then I left Take That/ Then I did drugs and I got real fat.”
He said: “They didn’t use that in the end.”
In the new interview, Williams listed his mental health disorders, saying: “Dyspraxia, dyslexia, ADHD, neurodiversity, body dysmorphia, hypervigilance… There’s a new one that I acquired recently: HSP. Highly sensitive person. Post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD].
“And, obviously, I have an addictive personality. I haven’t got narcissistic personality disorder or split personality disorder, though. I looked at them last week and, obviously, I chose all the worst options. So if I did have it, I would proudly tell you. But I am collecting them all, like Scout badges.”
He also talked about how all the members of Take That have struggled since being in the band.
“All the boys have mentioned this publicly, so I’m not busting anyone’s privacy,” he said, “you’ve got Gaz [Gary Barlow] who became bulimic and agoraphobic and didn’t leave his house, who forgot how to write songs and slept under his piano. You’ve got Howard [Donald], who contemplated suicide.
“You’ve got Mark [Owen], who ended up in rehab. You’ve got Jason [Orange], who can’t hack it and has just, like, disappeared. And then you’ve got me. So that’s your case study: there’s something that solidifies and calcifies in those five years — which is the traditional lifespan of a boy band — that causes mental illness. It’s five out of five.”
Robbie Williams is out on Netflix on 8 November.
If you have been affected by this article, you can contact the following organisations for support: actiononaddiction.org.uk, mind.org.uk, nhs.uk/livewell/mentalhealth, mentalhealth.org.uk.
