Fresh from stepping into the shoes of 90s pop icon Gary Barlow in Robbie Williams’ biopic Better Man, we catch up with the British actor to discuss his journey as a Robbie fan, the lifelong bonds formed on set, the challenges of portraying a real-life character, and his exciting expectations for 2025.

“Filming Better Man was the single happiest and most fulfilling 4 months of my life,” Jake Simmance starts. For Robbie Williams’ critically acclaimed musical biopic, the British actor landed what can easily be described as a dream role for a young talent fresh out of drama school: stepping into the shoes of 90s pop sensation and Williams’ Take That bandmate, Gary Barlow.

“I grew up on Robbie Williams and Take That, so I was already familiar with who Gary was and what he meant to so many people,” he says. But the thing with pop icons — and boy bands — is that star power doesn’t just come from personality. There’s that essential and perfectly curated hair flop (a bleached number in Barlow’s and Simmance’s case), the heartthrob charm, and, of course, the hip-moving skills. “A few months [after my first self-tape], I had my agent asking me whether I could dance. I did that thing all actors do and said ‘Yes. Say yes. Tell em’ I came out of the womb dancing,” he jokes. “The reality is I had two left feet!”

From filming in Australia to bonding with cast mates on set, performing for a crowd of 25,000, getting to know the real story of his subject matter, and dancing down a closed Regent Street to the sounds of “Rock DJ”, it’s easy to imagine that Better Man changed Jake far beyond his dance floor skills. Sitting down with Wonderland, the rising actor talks about fuelling himself with the unknown, his lifelong passion for the craft, diving headfirst into the role, and what’s next for him. Keep scrolling…

Hi Jake, thanks so much for chatting with us. How are you today, and how’s 2025 treating you so far?

Thank you for having me! I’ve been a long-time admirer of Wonderland so it’s really cool to sit down and chat with you for the first time! That makes today a good day.

Before we dive into your new project, let’s rewind a bit. Can you tell us about your upbringing and what first sparked your interest in acting?

Sure! So, no one in my family really knows where the interest in acting came from. My parents are both business people and acting does not run in the family. My mum tells me stories of how she’d constantly receive calls and letters from school when I was 7 years old asking to join the drama club. The school receptionists said I used to take myself down to the office every single day asking if there was space. What I didn’t know was that there was a year-long waiting list, but they jumped me to the front because of my persistence! I’ve had this singular focus on wanting to ‘be’ an actor since I was that young. I don’t think I even understood what the words meant at the time, and I have no idea what sparked it, but it’s without doubt my life’s calling. I’ve never wanted anything else, and I never will. 

Do you remember some of your early influences in the industry? What made you fall in love with the craft?

I’ve found that I have fallen in love with the craft for different reasons as I’ve grown up. As a child, I loved the excuse to have all eyes on me and try to make my friends laugh with silly voices and silly postures. When I was 5, I made my debut as the Old Woman in The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe to critical acclaim (my mum). The same year I did a project on Elvis Presley, purely so I had an excuse to snarl my lip, shake my hips and sing “Blue Suede Shoes” to my classmates! I loved that I could be anyone I wanted, and act however I wanted, and get away with it, under the disguise of a character.

I was in Oliver! in the West End for half a year when I was 11 and at that time it was the applause that hooked me in. The instant gratification that you get in theatre; knowing there and then that you are affecting those present, and the uniqueness of live performance whereby those present reward you, and let you know you’ve done a good job. It was great for my 11-year-old ego! 

Now as an adult I can appreciate all the other facets that acting brings, other than the purely indulgent reasons I acted as a kid. Now I have found an entirely new love for the craft. Since training professionally at drama school and dedicating my life to acting – rather than it simply being a hobby – I find a genuine therapeutic, cathartic release from acting. I am forced to look deeper within myself, identify what makes me tick, what makes me laugh, what makes me cry and channel all of these emotions to help shape characters and bring dialogue to life and make it all feel truthful. Essentially, I’m finally releasing a lot of pent-up thoughts and feelings which were locked away in a box somewhere through boarding school and manhood and it’s really an amazing feeling. I’m very grateful for acting for forcing this growth out of me.

Huge congratulations on Better Man! How did this project come about? Do you remember your first reactions to the script?

Thank you so much! To be honest the project came about just like any other, I had a self-tape in my inbox to initially play Robbie and a few months later I had my agent asking me whether I could dance. I did that thing all actors do and said “Yes. Say yes. Tell em’ I came out of the womb dancing”. The reality is I had two left feet! At the time I assumed the question over my dancing was related to a separate period piece I had auditioned for at the time. I was imagining some ballroom or line dancing and sort of thought – yeah, I can manage that. You can imagine my surprise when my agent told me the team from Better Man wanted me back in for Gary! 

I remember reading the script for the first time and seeing the multiple references to concert scenes, recreating music videos such as “Do What You Like”, and a solid 5 pages dedicated to “Rock DJ” and dancing down Regent Street. This, coupled with a video from the Choreographer Ash Wallen with some steps to learn for the audition, and the panic started to settle in. I must’ve watched that dance audition 60 times and just repeated the moves frame by frame. When I taped it I did everything I could to try and mask my dancing. I sang, I wore dungarees, I cut my hair into a Caesar and I hip thrusted like it was going out of fashion. It must’ve worked because a week later I was on a plane to Australia for principal photography. 

You play Gary Barlow in the film. I’d love to hear about your relationship with this character—how familiar were you with his story before landing the role? And how does preparing for a real-life character differ from prepping for a fictional one?

I’ve loved playing Gaz. I grew up on Robbie Williams and Take That, so I was already familiar with who Gary was and what he meant to so many people. I didn’t quite bargain for how affected so many people were – including Gary himself – by Take That’s split and the ensuing media war between him and Rob. 

Playing a real-life person who has spent most of his life in the public eye is a real blessing for an actor because there is so much material out there to research. I’d already watched hours of footage by the time I came in for my recall with Michael Gracey and felt really well prepared, I’d spent a lot of time trying to nail his cadence and characteristic eyebrow expressions, and there was a very surreal moment watching my first tape back with my mum and both of us having to pause the video and say ‘bloody hell it’s actually a really good likeness!’. Watching my own audition tapes back is a very uncomfortable and arduous process and I’ll always remember both of our reactions to this specific audition with fondness – I had that rare feeling you get as an actor where you really feel you’ve done a great job and have a chance at winning the lottery that is casting. 

Speaking of preparation, what was your process for Better Man? What helped you most on this journey? Did you get a chance to speak with Gary, and if not, what would you ask him if you had the chance?

I suppose I sort of started as I meant to go on from my audition. I just watched and repeated every single clip of Gary outloud, in front of the mirror. Over and over again. I firmly believe that to give yourself the best chance of doing a good job as an actor – and feeling free enough to play the role well – you have to be prepared. The playing has to be underpinned by homework, and this role and this job was just perfect for that. I had the resources, and we had a luxury of rehearsals before shooting started. Michael Gracey, our director, likes to work off of something called a ‘Pre-Vis’ – which is essentially a rudimentary animation, albeit with incredibly specific camera angles and cuts, of the entire movie before shooting. We then in turn rehearsed every single scene in the film on camera to match this pre-vis. It gave us weeks and weeks of preparation for every hip thrust and every syllable of dialogue. 

Ashley Wallen and Jenny Griffin, our choreography team were also fantastic in helping me build the ‘character’ of Gary. Helping me focus on every idiosyncrasy and detail in his performances and bringing them to life in the film. 

I haven’t had the chance to meet or talk to Gary yet. I’d really love to. I’ve developed a huge admiration for him over the last few years and have become a very big fan. I really hope he thinks I’ve done him justice. 

Did you feel any pressure portraying someone so well-known, and how did you navigate that?

There’s always a degree of pressure – albeit mostly self-imposed – on how the public will perceive your performance. When playing someone that well known, and particularly someone people feel very familiar with and protective over, you are acutely aware that by the time the movie comes out you could be inundated with responses from strangers about whether or not you’ve done their hero justice. But at the end of the day there is a line between the actor and the real-life person you’re playing. You can mimic them to within an inch of your life but ultimately when the camera starts rolling you have to trust your instinct and play the ‘truth’ of the scene and YOUR interpretation of that scene as an artist. You don’t want to be caught up in technique and tricks. It’s that typical adage you learn as an actor ‘Do the homework, and then forget about it’.

What about the story first caught your attention? Have you always been a Robbie Williams fan?

In all honesty, I was pretty fresh out of drama school and just desperate to work as much as possible so having an audition in the first place was enough to get the pulse racing. I didn’t quite realise the scale of the production I was on until I was at my costume fitting in the production office in Melbourne. Surrounded by hundreds of photos and costume references for the band, with freshly bleached hair, Michael came up to me, pulled me in for a hug and said ‘I hope you’ve been practicing your dancing, because you’re performing in front of 25,000 people in 5 weeks’. I think the particular trousers I was being fitted for at the time were immediately rendered unusable.

As for the quality of the film, that really hit home at the table read. Seeing first-hand the quality of the performances around me, and getting our first glimpse of the Monkey animations through the Pre-Vis, made me realise I was a part of something truly groundbreaking and visionary. It just made so much sense why Michael chose to tell this story in this way. 

Having grown up a Robbie fan, I was particularly drawn to the way Michael had reinterpreted Robbie’s songs and used them to accelerate and advance the narrative of the film. Hearing ‘Feel’ sung by 9-year-old Robbie after his father leaves the house makes you understand the music, and therefore Robbie’s personality in an entirely new way. Robbie had to become the man of the house as a child and so when you hear those words ‘not sure I understand, this role I’ve been given’ you feel an immediate pang of empathy. Michael has placed each and every number in the film and rearranged them, so they drive that narrative and elevate it. I hope Better Man has raised the benchmark on how to make a musical biopic.

Take us back to your days on set. How was the overall experience, and what are some of your favourite memories from that time?

Filming Better Man was the single happiest and most fulfilling 4 months of my life. I have people in my life that will be with me forever because of this movie. I remember one day on set Damon Herriman who plays Take That’s manager said to Michael in front of us, “Michael, you realise you have ruined the film industry for these boys, because this is the best job I have ever been on”. We all sort of laughed it off and Damon, who’s worked with Hollywood legends from Tarantino to Fincher reiterated – “I’m not joking. These poor boys are going to go into their career thinking this is what making movies is like and it’s not always like this. You’ve ruined it for them!”. We all pinched ourselves after that and just constantly reminded each other how lucky we were to land these roles, to meet each other, and to work on a film of this scale and quality. 

It goes without saying that shutting down Regent Street for 4 nights to film Rock DJ was a very special highlight, but I can’t look past the filming of one of our concert scenes for the “Relight My Fire” number. Halfway through Robbie’s concert at the Rod Laver Arena, the 5 of us went on stage and performed live to that crowd. The adrenaline rush of singing and dancing with your whole heart and soul, to a sea of 25,000 flashlights, knowing we only had 4 takes to get it right, after 6 weeks of rehearsals, was the most full-bodied natural-high I’ve ever experienced. Michael has since said he could ‘see’ the adrenaline buzzing off us, our pupils the size of ping pong balls. If I could bottle that feeling and sell it, I’d be a very very wealthy man. 

Now that the movie is out in the world, how has the reception from fans been? Any fun encounters you’d like to share?

So far, the reception has been fantastic. People are loving the movie and fans have been complimentary so far – I suppose the homework paid off! I haven’t been recognised in person yet, but I’ll happily put that down to the fact I’m almost unrecognisable from how I looked when I did the film – my hair no longer glows in the dark for a start. 

Looking ahead, what are your hopes for the new year? And what excites you most about what’s to come?

I want this year to be filled with work. I’m ready for my career to step up to the next level and I’m excited to play another new type of role. I want to keep stretching myself and showcase my versatility. 

I’m really excited by the release of my next film Two Neighbors, directed by Ondine Vinao. It’s a dark comedy being released sometime in the summer, and I play a really dynamic and challenging character called Sebastian. I got to work with one of my heroes Ralph Ineson which was a real highlight.

In unrelated news, I am hoping Chelsea win some silverware this season and I’m looking forward to Spurs falling into total disarray. As usual.

Photographer: Matt Bramston
Stylist: Charlie Schneider-Jacobson 
Groomer: Sandra Hahnel