The full unedited story of Take That has exposed some dark truths in a revealing new documentary about the band coming to Netflix this month
23:59, 19 Jan 2026Updated 07:30, 20 Jan 2026
A defining boy band and a huge pop act of their generation, Take That have enjoyed staggering success since forming in 1990 with 12 Number 1 singles and nine Number 1 albums so far in the UK alone. Now a three piece led by song-writing chief Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen the band also originally contained Jason Orange, and of course, huge solo star Robbie Williams.
A new Netflix documentary out next week will chart the highs of the band but also the lows, with each member of the band enjoying some surprising struggles which in some cases have not been fully expressed before. The three part series features 35 years of rare archive material, never-before-seen footage, and personal material. There are also new interviews with Gary, Howard and Mark and archive interviews with Jason and Robbie to tell the story.
Gary admitted: “Some of it was hard to watch – especially that middle hour, which covers the period after the band broke up. It was just a hard, hard time. I am quite good at leaving things in the past. I’m not a regretful person, and I was happy to leave it behind. So, seeing those memories brought to life on screen again was strange.”
* Take That is released by Netflix on Tuesday January 27.
‘Wasted’ Robbie’s vodka binges
Robbie famously went on a bender at Glastonbury and returned ‘wasted’ to his furious bandmates’ dismay(Image: Redferns)
The singer was pictured hanging out with rocker Noel Gallagher(Image: ©Justin Thomas)
The doc begins with the five piece band working hard to gain success with Gary’s songwriting and non stop gigs, sometimes three a day at schools, Under 18 shows, radio roadshows and late night gay clubs. By 1992 it eventually pays off and a cover version of Tavares 1975 hit It Only Takes A Minute goes into the charts at number 16 and they get a Top of The Pops appearance and are now mobbed everywhere they go.
Two huge albums in two years follow before lots more touring and lots of money is made by manager Nigel Martin Smith.
“We were a carefree bunch of guys traveling around the world, having fun, not taking anything too seriously,” Gary recalls of the good times. But he also admits things had also changed as they grew bigger. We’re a business now, a really big, important money making machine for a lot of people.”
As things went on, Robbie became frustrated at his lack of songs and the continuing focus on Gary. The third album Nobody Else was released in May 1995 and with a huge tour planned for that year, Robbie walked out on the band in July, shortly after his infamous Glastonbury appearance.
Looking back he says aside from his differences with management and Gary he was also behaving like an alcoholic, drinking neat bottles of vodka each day in his hotel room. Mark recalls: “Rob came back(from Glastonbury) and he was absolutely wasted, and he went upstairs and had a bit of a kip. I think the lack of interest was obvious, and I think that Gaz and Jay got pretty pissed off about that.”
Robbie says: “I’d go into these rehearsals the next day that I wasn’t fit to do because my body would be full of crap, and my head had hurt and I couldn’t take in information at the best of times. Something just snapped inside my head, you know? And I went, ‘well, then I’ll leave’.
“I stood up, walked across the room, and I got to the door, and I looked back at them, and I think we’re thinking ‘This is it’. And they looked at me, and then I walked through the door.”
Gary says he thought “he’ll be back tomorrow,” but Robbie would not return to the band in any form for decades and went solo.
Heartbreaking suicide admission
Howard, pictured with songwriter Gary, said he thought ‘seriously’ about jumping in the Thames when the band split(Image: Courtesy of Netflix)
A year after Robbie quit the band, the remaining foursome announced they were also splitting in February 1996 and the band would be no more. Gary had suggested the move and was hoping for a big solo career, but some of the other guys were less prepared, especially Howard.
Howard tells the doc: “It hit me the hardest, simply because of the fact that I’m thinking ‘well, what am I going to do now?’ I’m only trained at being a pop star, you know, a bit of paint spraying. So it hit me quite hard.
“You go home and you’re kind of in disbelief. I feel like I was the only one that didn’t grow up, and everyone else did, even though I was the oldest. Everybody watched what was happening and prepared themselves for the end, whereas I was in this dream.
“It was almost going towards a depressive state, and then I decided to go To the Thames. The state of my mind at that time, I was seriously thinking of jumping in the Thames, thinking I wanted to kill myself, but I’m just too much of a s**tbag to do it.”
In an interview discussing the footage and the second episode where he says this Howard reflected: “Episode two was a hard episode to watch and it did bring back the question of why I felt so angry when the band broke up. We were never the sort of people to talk about mental health. I think I’ve processed the emotions I felt around that time, and although those memories came flooding back, I was able to watch it all in one sitting. It made me thankful that I was with a long-term partner at that time, who was able to support me and be honest with me when I needed it most.”
Howard tried a solo career but did not enjoy it saying he “didn’t have the confidence” in what he was doing. Several years after the band split Howard became a father for the first time in June 1999 to daughter Grace and he credits this family time with helping him move on.
Crippling jealousy
Gary Barlow says he quit the country when Angels went platinum(Image: Redferns)
After Take That Gary began a solo career almost straight away but became embroiled in a war of words with Robbie which became quite ugly on both sides as they both promoted their singles. On Gary’s single, Robbie said: “I’d love to say it’s not my cup of tea, but in fact, it’s awful.”
Looking back Gary said: “That’s the first bit of negativity I felt like, serious negativity that went in the brain.” Gary responded to Robbie by picking up on his first single being a cover version, saying: “Let’s hear these songs that are easy to write. I’m dying to hear them.”
Unfortunately for Gary, months later just as his career was in the balance, Robbie released the anthem Angels and their fortunes changed overnight. Gary says: “It’s a great song, a great song. Once he had that song that was it.
“He was just untouchable from that moment. I remember sat there thinking, ‘Well, that’s it. I can’t catch that’. The only way I could see was me going to America, I’ve got to leave the country. And so I did that. I did a nine month radio tour.
“It started to dawn on me that nothing’s happening here, and all this is happening at home, because the news comes across. By this point, Rob is now an album in, multi platinum, this, that and the other.” Gary did eventually return home to the UK, but to the news he was being dropped by his record label RCA. “I was incredibly competitive, so I think I was jealous, yeah,” he reflects.
National laughing stock
Gary pictured on holiday with son Daniel at the height of his weight gain(Image: Gary Barlow)
The Robbie effect meant that when he came home from his failed America tour, Gary decided to stay in his Cheshire home a lot and out of the spotlight. He says he felt prepared for everything in the band but afterwards felt lost.
He says: “That was the bit I wasn’t prepared for. Oh, is that it for the rest of your life? Because that’s it for music now. I mean, I can’t even walk down the street now without someone shouting something about Robbie to me, so I don’t want to do that anymore.”
He says he watched “all” the TV shows which mocked him including comedy versions of himself played by Matt Lucas, combined with Robbie’s success.
At the Brits Robbie famously said: “Sorry, Gary, but I was always the talented member of the band.”
Looking back Gary says: “It was just so excruciating I just wanted to crawl into a hole. And there was a period of about 13 months where I didn’t leave the house once. And I’d also start to put weight on, and the more weight I put on, the less people would recognise me. I thought, ‘well, this is good’. This is what I’d been waiting for, living a normal life. And so I went on this mission. If the food passed me, I’d just eat it, and I’d killed the pop star.”
Gary also developed an eating disorder around this time, but would sill keep up the pretence he was trying to write new music to his family.
“You get out of bed and you’ve got to go, ‘Hey everyone, I’m going into the studio now’. And dad would go off to do his day’s work, and I’d literally sit there watching the piano, thinking ‘I used to write big hits on that thing’. Now, the piano was the enemy. I’d sit in there and I’d look at the clock, and I’d come out at four and go ‘that was a good day’. And I’d act this day of being in the studio, pretending I was doing something – I was doing nothing. It is awful and it went on for years.”
Dropped by record label
Quiet band member Mark felt the loss of Robbie the most when it happened. Looking back he says: “It was kind of strange, really, because for me, Rob was like a brother. I couldn’t have imagined the band experience without him, but we knew we had three weeks to do a show.”
But after the shows and another year he had enough of the band. When Gary suggested they split he says he thought “thank god”. But he wasn’t totally prepared for the coming years.
“I just pretty much started writing straight away. I had written my songs on my piano at home, and I was writing for myself. Rob lived in St John’s Wood, and I was recording at Abbey Road. So he came to visit a couple of times, which was lovely. And Howard came and sang on Clementine and Jason came to the studio, and I remember I was so much wanting to impress Jay that I forgot to eat all day and then fainted. So emotionally, we probably all a little bit, we didn’t have a plan.”
His 1996 solo album Green Man did OK but nothing compared to the highs of the big number one Take That albums. He then stepped out of the limelight for a while but bounced back to win Celebrity Big Brother in 2002 and brought out second album In Your Own Time in November 2003, but further success did not follow. “Eventually I got dropped. You started to feel very negative about yourself,” he admits.
Desperate attempt to get Jason to stay
Gary Barlow says he was ‘desperate’ to make the band work – even when Jason wanted out(Image: )
When the band reformed one of the things Jason Orange insisted on was that Nigel was no longer their manager so they could do things on their own terms having been hurt before.
“I think he decided if we got too big for our boots, it wasn’t going to work. So he made us all feel insecure. I didn’t want to feel like that anymore,” Jason recalls.
Mark adds: “I was really proud of Jay. I remember feeling like, go on, Jason. And I felt proud, you know?”
The band had all changed by this point and were less selfish it seems, thinking of each other and clearly more mature than the boys who began in the band.
Gary says: “I wanted to walk out on stage again. I wanted to sing again. I wanted that audience again. I was desperate for it all, but wanted it to be right for us all. I wanted it to be, to feel good for everyone. And I suppose that was new, because I didn’t really care about anybody else in the 90s, I just wanted it to be all right for me.”
After the comeback tour the band made new music including the single Patience which was a huge hit. Jason insisted the band got split royalties for tracks, which was not the case before when Gary got all the songwriting cash. He says previously Gary had refused to contemplate it. Gary says: “When we came back…everyone wanted to write, and I realised this takes pressure off me. Now everybody’s sharing the burden of being creative in a band.”
The band enjoyed a hugely successful tour called Circus but just as they were now playing their biggest live shows, Gary could tell Jason was not going to stay forever.
“I knew this was enough for him. I knew Jason was leaving. I think he’d found it hard coming back. I feel like he’d enjoyed the success, but he didn’t want it forever. I felt like to keep Jason, we’ve got to get Rob.”
Howard adds: “Oh, Jason promoted it quite heavily. The fact that he wanted to do this thing with Robbie. He worked together, five of us back together, making everything hunky dory.”
The band meet Robbie in America and after a few false starts work on some music together and he joins them on tour. At the end of this tour, Jason quits and the band becomes a three piece.
Howard recalls: “After that last show, Jason sat us all down and said, Listen, I don’t want to be in the band anymore. And I think I’m done. But it was really sad, because Jason felt like one of my best friends. I felt like we had so much in common.”
Mark adds: “It was a big, a big moment for us, because now we’ve gone from five on stage to three of us. We’ve lost two members.”
Happier times…
Take That reform kick-starts with ‘tipsy’ dance to Pray
Take That manager Nigel Martin-Smith threw the band an unlikely lifeline when he called up Gary in 2005 and told him that Sony wanted to make a film about them.
For Gary it was the encouragement for change he needed. Mark Owen had just done Celebrity Big Brother so was back in the spotlight and Howard hints in the film his money had begun to dry up by this point.
“You start having money worries. All of a sudden, my money’s dwindling. I’ve got to look after it. I’ve got to go to a smaller house,” he recalled.
The four members meet and discuss the band and Robbie and Take That: For The Record centred on a final reunion where Robbie was also invited but didn’t show up. “I got stoned before went in there, because I didn’t know how he was going to deal with it,” Howard admits.
There was a premiere for the show launched at the end of the year, and the four members posed outside for the first time in around 10 years together to help create a buzz. Despite the documentary being quite staged and awkward in places, it was a huge hit on TV and led to the foursome being offered the chance to reform and go back on stage.
“We didn’t really know what reception it would have, whether anybody even cared,” Mark admits. After a night drinking together, and even performing the dance to Pray whilst tipsy to see if they could still do it, they agreed to say yes to concert promoter Simon Moran and arena dates sold out in one morning. The band was back and this time it would be for good in some form.
Trio continue – and are Back For Good
Take That are going on an enormous stadium tour this year (Image: GETTY)
The trio of Gary, Howard and Mark decided to continue and have carried on performing on and off going forwards, with more live dates planned for 2026.
Gary says: “These days, that gorgeous audience, I want to go around and kiss one by one, because they’ve loved us and they’ve made us part of their lives for years and years, and they still keep coming.”
Mark also praises Howard and his importance in the band, despite not singing many songs. “Howard for me is like the backbone of the band. Never forget is the most fitting song for him to sing, because the band is in that song, meeting the other lads for the first time, a little bit nervous, little bit shy, every outfit, every award, every part of take that, every High, every low, Rob, leaving, Jay, leaving it resonates with me every time. And when you throw your arms up in the air and you’re never going to forget you are reaching for the freaking sky.”
* Take That is released by Netflix on Tuesday January 27.
*If you’re struggling and need to talk, the Samaritans operate a free helpline open 24/7 on 116 123. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or visit their site to find your local branch
