Do we like Robbie Williams?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent, long-running ally to LGBTQ+ fans, marked down for taking big World Cup gigs in Russia and Qatar.
Robbie Williams went from Stoke-on-Trent to Take That at 16, and the band's first stretch of gigs was in gay clubs. He told Attitude those nights were “instantly life-changing, life-affirming”. He has said the clubs felt safe and welcoming in a way his home town didn't.
That history is why his gay fans have always felt he's theirs. He has talked about trying to be an ally while protecting his own life, and he has appeared on the cover of Attitude. It's the core of the case for him, and it's about as long-running as pop goodwill gets.
The harm check is where the asterisk comes from. He took the 2018 Russia World Cup opening and a 2022 Qatar World Cup show, and campaigners and Amnesty pushed him to speak up about LGBTQ+ and migrant worker rights there. The PinkNews report on Qatar carried no direct response from him at the time. It's a contested call about taking big money from hosts with ugly records, not words against anyone.
Looking for harmful words, we came up empty. No searches turned up anything from him on trans people, vaccines, climate or migrants. In a 2023 interview he said “the hill that I will die on” is people's right to present themselves how they like. That's thin evidence either way, so the pass is on what we could find.
The Istanbul stoush is the political one. His October 2025 show was called off by city authorities, which he said was “in the interests of public safety”, after Turkish campaigners objected, citing his 2015 Israel gig. Where you land depends on whether you see a pop star being pushed around by a protest campaign or a performer who picked a side. He hasn't said much beyond the safety statement.
On the good-person side, a former personal assistant sued him and Ayda Field in 2015, alleging sexual harassment by Field. The couple called the claims “despicable lies” and countersued. The Los Angeles case was dismissed with prejudice in 2017, so it can't be refiled. Williams himself wasn't accused of harassment.