Sonny Bill Williams’ new book reveals moments that changed his life forever

Binge-drinking, substance abuse, womanising and a three-day bender that finished with a doctor telling him he had so many drugs in his system he could have died.

Sonny Bill Williams will hit the headlines again with his new autobiography You Can’t Stop The Sun From Shining. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“Sonny Burnt Legs,” the kids called him.

It was the childhood trauma so horrific, Sonny Bill Williams had repressed the memory.

He was in the backyard of a charity childcare centre when a teenager ran outside and threw a pot of boiling oil down the back of Sonny Bill’s legs.F

“Two teenagers were in the kitchen cooking chips when the fat erupted in flames. One of them ran outside with the pot and, depending on who you ask, either threw it without watching where it was going or it exploded,” Williams writes in his soon-to-be-released

autobiography, You Can’t Stop The Sun From Shining.

A young Sonny Bill Williams after winning an under-13s grand final with Marist in Auckland in 1986.

“Whatever happened, the result was I ended up with boiling fat down the backs of my legs. I guess one reason I’ve blanked it out all this time is the pain.

“It’s a kind of pain only someone who’s been severely burnt can understand.”

The name-calling, the months in the intensive burns unit of Auckland Hospital aged four, crawling through the halls towards his mum and dad trying to walk again wondering why they wouldn’t pick him up – had all been forgotten.

But Williams was forced to revisit his hidden agony, among a raft of raw disclosures in the book, co-authored by Alan Duff, the Maori novelist who wrote the gritty novel Once Were Warriors which was turned into the highest-grossing New Zealand film of all time.

Williams also addresses his drug and alcohol abuse at the Bulldogs, his controversial defection to French rugby mid-contract, the persistent knee injury that had him overdosing on painkillers, the infamous toilet tryst with Candice Warner at the Clovelly Hotel, the inner conflict of his own identity, and the struggles of his family.

Sonny Bill Williams has told his life story in You Can’t Stop The Sun From Shining. Picture: Adam Knott

Sonny Bill Williams was destined for stardom from a young age and represented NSW in the junior ranks.

BOOK EXTRACT: Sonny Bill’s wild life of drugs, women and alcohol

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ON FAMILY: Marriage first, then love for Sonny Bill

When Duff first asked Williams to recall a childhood ordeal, it took him weeks of thinking and he came up with zilch.

Yet he’d told his wife Alana early in their relationship about his gruesome experience being burned by hot oil at a charity childcare centre, and her prompt saw a wave of remembrance flooding back to Williams, who believes the incident was central to the athlete and man he’d become.

Williams’ Caucasian mother Lee and Samoan father John are among numerous contributors within the book. “The first time I read [the final edit of the book], I got real emotional about what my mum was saying, what she had to go through caring for young kids, it hit me hard,” Williams told The Saturday Telegraph.

“But this whole process was so therapeutic because things like that came to the fore and made me realise why I am the way I am; thinking I’m not Samoan enough, I’m not white enough, the self-conscious vibes I would have had to struggle with from a young age because of my legs.

Sonny Bill Williams with his father John, who has contributed to his autobiography.

“I wore pants all the time, I had the whitest legs. One weekend I put fake tan on my legs and it looked like Donald Trump.

“I was tall, skinny, and I just used to think ‘I’m going to get real strong legs’. And part of the keys to my success is the strong legs I have. That stuff like really drove me to the heights that I got to in sport.

“My tattoos, as a Muslim I know they’re haram and I wish I didn’t get them now. Back then I got them because of my insecurities.

“Like the one on my calf, it was just to cover the scars. But now I see heaps of youngsters with the tattoo on their calf, but for me it was just about getting it done so I could feel comfortable wearing shorts.”

Williams endured the name-calling throughout primary school but was young enough to brush it off. Not so when he turned 11.

“I distinctly remember the day that I was like, ‘I’m going to wear pants every day now’, it was my first day of intermediate [school],” he said.

Sonny Bill Williams says he got tattoos on his legs so he could wear shorts. .

Strong lets have been the key to his success, says Sonny Bill Williams. Picture: Mitch Cameron

“I wore shorts and I remember walking the hallway and heaps of people stopping and looking.

“At primary school I was called ‘Sonny Burnt Legs’ or ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken Legs’ but you’re young.

“But intermediate, that first day, when girls in the hallway stopped and were like, ‘Oh my gosh, look at his legs’, really hit me.

“I remember going back home and saying ‘Mum, can you get me some pants?’ She bought me pants that night and I wore pants every day, even in college, every day until I dropped out of school at 14.”

By then he’d been offered a rookie contract by NRL club the Bulldogs and made the decision to move to Sydney.

Then began the journey to one of the most remarkable sporting careers in history as Williams went on to win two NRL premierships, two Rugby World Cups, the New Zealand heavyweight boxing title, and compete at the 2016 Olympic Games with the Kiwi Rugby Sevens team.

Sonny Bill Williams was a superstar when he entered the NRL with the Bulldogs.

Yet soon after emerging as one of the best rugby league prospects seen during his debut season in 2004, Williams was on a quick path to self-destruction.

He details his binge-drinking, substance abuse, womanising ways and recalls the time he went on a three-day bender and woke up in hospital with the doctor telling him he had so many drugs in his system he could have died.

“It was so funny doing this book because some of the things I look back on, waking up in the hospital with the doctors and my ex-girlfriend at the time saying that ‘What the hell, all this stuff is in your system, how could you not tell us, you could have died’, it’s like a movie,” Williams said.

“I thought ‘Did that actually happen?’

“I’m older now but at the time, I was just wild.

“And that was the hard thing because where I came from in my household there was no talk about thriving in professional sports or thriving in a professional arena.

Sonny Bill Williams says he can’t quite believe how wild his early days were at the Canterbury Bulldogs. Picture: Adam Pretty/Getty Images

“We were all about surviving paycheque to paycheque. Everyone that I knew, extended family, family, friends, whatever, just all worked low income jobs. So when I got to that place where I signed for the Bulldogs at 14 it was like ‘He’s the man’. Obviously I wasn’t.”

In 2007 Williams was involved in his most unsavoury moment after being photographed in a toilet cubicle with Warner, then known as Candice Falzon.

Williams respectfully does not name Warner in his book, but was well aware he could not avoid the topic.

“That’s my story, that’s me being authentic, I have to write about it,” Williams said.

“I have to write about the all my mistakes because when I sat down and decided to do the book, I knew I needed to be authentic.

“At that time of my life, I’m not proud of the things that I did, I’m not proud of how I treated women, I’m not proud of how I treated my own body.

“If I didn’t put those stories in, then people would understand I’m not being authentic.

“When we talk about the young players that are getting in trouble, I always have that empathetic heart for these guys because I walked that walk.

Sonny Bill Williams would go on to win two World Cups with the All Blacks. Picture: Hannah Peters/Getty Images

“A lot of these guys are just young men trying to find themselves. And sometimes the world that we live in, especially as professional sportsmen, is ruthless. A lot of times these young guys are just naive and just think ‘I’m just going along for the ride, I’m just going to be happy-go-lucky. And that’s what I was.”

Asked if he’d ever reached out to Warner in the aftermath, Williams replied: “I said my part in the book. I don’t need to delve into it any more than I have.”

Warner has endured humiliation over the incident including in South Africa when he cricketer husband was on the ball-tampering tour of 2018 when spectators taunted the couple.

A year after that embarrassment, Williams felt a complete loss of identity with his wayward lifestyle, and identifies that – and not money – as the reason he sensationally left the Bulldogs mid-season and joined the Toulon rugby club.

Williams revealed how he’d gained a Samoan passport, threw away his Australian mobile phone, and was pulled aside by a customs officer at Sydney Airport on his way to France.

Sonny Bill Williams is a devout Muslim and said the religion has played a huge role in his life. Picture: Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images

He was chased by reporters through Singapore Airport in transit, then at London’s Heathrow was told he could not enter France on his Samoan passport and was forced to hide out in his French agent’s attic.

Travelling with Ahmed “Honks” Nasser, the brother of his manager Khoder Nasser, Williams had to get a visa from London’s Australian Embassy and sprinted two kilometres on foot to Hyde Park where Nasser was waiting.

The pair were aware of hundreds of journalists descending on Toulon while lawyers for the NRL were trying to serve him subpoena papers to stop him playing, so instead of heading straight to the team’s headquarters they diverted to southwestern town Pau.

“I felt like a fugitive,” Williams said.

“We went to the local gym and nobody knew who we were, except this one young guy. I don’t know how the hell he knew who I was, but he pointed at me and said ‘Sonny Bill’.

“I looked at him and said ‘Nah’. He looked at me and started laughing, and Honks was like ‘Bro, we’ve got to go’.

Family is at the heart of Sonny Bill Williams’ life. Picture: Instagram

A happy Sonny Bill with his family. Picture: Supplied

“Then we got a call from the French agent; ‘I’m coming to get you, they’re onto you, they’re trying to subpoena you’.

“I was crapping myself. It was dark, he pulled in, I jumped in the back, he put a blanket over me, we just took off and I had to stay under that blanket for a while’.”

A recurring theme in Williams’ book is his salvation through the teachings of Islam and his desire to improve as a person each day.

“The beauty of the book for me is that we all see that I am a work in progress,” he said.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d have written a book, be working in television. But the growth that comes with it, that’s what I’m about.

Sonny Bill Williams is set to release his autobiography.

“I always think of the big picture, and in 10 years from now hopefully I’m still alive and with my kids and I can look back and say, ‘Yeah, it was a good book’.”

Williams’ strong will to uplift his community is apparent in his writing and the failure-to-success tales he shares.

He insisted that book publishers Hachette employ Pacific Islanders to be part of the project, resulting in the hiring of a Polynesian cover photographer and an editorial assistant.

“My insecurities come to the surface when I think about the book, you know, will anyone even like it, will they read it?” Williams said.

“But I just put my vulnerability hat on, if one or two people can get some goodness out of it, my job is done.”

Sonny Bill Williams, You Can’t Stop The Sun From Shining, with Alan Duff, published by Hachette Australia, available from October 13, 2021, RRP $49.99