Cillian Murphy and Steven Knight on the set of 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.' Courtesy of Netflix When Peaky Blinders was at the height of its TV dominance, as ratings soared and men in newly-bought flat caps spilled out of Garrison-inspired pubs across Britain, its creator Steven Knight teased a little bit about what Tommy Shelby’s final chapter would resemble.
The British writer occasionally said that his story of the Shelby dynasty — the 20th-century Birmingham crime gang headed up by a magnetic Cillian Murphy in a role that sent him flying in the direction of Oscar-worthy acclaim — would continue right up until the Second World War.
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Today, 13 years after Peaky Blinders first premiered on BBC Two (Netflix acquired the show’s international streaming rights a year later), audiences will finally get to see Knight’s long-held vision play out, as its six wildly popular seasons culminate in the Netflix movie The Immortal Man, which also scored a brief theatrical run. Knight’s script, directed by Tom Harper, promises exactly what he’d always discussed — revisiting the Peaky Blinders at a time when Europe was facing a villain a lot more sinister than Sam Neill’s ruthless Inspector Campbell or Adrien Brody’s vengeful Luca Changretta: Hitler.
Except, Knight hadn’t always known this was going to end in a Peaky versus Nazis showdown, exactly. “I didn’t have the actual story in my [head],” he says about making the Germans the final big boss of Tommy’s tragic, death-laden life. “But I knew that this should be a story about a man and a family between two wars.”
As the years went on, and the series landed the film finale treatment, the Birmingham native decided to end his protagonist’s journey with a once-and-for-all mission: Stop German-made counterfeit banknotes from entering Britain and toppling the economy, thus losing us the war. Returning castmembers include Sophie Rundle (as Ada Shelby), Packy Lee (Johnny Dogs) and Stephen Graham (Hayden Stagg).
But it was actually those lost along the way — such as Shelby’s first wife, Grace; his brother, John; and daughter, Ruby — that provided the entry point for Knight on The Immortal Man. “What I wanted to do was start the film with Tommy in a very unfamiliar place,” he continues to The Hollywood Reporter about having the film start with the former gang leader consumed by ghosts of his loved ones. “Because he’s done lots of bad things over the six seasons, but he’s done something that he really cannot forgive himself [for], and so he’s withdrawn from the world.”
Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Courtesy of Netflix Knight, whose other credits include creating the U.K. quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? as well as House of Guinness and A Thousand Blows, also wanted to honor his mother, who worked at the Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) company factory, the same one obliterated by the Luftwaffe in August 1940, killing 53 employees, as depicted in the opening moments of The Immortal Man. Thankfully, Knight’s mother happened not to be working that night.
“I would have said confidently — not too long ago — that the Second World War was the last time when there was universally agreed good and bad,” the writer continues. “The Nazis were bad and the people who fought the Nazis were good. The world’s changed a little bit at the moment,” he concedes, “but it still has that dividing line — even a man like Tommy Shelby, who is ruthless and prepared to do what would conventionally be seen as bad things — when coming up against this, he has decided, even before the war begins, that he’s going to oppose it.”
Harper jumps in: “There’s still shades of gray, because it’s almost like Beckett and Tommy are similar in some ways. They were both knocked off course by the First World War, and they’ve taken different paths.”
At the mention of Tim Roth‘s antagonist, a British fascist working with the Germans, who tells Tommy he wants to see the war ended with “banknotes, not bombs,” THR has to ask about the casting decision of an understatedly unnerving Roth. “He was first choice,” confirms Knight. “Cillian [also an EP on the film] has a fantastic address book, so the casting process was made more simple, but I wrote him as a posh person,” he adds. “And it was so brilliant, when Tim came in, he said, ‘What about if he’s infantry? What about if he’s more similar to Tommy?’ … It was absolutely instinctively the right thing to do.”
It also had to be plausible that Roth’s character was alluring enough — or shared a likeness with Tommy so much — that Barry Keoghan, playing the gangster’s estranged son, Duke, would be caught up in a battle of the father figures. “One who has ostensibly betrayed him or left him behind, and this other [one] who is coaxing him along, who is offering him an alternative, who is manipulating him, really,” says Harper. “It felt important that Beckett wasn’t immediately deplorable so that there’s a genuine choice for Duke.”
Keoghan’s character has taken over as the Peaky Blinders’ kingpin in the absence of his father and is in the middle of terrorizing Birmingham when Beckett enlists him in the Nazi’s banknote plot. Getting the Saltburn star on board was another one of Murphy’s address book successes. “Cillian’s just been telling the story that Barry texted Cillian on Father’s Day,” says Knight. “Cillian didn’t know, but it was very appropriate. And we all wanted him. Even after looking at the rushes, [Keoghan] was really the only person who could have pulled that off.”
Tim Roth in ‘Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.’ Courtesy of Netflix Harper, who directed three episodes of Peaky Blinders before being tapped to helm the movie, admits scaling up for film was pretty liberating. “In an obvious way, you can blow things up, whereas before, you would have to have it off-screen, or characters talking about it.” But shooting on film allowed the crew the time to choreograph the fight scenes, especially, generating a more authentic performance from the talent. Knight concurs that the Netflix budget “really helped us be able to play.”
Knight also says achieving that balance of capturing the Peaky TV show essence while still creating a bulked-up feature was imperative. “It was very important from the beginning that we make something that even someone who has never watched the show would be able to watch and enjoy it,” he tells THR. “There are certain elements that make the show what it is and make it recognizable, so we definitely wanted to have them. But then we had the good fortune to have a bigger budget and a big screen. So I think audiences are agreeing it was a fitting way to end this part of the story.”
Does the opinion of the fanbase matter to Knight, or is he confident in his ownership of the story? “No, it matters a lot,” he replies. “I’ve never felt the desire to escape the posse.” He didn’t want to shock fans for the sake of it. “Because the truth is that this show has become what it’s become as a consequence of people discovering it for themselves and becoming quite evangelical about it and selling it to other people,” he adds. “[Fans] are very loyal to it. You have these incredible experiences. If you walk into a pub and there’s somebody there — builder or scaffolder or somebody doesn’t look like a fan of anything — he’ll roll up his trouser leg, and there’s Tommy Shelby tattooed on his calf,” he giggles. “I can’t think of many other TV shows where that has happened, [and] not just here in Europe. It’s happened all over the world, in places you wouldn’t expect.”
He’ll be hoping to achieve that same success with the Peaky spin-off in the works, filming at Knight’s Digbeth Loc. Studios in Birmingham. “I can’t really talk about it in detail,” he says. “I can tell you that it takes place after the war, that it is sort of a new generation, and that it’s really good.” The mammoth production lot — a “passion project” for the screenwriter — will not just be for film and TV, he says. “I want there to be other art forms. I want it to be a creative place. The band UB40 are recording their new album there already. They just moved in and set up a recording studio,” he beams. “I’m hoping the Royal Shakespeare Company will come in and do a training school there. … It’s got to be a community of people who share a creative spirit. That’s what I want it to be.”
Between The Immortal Man, the spin-off, and running a creative empire in the heart of his hometown, Knight’s diary is chock-full. Don’t forget, he’s got a Bond script to finish for Denis Villeneuve and Amazon. “I would literally be killed if I [said anything],” he says about the 007 plans. “I can’t talk about it at all, apart from to say it’s wonderful.”
Barry Keoghan and Cillian Murphy on the set of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Courtesy of Netflix For now, it’s all about waving off the Peaky Blinders (as we know them, anyway). The director and writer laud the movie’s electric soundtrack — the likes of Fontaines D.C. and Nick Cave actually came in to re-record their covers or original songs — the characters they wish they could have revived (Knight recalls an IRA paramilitary he regrets killing off early in the show), and reminisce on what makes playing in this universe so brilliant. “The thing that really connects with me and I find enduring is the sense of what Tommy is fighting for and how he is representative of a community of people that went to war in the First World War. [They] came back, [but] they were overlooked, forgotten about, and they took action to take back control for themselves and Tommy for his family,” says Harper.
“It probably all comes back, primarily, to me, to Tommy,” he adds, “and what a fantastic central character he is, and how phenomenal Cillian is.” The duo explains that having Murphy serve as a producer on The Immortal Man made for an endlessly collaborative and aligned experience.
Thirteen years on, what lingers most for Knight isn’t the storylines or the accolades — it’s who the show found. “It’s the way it’s been received around the world and the nature of the people who’ve enjoyed it,” he says, saying some of his heroes, from Leonard Cohen to David Bowie, lent their words and music to the show. “Bowie was quite insistent, shortly before he passed away, that his music would be used on the show, which was a dream come true,” he continues.
He says he started to understand there was “something special happening” when Snoop Dogg’s agent got in touch and said he wanted to meet Knight. “He said, ‘He’s coming to London and there’s two people he wants to meet, and you’re one of them.'” The pair sat for three hours in the British capital while the U.S. rapper explained how he got involved in gang culture in Detroit and South Central L.A. Another fan is A$AP Rocky, he says. “I invited him to a Christmas dinner with all [my] kids and didn’t tell him. His minder was trying to get him to the airport and he wasn’t leaving. He was saying in Harlem, people there were loving Peaky Blinders. Now that made me realize that in places where life is pretty tough, it has a particular resonance.”
“So what’s happening is people,” he continues, “are seeing Tommy Shelby from a very tough place, himself and his family, having the swagger, the confidence and the control to take charge of their lives and their environment. That’s what makes me most proud.”
He also can’t deny it: Peaky Blinders has helped put Brummies on the map. “People from Birmingham now tell me when they go abroad and they speak with the accent, the first thing people say is Peaky Blinders… So it’s given Birmingham, [which has] not been considered the most fashionable city in the world — it’s industrial and quite tough — a bit of a swagger to it as well.”
Knight considers some of the murals and graffiti he’s seen across his city. “If it’s a Peaky character, it doesn’t get touched. People leave it alone.”
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is now streaming on Netflix.
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