by Gill Pringle in LA
When Peaky Blinders first launched in 2013, it instantly became a cultural phenomenon, spawning six series.
Created by Steven Knight and led by Cillian Murphy, the show focused on the ruthless exploits of a fictitious Birmingham crime gang – known as the Peaky Blinders – in the aftermath of WWI.
Illustrious cast members including Tom Hardy, Sam Neill, Amya Taylor-Joy, Sam Calfin, Stephen Graham, Adrien Brody and Paddy Considine came and went, while the unflinching Murphy remained at the helm as Tommy Shelby.
But, instead of creating a seventh series, Knight decided to go out with a bang – with a movie no less.
It’s now WWII, and Barry Keoghan joins the cast as Shelby’s son Duke, while Rebecca Ferguson plays a seductive gypsy woman, Kaulo, who claims to speak with the dead. Meanwhile, Tim Roth steps in as a dubious Brit known as Beckett, a slippery customer with a plan to aid the Nazis.
Grieving the death of his daughter and now writing a memoir, Murphy’s Tommy is dragged out of self-imposed exile in the countryside, returning to the city to face the biggest and messiest part of his life yet.
It’s less about gangland politics this time and more about legacy, survival, war, and the kind of inner demons only Tommy seems to carry.
“I feel just really, really lucky,” reflects Murphy, 49, who has since become an Oscar-winning actor for his role in Christopher Nolan’s epic Oppenheimer.
“I feel really proud of the work – it’s nuts that it’s been that long, that it’s been since the end of 2012 when we shot the original series. And it’s kind of wild that we made so much work and that so many people have watched it and it’s become so beloved. I just feel immensely proud of it all,” he adds.
If stepping into a world built so perfectly by the original cast seems like a lot to live up to, then Keoghan brings his own swagger with an unpredictable energy that fits right into the gritty, razor-edge world of Peaky Blinders.
“It’s such an honour to be asked to come in and do this. It’s nerve wracking and it’s exciting,” says Keoghan, 33, who had been angling for a role in the series for several years.
Being on the Peaky set did not disappoint. ‘It was mad. I remember seeing Cillian in person as Tommy Shelby, just looking at me being kind of in that place, and me being like, ‘Oh, man. It’s iconic’,” recalls Keoghan, 32, fresh from The Beatles set where he plays Ringo.
“And I’d asked [Peaky casting director] Shaheen Baig over the years, ‘How can I get in there?’ And I had the make-up for about 10 years. And I’d even get mistaken for someone in Peaky,” he laughs.
Relishing the costumes and the mythology, he says, “I was a big fan of the show and a big fan of Cillian and always just wanting to be part of it, and get my teeth into it.”
But it was the absent father aspect between Tommy and Duke which really intrigued Keoghan, whose own mother died of a drug overdose when he was 13, leaving him and his brother to be raised in foster homes before their grandmother took them in.
“It was the relationship for me, and sort of the absence I leaned into, and the experience that I have in some similar ways to the absence of my dad, and the echoes I’ve heard of him and the kind of figure I’ve made him to be.
“I thought that sort of humanises Duke for me, to show those vulnerabilities, and not just, obviously the kid’s gotta have problems and with the violence, but they’re all reactions – not to justify each and every one of them,” says the Banshees of Inisherin and Saltburn star.
“But, at the end of the day, there’s an animalistic thing there; a cub looking for its dad. And that’s what I brought it back to. And when he’s finally there, and then there’s the behaviour he does when he’s not there, of emulating him and trying to be like him, from what he’s heard, and trying to put it on. To when he is with him, present, and the contrast of that is what I wanted to lean into and make that a conscious thing,” says the actor who first met Murphy when the pair both starred in Dunkirk.
Talking about returning to the Peaky family, Murphy muses, “I think the luxury of having played him for so long is that all the research is kind of done.
“You’ve got like 13 years of it there and you’ve lived it alongside him, and also you’ve kind of aged alongside him. And so that’s kind of unique. I’ll never experience that again, and it’s really unusual and gratifying to have that opportunity to play a character like that,” says the Inception and 28 Days Later star who has never been entirely comfortable with his stardom and celebrity, living with his wife and two sons in the suburbs of Dublin.
“But then we wanted to make something that would justify its existence. Because the TV show, I felt, was so successful and every series became richer and deeper to me. So, in order for us to kind of conclude it with a film, it needed to justify itself.
“And ultimately that comes down to the script, and when we figured out that – the main sort of thematic drive of the show has always been family, if we continued with that, and made it a father and son story, and introduce Duke [Keoghan’s character – Tommy Shelby’s son] in that manner. Then, we knew we’re on the right track, and off we went,” says Murphy, who still finds it hard to grasp, the length of time he has spent as Tommy.
“I was 35 when we started and 48 when we made the film, meaning I’ve played Tommy for more than a quarter of my life, moving from being a youngish man right into middle-age,” says the Cork-born actor.
If Tommy Shelby has always been a bit messed up, then The Immortal Man finds him even deeper into a dark headspace.
“The whole TV show, I think, was predicated on these men’s collective trauma that they experienced coming out of World War I. And they’re all messed up in a myriad different ways, and are all dealing with it in many different ways.
“And I think that none of them could ever have conceived of the idea that it would happen again within their lifetime and so Steve Knight’s ambition, as far as I’m aware, was that the story would exist from the beginning of the end of World War I to the beginning World War II. And he’s achieved that and has kind of bookmarked it like that.
“And then the fact that Tommy, I think, when we meet him, is kind of withdrawn from the world, and he’s dealing with his own personal stuff. I think what setting the film against the backdrop of the war means is that his values are being tested all the time. What do you actually believe in? What do you actually stand for, aside from illegal bookmaking and racketeering and making money and buying houses and abandoning children and abandoning wives? Like, what do you actually stand for?” he asks of his alter-ego, a quiet storm of a man who can command a room with a glance and absolutely wreck it with a plan.
“And then he figures it out. And I think he begins towards the end of the film to really realise what he actually stands for.”
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is streaming from 20 March 2026
