Steven. How are you? I'm very good.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Actually, probably what I should say is you all right our kid?
All right. Yeah, we're good.
Where you.
Where are you from?
Selly Oak!
Yeah,
You're Small Heath?
No...
You know, my parents are Small Heath I grew up in Kingstanding.
Same sort of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Not that not far.
Honestly, the accent sounds so fake when I do it now to my ears,
because I've just.
I've lost most of it, but I've been down a number.
I've been in London for 40 years.
Yeah.
Yeah, but when you go back to you, slide.
Yeah, exactly.
But, you know, thing is, the first time I ever heard
anything about the sort of Brummie Mafia was when Peaky Blinders appeared on.
Let's say they almost got a very sheltered childhood.
But where did the original idea come from for you?
My parents told me stories.
Uncles and aunts,
grandparents told me stories about the Peaky Blinders when I was a kid.
But my mum was a bookie's runner when she was nine years old.
They used to use kids to take to carry a basket washing down the road,
and people would rap the name of the horse they were betting on and their code name
on a piece of paper and then drop the bet, the sixpence or whatever in it
and then drop it in the basket.
And my mum and little kid would be walking,
then walked and took a ride to the bookmaker
and drop all the bets of my dad's uncles were illegal
bookmakers called the Sheldons and they were known as the
Peaky Blinders
So you really had some success in Brum [Birmingham], didn't you?
Oh God, no.
I mean, I remember in the early days, what about Liverpool?
What about...
Yeah.
So how much are we actually watching people from your childhood in the service
It's some.
I mean, Charlie Strong was a real person who I knew.
They run plays a gypsy scrap metal, you know, in Nechells Green
You know. Well,
Polly was real.
She was. My dad's answer to the welder
then was the toughest person Yeah, Curly.
Curly was my great uncle,
who I've met and he's completely bald
his name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, yeah,
I mean, a lot of it is rooted in people I've met, sort of when I was a little kid.
And also just stories I was told.
And the series
is nearly ten years old when it first appeared on TV in 2013.
But how long was it that actually sort
of forming in the back of your mind before that?
I'd always wanted to do it since I was a kid.
And when I became a writer, I mean,
it was sort of unlikely
possibility because Birmingham isn't the most fashionable in all of them.
But 25 years ago I pitched it to Channel four
and it nearly happened, but then did, didn't,
and I'm glad it didn't because I think the lack of technology in those days meant
we wouldn't have been able to do justice to Birmingham.
In the twenties with a green screen and all of that stuff.
Yeah, yeah. So,
so I mean, obviously
it's been sort of on and off parts of all your life.
But when you started work on it, did you ever foresee
that it was going to have such longevity or did you think, Oh, maybe season.
So No, I thought
I mean, I was proud of it and suddenly we have the reality
and I just sort of wanted to introduce this
interesting world to Britain
and I was very thrilled when it became popular here
and then astonished when it became so popular everywhere else
you know, in the US, South America, Russia, China,
all these places where people live.
And it's just incredible that people from such
different backgrounds
with such different lives seem to identify it.
So how does it feel to be sort of saying goodbye to the TV series anyway?
I know you've got other plans, but just.
Yeah, the TV series.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I'm describing it is the end of the beginning
because I think this is a lot
more life in this, because it is a world now and it's the, the,
uh, the fans who made me want to keep it going because the, you know,
the things that they do, the artwor, thje tattoos, the videos that they make,
it just makes you feel that there's something really out there
There's a connection with a lot of different people from all over the place.
And why would you artificially get rid of it just because.
So there's going to be a film then. Yes.
Why did you want this to finish things with the film?
Why not another series on TV?
Well, I'm not saying the film will be finishing it.
It really I mean, it's the next thing and it's the only thing
that I know I'm going to do.
But after that, the fifties are interesting.
So where are you with work on the film?
How far ahead of you?
It's in my head. I know what I'm going to do.
I know what the story's
pretty comprehensively so it's going to be just a question of writing it
and shooting it, and I want to shoot it in Birmingham.
Okay.
That's been just
Selly Oak will be featured.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Steubenville is where I was
gonna put the terraced housing in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Please, please.
I'm just thinking about
the new season of Peaky Blinders, because at the end of season five,
Tommy Shelby's not in the greatest places,
to put it mildly, and he seems made worse by the start of this tunnel.
And what I've seen
is his sort of mental state and his decline going to be
much of the focus of this this new series,
or is it something is going to carry over into the film?
Well, I felt like of
what I've always wanted to do with Tommy is that
he has his mental input, rather,
he has his trauma from the First World War,
and yet he goes from strength to strength from the outside.
You know, it gets more and more rich, more and more powerful.
He's now got political power.
So on the outside, here is a man on a fantastic upward trajectory.
But what I'm interested in is that on the inside, it's the opposite,
just watching how those two things affect.
Yeah.
So perhaps we shouldn't believe him when he says he's a calm
or a more peaceful person, you know, my man, definitely.
Definitely not even though he's released.
And so even inside
if having seen the trailer, of course, in this case
and you've got Stephen Graham
how does he fit into things?
I can't tell you. I can't I can't tell you.
Everything I can tell you is that the character he plays has he's relaxed.
I was going to ask that.
I bet he's relieved that actually.
Yes, exactly. But we did talk about his life.
At least that's one thing you'd have to worry.
How difficult was it to get him, though, because he's in so much demand
at the moment and has been for years, actually.
But he's a big fan, so that always helps.
So usually the people we get, we get as a consequence of them wanting to do it.
It's certainly not the money.
It's they don't get paid a lot to be.
So it is for the love, which is great, which is great.
And still, on the subject of actions night,
you and I would know proper Brummy accent sounds like.
Yes. Yes.
But actually it's a really hard accent to do
if you're not it's not you know, it can sound like a parody now.
I wondered how the cast went about getting the accent and getting it right.
Well, at the beginning it was like the big issue was, was the accents.
You know, who's doing the accent?
I never and I remember at the beginning there was a lot of talk
about voice coaches and everybody's got to do the accent and get it right.
I just can't see how an actor
who is worrying about the accent can act and so I said, Let's forget that.
Let's just do it, do it, do it and see how it goes. And
Cillian [Murphy]'s absolutely wonderful and in the end, it's a question of attitude.
It's like, just go at it, just go and do it.
Do we do it?
And then the accent will come.
I think if you stop and think, Well, I should be saying that,
you know, that vowels should be like that.
What are you doing? You know, you're pulling the sink apart.
There's no point.
So and I think now it's no longer an issue.
Nobody would
I mean, it would definitely show in the performance
because you've been concentrating on the wrong things.
Exactly. Exactly.
So the first episode of this season,
of course, is dedicated to Helen McCrory,
who was such an extraordinary actor in Polly.
It must have been such a blow for the whole cast and crew.
Yeah.
I wondered how much the spirit
of her character sort of still lingers over this final season.
Absolutely.
I mean, the loss of the human being, Helen, was the tragedy.
The loss of the character is just something we had to deal with.
And hopefully we did it
appropriately.
But like in real life, when you have someone in your family
who is that powerful and not strong, even after they've passed, they carry on.
You know, their influence carries on.
And as long as people they've knew them are alive, they're sort of still there.
And that's what I wanted to reflect is now,
you know, I'll never seem to stop working as far as I can tell.
And your most recent film, Spencer, of course,
opens to so much critical acclaim I saw it at the London Film Festival.
I thought it was absolutely brilliant.
So I wondered how you felt about Kristen Stewart getting so many awards,
so many nominations, because now she's up for an Oscar as well.
I know she's brilliant.
I mean, she's great, a great person.
She performed the role so beautifully
and, you know,
it's like well through chilly, you know, that any great actor, you know,
you write your stuff and then I just they make
they make it live.
And she was brilliant.
So I really want to work with her again.
So that would be wonderful.
And you're right.
I mean, she's absolutely fantastic in the film.
I'm just looking forward.
I've read that this particular season of Peaky Blinders
is going to end just as World War Two starts.
Is that about right.
I shouldn't rule anything out.
No, it's not.
It's not
because the sort of the the conclusion
conclusion will happen in the film of this chapter,
because I was just thinking in terms of moving forward
into the film World War, to be such a wonderful setting for them, because they
then have a lot of the time when the black market going on.
I'm ahead of you. Absolutely.
The film is all that.
It's, you know, Petey... fight for you.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absoluteyl. Yeah. There's a
sell out chapter.
Yeah.
Oh, totally. Like it's
an aside from the Peaky Blinders movie,
I believe you're going to be making a mini series with Mark Ruffalo.
Yes, that's been announced, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's adaptation of a fantastic Pulitzer Prize winning novel called All the Light
We Cannot See, which also sits in the second world war but in France and Germany.
Right.
And, yeah, and it's got an incredible cast.
And I can't wait for it.
They start shooting, I think, March, middle of March.
Okay, so it's not far off then.
It's all done, it's all ready to go.
Done my bit!
and it seems like it took the rest.
Right.
So it's it's been lovely to talk to you.
I really appreciate your time.
And then I guess I should say, Ta-ra. Ta-ra, see you soon.