Hi. How are you?
I'm good. How are you doing today?
I'm not too bad.
We're filming late at the minute, so I'm away.
But with my coffee. But fine.
Oh, no, no.
Yeah, I'm quite enjoying.
We've got a bit of sun today, which I'm quite for right now.
It's. It's very blustery here, but it's. It's.
It's relatively.
It's too bright, in fact, for Zoom, but.
Yeah, I'm not complaining about the weather.
No, no, not at all.
So excitedly.
Peaky Blinders is back.
I know. It's so long away.
How does it feel to return?
It's just great. It's.
It's great to finally get it out there after it was going to happen
that it didn't happen.
That it was, you know, at all the everything's and
I mean, when I first signed on was like 2018.
So it's now it's actually coming up.
So it's just like, oh I see.
I really wasn't lying that I was going to be in the show.
Like for a long time we were like,
yeah, you're, you're not in it, but okay,
okay, you'll see, you'll say so.
And then it was like, then it didn't happen.
So it was like, oh my God, it's not going to happen.
Then it did and now it's out so it feels great.
Oh, that's good.
Because, yeah, in season five, we were just sort of
teased about your character.
So it must have been you must've been holding so much back for so long.
So much back because people were like, you thought you were going to be in Peaky.
You're not really in it. And I'm like, no, I.
And it sounds like such a line to go.
No, I'll be. I'll be in the next one.
It'll be a bigger part.
It's like, Oh, that's cute. She thinks
she thinks she's going to be in a she's not.
That's really awkward.
Oh, bless her.
And now you're in it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, right.
She told you, like, drop
Well, it's very exciting because I think your character is really interesting.
When in season six, I was wondering if we could
sort of explore where we find her on what's going on with Captain Swing, a.k.a.
Laure McKee. Okay. Mm.
Where are we?
Well, it's the start.
You obviously find her four years ago, four years in season five.
So that's.
I mean, and then it jumps.
So where you find her in episode two is four years later,
and it's actually the first time they've met.
So she did the awful things or have them
or sanctioned the awful things four years ago.
And so that I wonder if people quite grasped
how epic that first meeting at his rally was
because that takes some balls.
They could have just took the absolute head off her
because she killed everyone and she killed some of the most important
family members and she just strolls in on her own.
Is she armed?
Is she not like him?
So that's where we find her.
But they have been doing business together, I imagine, you know,
via telephone
zooms and emails for four years.
So that's where I guess without that, that's where you find them.
So separate you go is another thing.
Yeah.
I find that saying that you were talking about my favorite so far
because it's just this little pint sized woman walking into this rally
full of angry men around her. Yes.
Very riled up people.
I mean, she's just got the absolute balls of a rhino.
I mean, is he just she's so
nervy, like like the nerve of steel.
I mean, everything that I am not.
I mean.
Yeah, but I guess she's got that thing that I think
I don't completely don't agree with a lot of her politics,
but she's got that thing of she so
deeply, deeply believes in what she's doing.
But, you know, when she says about the bodies
kind of being his collateral damage, that's kind of what she thinks because
she sees the greater picture of of her cause and
is not afraid to die for it.
So I think when you take a bit like Tommy, when you don't have that huge
fear of dying, you're like,
dude, you'll do anything.
So that's I mean, it's yeah, it's amazing to play.
Like, Arthur's there and there's all the Peaky Blinders there.
Like, he's surrounded.
She's on her own.
Yes. Tootling in... balls of steel.
I mean, so what makes it somewhat terrifying at the same time?
Yeah, she's just so unpredictable at this point.
Yeah. And she is. And she is unpredictable.
And I think the fact that she has taken out
people like that close to him without batting really an eyelid
I mean, it's so clear to her that that that happened, that
that as far as she's concerned, that is Tommy's fault.
He he is his his inability to see
his limitations is absolutely anyone who around him who dies.
That's his fault.
And like, she's like, that's not on me.
So enjoy that.
Don't annoy me.
Let's do business.
Oh, it's amazing.
I find the the the political landscape we have had
peaky combined is right now so fascinating.
What research did you look into?
Because, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a minefield.
And you can only you can you could go you could go into it forever,
but then you hit walls because
some of what we're doing is
historic poetic license
because it's, it's in Ireland.
You but it's not entirely accurate
that you'd be a member of the IRA and a member of the Blue Shirt Party
because they were kind of mutually exclusive.
They didn't agree. The politics didn't agree.
You had people that were in the IRA who left and joined the Blue Shirts,
but they weren't in the two parties at the same time that I could find.
So my research was mostly that.
And I brought that Steve[n Kinight]
and we we and Cillian [Muprhy], we ironed out a few things and made some
some more
conditional script changes, whereas things were maybe written as fact
and we were like, let's maybe make that conditional rather than fact
because like it is just like, so is not fact.
So like things like that, for my part, that's I I stuck to my own part of us.
And then you just know what you know, surrender the rest.
And then it's a TV show. I mean, it's a fictional TV show.
We rooted in truths but it's not a documentary.
So that's kind of what you have to do, I guess.
Yeah. Sort of embellish it.
Enjoy the kind of research. Yeah.
Of your own little characters. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
And and yeah, it is it is definitely rooted in some accuracies and stuff.
And, you know, I was talking earlier
that I believe if if you were if we were to go on another, you know, a
few years down
the line, I would imagine her and Mosley would start to diverge in politics
because at the minute, they're seemingly on a similar,
you know, nationalist kind of
I don't think she likes him much at all.
I wouldn't say she loves the English much at all.
Consider.
Right, because as a united Ireland, you know,
by any means.
But yeah, so it's it's what it's it really interesting.
And and when we were and this was before what's happening right now
with Ukraine, we you know, we talked about it with Steven
when we talked about the mirrors
of what of what started to happen and then what started to happen.
And it's everything that's happening now and it's really it's terrifying.
And there's no way there was no way of knowing that.
I mean, that was just I mean, that would be that'd be a topic for Steve.
But it's it's kind of eerie.
Yeah.
That was actually going to be my next question
because the now the political and shortness of nowadays
and how it's been sort of building up the couple of years
I mean, obviously you filmed before all this happened,
but was there anything from like the Trump era, the Tories or anything?
Yeah.
Yeah, we did talk about stuff like it was more Steve and Steve could speak
for nominally more to than I can on the topic because he's way more
versed particularly on the English politics side.
But he
he talked a lot about when he was doing his research
and how he started to see these mirror,
how, you know, he was doing research for Baghdad.
And he was like, wait a minute.
But that's like that, like that slogan that they had or that
you know, that
whatever the political parties agenda that they were trumpeting that time
is, wait a minute, that's like what they're saying
and then
we'll hold on if we look back at that, that led to World War Two.
And then and this was before what's happened enough.
And we were all we all had a real oh, that's like that's really scary.
Like, that's really close to the bone.
And I'm I mean, now look at where we are.
It's it's it's just terrifying.
I don't I don't know if things are just cyclical or it's like a cogs in a machine.
I don't know what the hell.
It's it's really scary.
And therefore, just makes your show kind of a very
good look at the human nature and cyclic nature of politics and violence.
Yeah, totally.
It is.
It is. It does.
There seems to be a yes, it's very cyclical.
Yeah.
Just human nature and ego and and power and control and money and crashes
and then cranking it up again and then it's.
Oh, it's, it's true isn't it.
Just thinking about because you wouldn't get out of bed.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
So I think we should we want to have more of a question before.
Yeah,
I was I if I think about this this season as well, there seems to be
a lot of talk about women behind the men on the forefront of politics.
How is that with your character?
Because it's got your character.
We've got Lady Diane know that and they seem to be
the ones that are pulling the threads more so.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I do think that was is probably
rather historically probably accurate.
It's just that there's not much about it.
I mean, there is obviously abandonment and stuff.
But, you know, of all the women,
as we know, so many women were written out of history
so I would say there was I mean, it's not news that women are formidable
and clever and amazing and awful and all the same things men are.
It's just that men have been on the forefront of the face of history on it.
So I would say, no, I don't know that they're commanders
at my level, you know, Captain Swing's level.
But then I know there was a guy that I'm very much
I've very much put in my head of who
she is based on what he up to because he was from
the same town, the same ever, then followed a similar trajectory.
She did so I give me some boots to to step into book as a man.
But yeah, I mean, we know we know little about the
the women in history are pulling the strings,
but I don't the ones that we do know about are very present.
And I think there's no doubt that it's just it's nice to see them doing it
just to see it in show.
But I would imagine they were very much there.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I feel that way to go from a question about women
to a question particularly about a specific man.
But what is it like working again with Cillian Murphy again on your scenes.
Just I love it. I mean, I love more.
I love
I love it.
Got such a great, very calm,
very presence, very on very honest, like very honest.
You know, I had
as I said that I had some
the issues
of science dramatic, but I had something that was going well, I don't know.
But, you know, from the Irish history, I was like,
I this is really like jarring to me because it's like, really
what should I do?
And he was immediately in there and he was, you know,
he was like, you're absolutely right.
And I was like,
I was he was you need to email Steve.
I'm not email Steve.
You get fired I'm not getting fired.
I'm new here.
But he was like, no, no, no.
He was like, it's totally.
And, you know, it's a very hard, very valid, very, you know,
he wasn't he's just lovely.
He's just down to earth, professional, funny.
He's these cool
I would say he's really cool.
That's amazing.
And so it's final question.
The so much I'm assuming coming up and I know you can't talk about it,
is there any particular episode that we should, like look out for?
I'm excited if I have my numbers right
because I thought last week's episode, I thought that was episode three
it was my husband would say, take everything on
but tell you that and $2.50 to get in.
So I want to say four and six
who am I going to do wrong because I thought I was in
1, 3, 4, 6 I'm in this week's episode
no no yeah. Every episode.
Not sure.
Yeah, totally.
Well, thank you so much for talking with me today.
I can't wait to see what Captain Swing gets up to in season six.
I know I'm not....
I am. I'm so sorry
for everything she's done.
What she's about to do.
Yeah,
she's done what she's about.
I'm sorry.
Thank you so much.