Newsweek - USA (2019-10-04)

OCTOBER 04, 2019

Culture

48

Illustration by BRITT SPENCER

“he’s unafraid of death,” says peaky blinders star cillian murphy about
Tommy Shelby, the tormented, enigmatic leader of the fictional Shelby
crime family. The BAFTA-winning crime saga, which first debuted in 2013, is
loosely based off the real Peaky Blinders, a gang who may have sewed razor blades
in the peaks of their caps in Birmingham, England, during the early 1900s. Mur-
phy has appeared in Hollywood blockbusters like Inception, 28 Days Later and the
Dark Knight series, but it’s playing mob boss Shelby that Murphy considers a real
“gift.” Murphy reveals that Season 5 will be more politically charged, showing the
rise of fascism in England during the reign of Sir Oswald Mosely (Sam Claflin),
the leader of the violent, anti-Semitic British Union of Fascists. Without sharing
his own views on politics, Murphy lauds show creator Steven Knight’s masterful
way of addressing today’s climate. “Steven Knight is very smartly commenting
on what is happening in the world politically, but doing it through the prism of
history, which is a much smarter, a much more elegant way of dealing with it.”

Cillian Murphy

What is it like to play a character

like Tommy Shelby?

It’s very satisfying yet quite exhausting.

He’s a relentless, beautifully written

character with all these complexities

and contradictions. I wouldn’t play any

character if I thought it was a walk in

the park. I don’t necessarily identify

with any facet of his personality—but

that represents the challenge. To have

played him for ɿve seasons is a real gift.

Season 5 is going to be more

politically charged, right?

The series deals a lot with the rise of

fascism in Britain and with Oswald

Mosely. His speeches are readily

available online. You can look them up,

but he uses phrases like “Make Britain

Great Again” and “false news.” It’s kind

of like a playbook for populism.

Tommy struggles with PTSD after

WWI. What’s his mental state like?

He’s very fragile. This season there’s

no conventional kind of threat. He is

dealing with an ideology. The other

biggest threat is himself. A lot of things

come home to roost; stuff that you’ve

been sweeping under the carpet and

not dealing with begins to surface. In

Tommy’s case, all of that is magniɿed

1 million times.

What keeps Tommy going?

He witnessed such horror, it made

him realize that you gotta take the

world by the collar and just kind of

shake it up. I don’t think he expects

[to live]. Every day for him is just like a

bonus. —Maria Vultaggio

PARTING SHOT

“I don’t think

he expects

[to live]. Every

day for him is

just like a

bonus.”