Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight reveals 'missing' Arthur Shelby's fate in The Immortal Man - and the jaw-dropping message he received from Snoop Dogg about award-winning show
Nobody messes with the Peaky Blinders, as the gang members like to say. And there was no way Cillian Murphy was going to abandon their leader, Tommy Shelby. ‘When you’ve played a character for that long, you do kind of swap atoms with them,’ says the actor who first swaggered into view as the ruthless, charismatic gangster in 2013.His piercing eyes were perfect for a man traumatised by the horrors of the First World War, now running crime on the streets of Birmingham during the 1920s.The show’s highly stylised look, gritty violence, loud rebel rock music and gypsy mysticism confused some early viewers. But audiences grew and grew over six series until the BBC joined forces with Netflix, and Peaky Blinders became a worldwide hit.Now Tommy is back for a final time in a big-budget movie called Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight addressed the fate of 'missing' character Arthur Shelby in new film The Immortal Man While several familiar faces - including Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby - reappear in the film, Arthur does not‘It was great, because every time Cillian won an award – like the Golden Globe or the Oscar – he would send me a text saying, “I can’t wait to get started”,’ says the writer Steven Knight. ‘In other words, he was saying, “I’m still with you. I’m not gonna abandon this.”’And Cillian might well have walked away after Peaky Blinders gave him a platform, and his career shot off like a bullet from one of Tommy Shelby’s smuggled guns. He won multiple best actor awards after starring in Oppenheimer in 2023. ‘I think he felt the same as all of us, that we wanted to tell the final chapter of this story,’ says Steven, who has also written the movie.He has distractions of his own to think about, having been handed the massive challenge of reinventing James Bond for the super-spy’s new owners, Amazon. But as for the Peaky Blinders movie, will anyone who has not followed all six seasons have a clue what’s going on? ‘You don’t have to have seen the show,’ Steven insists. ‘We wanted to make a standalone film you could watch if you’d never even heard of Tommy Shelby.’If that’s the case, here’s everything you need to know at the start of The Immortal Man. The Second World War has broken out. The Shelbys are a mixed Romani and Irish Traveller family who run a pub called The Garrison and other businesses in Birmingham, both legal and criminal.Tommy is weary after steering them through battles with the IRA, the Mafia and many others, including Oswald Mosley’s fascists. He has been a Member of Parliament, but his sister Ada, played by Sophie Rundle, now has that job. Tommy has lost a wife and daughter, he blames himself for their deaths and is haunted by their ghosts. So he has retired from the gang and is holed up on a decaying country estate trying to write a book about his life, with only one faithful friend left, Johnny Dogs (the Irish actor Packy Lee).‘When we meet him, he’s as broken as he has been, and he’s just medicating and living in this purgatory that he’s created for himself in this big old house,’ says Cillian. ‘He’s not really living, he’s not really dead. He’s ignoring the world, he’s ignoring his family.’The story was originally going to be about Tommy’s son Charlie, who is fighting in North Africa with the Eighth Army. Instead, Tommy’s other boy, Duke, the illegitimate product of a one-night stand at a gypsy fair nearly three decades earlier, is the one who moves things on. ‘I just wanted to go to the darker side,’ says Steven.As Tommy hides away, Duke and the younger generation of Peaky Blinders are wreaking havoc. The wayward son is played by Barry Keoghan, as seen in Saltburn and The Banshees Of Inisherin. ‘Barry has that thing you can’t learn and you can’t fake, which is on-screen charisma,’ says Cillian, 49, who has it in spades himself. ‘You can’t take your eyes off him. I worked with him when he was a kid on the movie Dunkirk and he had it then. And he looks good in a Peaky suit, so that was helpful.’ Paul Anderson played the role of Arthur, who is Tommy's older brother, in the character's appearances in the Peaky Blinders TV seriesBarry, 33, took the older actor’s number while they were working on Dunkirk. He sent a message a few years back and got a thrilling reply. ‘I was just saying Happy Father’s Day – we always keep in touch – and he said, “Oh thanks.” Then he texted me saying, “How would you like to play Tommy Shelby’s son?” I was like, “Oh wow! Great, I’d love that.”’As The Immortal Man starts, Tommy wants to keep out of the war, but it’s getting personal. The Nazis are rounding up Romanis and there’s a plot to plunge the British economy into chaos by flooding it with forged £5 notes, which is also based on historical truth. Duke Shelby is offered a fortune to help sabotage his own country by a Nazi collaborator played by Tim Roth. Will he do it?Tommy is forced out of retirement to try to talk sense into his son. The battle between them is mesmerising. ‘They are mirror images of each other, and one is taking over from the other,’ says Steven, slightly giving the game away. A fortune teller says one of the two men has to die, but the circumstances are surprising and there are several massive plot twists before we get there.For the uninitiated, Peaky Blinders is based on a real-life gang that menaced Birmingham up until the 1920s, although their name came from a habit of wearing their caps over one eye. The razors concealed in their peaks was invented by Steven. They were also called Sheldon, not Shelby. But they did wear their hair in the Peaky Blinder style – shaved on the back and sides, long on the top – originally to ward off lice. Steven once said his father had run into them during the 1920s. ‘They were immaculately dressed. Razor blades, guns, drinking beer and whisky out of jam jars.’Steven studied English at University College London, then worked in radio advertising before writing screenplays. In the late 90s, he was a co-creator of quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. His films include Dirty Pretty Things, Spencer (about Princess Diana) and Maria, which starred Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas.Still, the slow-burn success of Peaky Blinders came as a surprise, says Cillian. ‘It was incremental. I suppose you know when people driving past in cars start shouting “Tommy” at you. 'Then when people started dressing like Peaky Blinders and getting their hair cut and having themed weddings and all of that stuff. 'But it was all fan-generated. There was very little advertising, it was all people on the internet talking to each other about the show.’Young men began wearing three-piece suits, tailor coats and baker boy caps like the gang. And it went international. Four young men were arrested by the Taliban in Afghanistan last year for wearing the suits and hats, which were said to be against Islamic values. ‘It’s quite remarkable. I really knew something was happening when the rapper Snoop Dogg got in touch. 'He talked about how it reflected the way he got involved in gang culture in South Central LA,’ says Steven. ‘I love the fact a Mafia boss in a New York jail, when asked about what was the best evocation of being in the Mafia, said, “Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders, more than any of them, even The Godfather.” Which was amazing.’One notable absence in the new film is Tommy’s big brother Arthur. ‘I don’t want to go there, because it is such a huge spoiler,’ says Steven. So look away if you don’t want to know, but Arthur has been gone for two years when the movie starts. The actor who played him, Paul Anderson, pleaded guilty to possession of crack cocaine in January 2024, in an eerie echo of his character’s addictions, which may help explain why Arthur does not appear.But Stephen Graham does return, as a union leader, while Mission: Impossible’s Rebecca Ferguson makes a sensational entrance as Kaulo, the psychic twin sister of the Romani woman who gave birth to Duke but is now dead. ‘I bloody love Peaky,’ says Rebecca – and Cillian was a draw too. ‘I’ve wanted to work with him for a very long time.’Filming locations included the disused Burton clothing factory in Leeds, which stood in for the Birmingham Small Arms munitions factory, and Hartley’s old jam factory in Liverpool, where they built a pig sty in which bodies are disposed of and Tommy and Duke wrestle in the mud. The Black Country Living Museum in Dudley also lent authenticity to various scenes.The Garrison pub is in Castlefield, Manchester. But most of the interiors were shot at Digbeth Loc, a production complex Steven Knight has recently built from a series of warehouses in Birmingham. The band UB40 is based there, alongside the hit TV series MasterChef. For Steven, 66, all this is a labour of love.‘My dad was a farrier, a blacksmith,’ he says, wearing a horseshoe necklace. ‘This reminds me of where I’m from.’ His father, George, often worked on horses in scrap metal yards in Small Heath. ‘When I was ten, Dad didn’t make me go to school. He’d say, “Do you want to come with me?” I’d take the shoes off the horses, turn the handle on the forge, cook breakfast on the frying pan, all of that happy stuff.’ The original BBC series first hit screens back in 2013 and aired in total for six series until ending in 2022Some of what he saw as a boy inspired Peaky Blinders. ‘A lot of Romanis would be running the yards. I’d meet these amazing characters.’ A few ended up in Peaky, like the owner of the yard where the gang stores its contraband. ‘Charlie Strong was a real person. One time I said to my dad in Charlie’s yard, “Is this stuff stolen?” And he said, “No. Charlie finds things just before they’re lost!”’The writer has also created other hit shows like House Of Guinness, SAS Rogue Heroes and A Thousand Blows, all of which are set to return.Then there’s Bond. James Bond. How did he feel when Amazon took over the rights and asked him to reinvent 007? ‘Ecstatic. For any British writer it’s going to be on the bucket list. It’s wonderful.’ Secrecy rules, though, for the moment. ‘I can’t say anything about it, but yes I love it.’ Has he written the script yet? ‘I can’t say.’What he can talk about is the deeply personal story hidden within his new movie.Early on, we see a group of women starting the night shift in a factory during a bombing raid. Candles flare on a cake, there are smiles as they sing Happy Birthday – then a bomb falls and kills them all. ‘My mum used to work there,’ says Steven, who has dramatised a real attack on the Birmingham Small Arms factory in November 1940 that ended the lives of 53 women and men. ‘She would have been there that night if it wasn’t for the fact that one of my older brothers had a sore throat,’ says the seventh child of George and Ida. ‘So that bombing has always stuck with me.’If his mum had not stayed home to look after his big brother, Steven Knight would not be here. And he would not be using the opening scenes and closing credits of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man to honour his mother’s lost friends. ‘The people who died had been offered the chance to go to the shelter, but decided to work on. All of that heroism. I just thought we should do something. There’s a sort of a tribute to them at the end of the film.’
Steven has a genius for turning forgotten stories of history into gripping screenplays. He’s already working on two more series of Peaky Blinders for Netflix and the BBC, set in the 50s and exploring the lives of the next generation. But how does a boy from Birmingham who’s now 66 cope with being so successful? ‘It’s great, but when things happen incrementally, you don’t notice. Then you’re talking about a film premiere and a Bond,’ he says, channelling the cool of 007 or Tommy Shelby, at his calmest in a crisis. ‘So it’s best not to think about it. Stop. Don’t look down.’Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is in cinemas now and streaming on Netflix from 20 March.
