How did Cillian Murphy get the role as Tommy Shelby in ‘Peaky Blinders’?
Picture the scene. A horse walking through the blackened cobble streets of Small Heath, one of Birmingham’s biggest slums, in 1919. People scurry out of its way, doing their best to hide from the fearsome flat-capped figure on its back. None other than Jason Statham as Tommy Shelby, head of the notorious Peaky Blinders gang.
That’s what so very nearly happened, according to series creator Steven Knight. Fast & Furious star Statham was his number one choice for the lead role in Peaky Blinders. “I’d just made a film with Jason,” Knight recalled during a live watchalong of the show broadcast by Esquire UK. “For that role I was considering Cilian and Jason. I met them both in Los Angeles to talk about the role, and opted for Jason.”
Knight said he realised Murphy was a great actor while watching his work to prepare for the casting process, but felt Statham’s physical presence more strongly in the room when he met him. But Murphy was about to turn that perception around, with four simple words.
He obviously felt that Knight was leaning towards Statham, and so sent the filmmaker a succinct reminder of what he was there to do, that Tommy Shelby himself would have been proud of. Knight immediately reassessed his decision, and settled on Murphy for the role that would define his series. From that moment on, Knight explained, “There was never anybody else even talked about.”
What did Murphy’s text message say?
Murphy texted Knight a single line which read, “Remember I’m an actor.” This straightforward message emphasised to the show’s creator that he shouldn’t have expected to see Tommy Shelby in the flesh upon first meeting the actor who was going to play him. Murphy would have to become Tommy Shelby, using the incredible acting range he’d already demonstrated up to that point in his career. “What he can do with himself is extraordinary,” Knight added. “With his whole presence, who he is changes. There’s a way of moving and a way of being that he masters.”
For Murphy’s part, he didn’t take much convincing to go for the role of Shelby. “The title made no sense to me whatsoever,” he joked, when speaking to the Independent around the time of the show’s premiere in 2013. “But it was so compelling and confident, and the character was so rich and complex, layered and contradictory. I was like, ‘I have to do this.'”
Once he and Knight were in agreement, he began preparing for the role by accompanying the writer and his friends on trips to the real-life version of The Garrison pub in Birmingham’s Small Heath – a key location in the series. “We all sat in The Garrison, singing, drinking,” Knight recalled, “and Cillian was recording the conversation to get the accent. He took the tape back and just played it, and started doing the accent at home.”
As well as learning to speak like a Brummie, Murphy immersed himself in Romani culture, speaking with elders of different clans and learning to ride a horse bareback. Over the course of several months, he achieved his aim of becoming his character.
With a Peaky Blinders movie on the horizon following on from the hugely successful six-season series, Shelby is set to be the role that defines Murphy for some time to come. Robert Oppenheimer, eat your heart out.