Cillian Murphy on Becoming Thomas Shelby | Rotten Tomatoes TV

the characters that i've always loved are neither the hero or the villain their state operates somewhere in the in the middle which i think is where most of humanity operates and i think people like fallibility in a character they like contradiction in a character um and they like spending time with these these characters even though they're you probably wouldn't want to spend time with them in your real day-to-day life [Music] hello i'm killian and this is how i became thomas shelby i had been watching a lot of american television and like the wire which i loved and i was kind of curious to know if there was anything happening um in britain in the television world so i asked my agent and then um a couple of days later i had the script for peaky blinders so it was sort of a combination of um serendipity and great agenting i guess we started shooting the show in 2012 and if you googled um peaky blinders in 2012 you've got one hit um so i knew very very little about about them there was very little about them available to read what i read was i read a lot about the first world war and you know what what the british soldiers would have gone through in the trenches in france and then i read a lot about shell shock or ptsd um and then i read a lot about britain between the wars he's defined by that particularly all the trauma of what he experienced in the first world war he was what was called a clay kicker which is basically a tunneler and they would taunt tunnel parallel or underneath the german lines and then you know sometimes the german soldiers would break through and they would have these hand-to-hand combats and you can imagine the tunnels would collapse on top of them sometimes it was probably one of the worst things you could have to do in one of the worst circumstances in the world in the first world war you know so um he was profoundly altered and changed by that experiences and seeing how this you know um friends and comrades you know blown up into pieces before him so so so there was a line there was tommy before the war on tommy after the war and then all through the series all through up until series six he's still trying to come to terms with that trauma i think being that close to death um continuously made him unafraid to die um so when he came back to birmingham you know they were just kind of spat back into society they would you know no counseling or whatever they were just there living with this trauma and sort of self-medicating and they all had this access to violence you know it was sort of a form of expression for them and um and i think he just said why not you know why not i can't believe i'm actually here i'm still alive i'm just gonna take everything that i can get and i'm gonna and then also he has this kind of he's burdened by this intellect and so he operates at a different speed to everybody else and sees things at a different speed everybody else and recognizes things at a different speed everywhere so that kind of drives him so there's this relentless kind of why not ambition for him and this this this lack of fear of death we were very keen that they had a distinctive look the peaky blinders and um steve knight had written that they had the peaked caps and that's part of where the name comes from um the haircuts were it was a kind of a gradual thing getting to trying to persuade the the actors to to go that brutal with a haircut and we had a brilliant um makeup and hair designer called las cayavo and she had a book of these criminals from australia in the 1920s and they all had this brutal brutal haircut so we thought that would be a very good look for the gang would make them distinctive you know so we all eventually succumbed and capitulated and allowed our heads to be shown um and then yeah that became this kind of silhouette the cuff of the three-piece suit of the jacket just became this kind of silhouette that worked really well for the gang you wearing the black madonna you gypsy [Music] but the part of me the dreams is gypsy i think family is probably the the most important um i think it's the most important thing in the peaky blinders is a dysfunctional um messed up family um and this is all this it's constantly shifting that the dynamic is always shifting and i think his position is never secure i think his closest confident is is polly um and he trusts her more than anybody else and when he loses polly it's very hard to operate like that i think she was kind of the beating heart of peaky blinders um she's phenomenal phenomenal actor an incredible human being and you know it's not the same without her we all just desperately miss her and and you know this this series will be will be dedicated to her memory and her character still is very important in series in 36. on a drink lizzie i've had a hard day i don't drink whiskey or gin anymore tom why not oh because they say it harms the baby yes it can only be yours his relationship with lizzie is very very complicated and she she is actually like really wants to be there for him and wants to support him but again he's just so messed up that he can't take advantage of that um and in this series the the tommy lizzie storyline is actually is amazing is one of the best story lines of it but yeah i think the whole thing is is family family's at the core of it it's a family gangster saga so um grace is deaf i think that's one of the biggest moments in the six series and i don't think he properly recovers from that ever because again he never deals with anything emotionally so he's not processing processing it and then um you know she she haunts him still in series five and then lizzy lizzy is such a fantastic character and if only tommy had some sense he would just stick with lizzy but because he's so dumpy he gets it wrong all the time you know and um and and then in in series six like this the scenes between myself and natasha keith are some of my favorite they're really really powerful we will discuss our business on sunday on the agreed day at the allotted time and at the place that has already been determined you made your point good night mr shelby sam neil is such a wonderful actor and he he himself and myself had some fantastic scenes in series one and series two um that was a real thrill working with sam neil um obviously the scenes with tom hardy are always a gift you know to play opposite him they're always um kind of delicious scenes in terms of dialogue and the tension between the two me and tom always get on really well it's always it's always fun to do scenes with him he's such a fantastic actor and you know the energy between alfie and tommy is um so completely the opposite uh of each other that's why i think those scenes work you know and we kind of shoot them like theater you know they're big long 20-minute takes and what do you you know when you have a fine after like like tom hardy it's a it's a it's always a joy to do those scenes patty considine but i think he was probably one of the most despicable characters in people blinders and yeah we've been lucky that so many actors want to come and play on the show it's very hard to speak about it when you're inside of the thing and sort of um have some perspective for perspective on it i mean the characters that i've always loved are neither the hero or the villain their state operates somewhere in the in the middle which i think is where most of humanity operates and i think people like fallibility in a character they like contradiction in a character and they like spending time with these these characters even though they're you probably wouldn't want to spend time with them in your real day-to-day life you know each series has been like i said it's been a different sort of version of tommy in a different experience these series we've had amazing directors different director on each series kimball and me for this battle one on one it's over go on to your families we've always had amazing locations we shot in manchester in liverpool and we've used a lot of the sort of the victorian architecture that remains there and that is amazing and it's been great to sort of track that arc from them living in watery lane which is these you know these terraced old terraced tiny terraced houses and then he lives in this huge mansion um at the end or already um and i think it's a tribute to the production designers on this show that they've always been really imaginative um and ambitious and further for the locations because you know we don't have a huge budget but it looks expensive so i'm always proud of that i really love the ballet sequence in series five when there's a huge there's a party at tommy's house and there's a ballet going on and then linda gets shot he goes greatly executed and directed i like that scene where tommy climbs out of the grave in series two now there's so many you know it's it's hard to pick um it's really hard to pick i really enjoyed the story like you know the mosley storyline in series five now that this sort of rise of fash fascism in britain that that was fascinating to to read about that um it's not gone away it doesn't go away and it was interesting to deal to deal with that because you know that actually happened in britain and um you know i didn't know so much about the rise of fascism in in britain so i think that is well used to corruption and you know politics is corrupt so he's well able to handle all of that and it's interesting though i do i do believe even though he's surrounded by corruption and politics i do think he actually wants to do wants to do some good uh when he is a politician i think he firmly believes um he is a true socialist and i think he really wants to do good that's one of the few things i feel that it's very pure for him you know there's a myriad of things it's really hard to reduce it to one thing there is so much about him i can't quite fathom him you know i'm so unlike him i'm such a coward and i i i i love sleeping he never sleeps he never eats he's relentless um i don't know i think the one thing is i don't know would that man ever rest would he ever be at peace i don't know if he ever would oh i think his best trait is probably his his intelligence and his ingenuity his worst trait i'd say that's a sort of um a lack of complete self-knowledge i would not ever take like life lessons from from tommy shelby he's the wrong man to take life lessons from no i don't you know i don't do this job to learn stuff it's not really why i do it my job is to just kind of serve the material give the raw materials to the director to make to make the best them to make the best show they can it's almost like in every series you know there's this there's a new version of tommy and i can never ever predict how it's what it's going to be because steve wright is such a brilliant steve knight is such a brilliant unpredictable um writer but yes i think people will be surprised by the version of tommy they find at the beginning of at the beginning of six he's made some decisions you

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Keywords: Annabelle Wallis, Helen McCrory, Thomas Shelby, anya taylor joy, cillian murphy, cillian murphy interview, emma thompson, peaky blinders, rotten tomatoes, rotten tomatoes becoming, rotten tomatoes tv, tom hardy

Id: nnAGO4xIwcU

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022