Is it usual to be taken over like that? \u201cI\u2019ve never had it with any other character,\u201d he admits. \u201cYou give yourself up to it. Something happens, some exchange of atoms. I couldn\u2019t just put his flat cap on and step into it; every time we\u2019d do a series it would be, \u2018OK, three months of prep and then getting back into it. I don\u2019t know how I\u2019m going to do that again.\u2019 But then you do it, you\u2019re in the groove and every time Tommy became more a part of me. It\u2019s a strange experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
And now, perhaps, it is coming to an end. \u201cSteve and I explored how you bring this thing to a conclusion,\u201d Murphy says of the discussions the two men had before The Immortal Man<\/a>, the Knight-scripted Peaky Blinders feature film, which Murphy stars in and co-produces. \u201cWe have a weird symbiotic thing. Steve is preternaturally gifted. If you throw an idea at him, he throws it back infinitely better.\u201d Can that be a little annoying? \u201cNo, it\u2019s wonderful!\u201d<\/p>\n Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby.\u00a0BBC\/Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd.\/Robert Viglasky<\/p>\n The film is widely predicted to offer a final redemption for Shelby who, it must be said, has done a lot that needs redeeming.<\/p>\n \u201cSteve has always said that Tommy is a good man doing bad things to a good end,\u201d says Murphy.<\/p>\n Still, if we don\u2019t include German soldiers in the First World War, Shelby has killed around 15 people, ordered the deaths of more and, for much of the time, run a relentlessly criminal business model. \u201cBut it\u2019s not surprising that people love flawed anti-heroes,\u201d says Murphy. \u201cThere are a lot of people you really want to hate, but you can\u2019t hate. It\u2019s much more interesting to me than the square-jawed hero and the nefarious villain.\u201d<\/p>\n Add Radio Times as a Preferred Source on Google<\/a> Has that made him more sympathetic to the bad people he meets in real life \u2013 after 13 years of Tommy, is Murphy a more understanding person? \u201cIt\u2019s easy to say that, hypothetically, isn\u2019t it? There\u2019s an awful lot of othering happening in society nowadays. You get \u2018They\u2019re the bad people!\u2019 from both sides of the divide and I think it happens very early on with children and teenagers now. It\u2019s very hard if a person is threatening you or compromising your beliefs, but you should always be able to see the child or the human being behind the thug or the so-called villain or gangster.\u201d<\/p>\n Which, year after year, is exactly what Knight did. \u201cEvery time I got the scripts for the new season, I\u2019d go, this is great, let\u2019s go. Because Peaky Blinders went deeper as it evolved. It became more confident, its world got bigger but more detailed. And it went into darker places.\u201d<\/p>\n Want to see this content?<\/p>\n Accept and continue<\/p>\n The film finds Shelby holed up in the remains of his country house, tortured by recent traumas and the loss of his daughter Ruby, who died of tuberculosis aged seven in series six. Writing a memoir that, he hopes, will explain everything (The Immortal Man of the film\u2019s title), Tommy is visited by Kaulo, the Romany aunt of his son Duke, who attempts to cure him with a s\u00e9ance.<\/p>\n \u201cTommy is disdainful of doctors or modern medicine or anything that is vaguely part of the establishment,\u201d says Murphy. \u201cHe is much more interested in a gypsy kind of magic.\u201d Has Murphy encountered magic in his own life? \u201cIn that spooky way, no, but I have creatively. Sometimes, when you\u2019re acting, the words hit the air and it just works. Everyone feels it but nobody can define it. I\u2019ve had times where you feel like it\u2019s almost transcendental.\u201d<\/p>\n There is something of that in the scenes between Tommy and Duke (kept apart by Knight until near the d\u00e9nouement), played by Barry Keoghan<\/a>. Both are damaged \u2013 one by the horrors of combat, the other by the long absence of his father. \u201cI do believe in generational trauma,\u201d says Murphy. \u201cI also believe it can be stopped, that there\u2019s a duty to stop it, or to identify it. Unfortunately for Tommy, I don\u2019t think he\u2019s capable of it because he effectively abandons his son.\u201d<\/p>\n Murphy, born in Cork, denies any deeper significance in he and Keoghan being Irish. \u201cIt\u2019s entirely coincidental that we\u2019re Irish actors doing it. But it probably helps, having the old chip on the shoulder.\u201d Is there an Irish attitude both men bring to the work? \u201cI am incredibly proud of being Irish, of my heritage, but as a younger actor I really wanted to not be identified [with Ireland], I wanted to be an actor first and Irish second. To just go off and play American and play English and not be inhibited by my extraction.\u201d<\/p>\n Cillian Murphy at the 96th Annual Academy Awards in March 2024.\u00a0Jeff Kravitz\/FilmMagic<\/p>\n Murphy\u2019s success in doing that reached a zenith in 2024 when he stepped onto the stage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood to accept a golden statuette from a beaming Brendan Fraser. \u201cThe whole awards campaign is like an out-of-body experience,\u201d he says of winning the best actor Oscar for Oppenheimer that night. \u201cIt\u2019s not real. It\u2019s very hallucinogenic. I\u2019m very grateful for it but it\u2019s so divorced from reality.\u201d Still? \u201cYes, it\u2019s like something that didn\u2019t happen in real time, some magical kind of dream.\u201d<\/p>\n But then Peaky Blinders has been a dream of sorts \u2013 a BBC drama that became a worldwide sensation. \u201cConnecting,\u201d says Murphy, \u201cin a way that none of us could have anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n Read More:<\/p>\n Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is in select cinemas now and on Netflix from Friday 20 March 2026.<\/p>\n The latest issue of Radio Times is out on Tuesday 17 March \u2013 subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Check out more of our Drama<\/a> coverage or visit our TV Guide<\/a> and Streaming Guide<\/a> to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Tommy Shelby has been in our heads for 13 years,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-346858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cillian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/cillian-murphy-peaky-blinders-8d94a42.jpg\" "\\"cillian-murphy-peaky-blinders\\"")
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