A Gift To Fans, Cillian Murphy Says

“If you’re gonna make a film of a TV show, it has to have all the bells and whistles, and you have to have that kind of cinematic magic dust, and I think we’re achieving that.” That was star and producer Cillian Murphy speaking to me on the set of the Tom Harper-directed, Steven Knight-penned Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, the anticipated feature follow-up to the award-winning drama series that Netflix will release theatrically March 6 before global streaming begins March 20.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is set six years after the end of the series. It’s 1940 Birmingham when, amidst the chaos of World War II, Murphy’s Tommy Shelby — who has been living in monastic isolation, haunted by the ghosts of his past — is driven back from self-imposed exile to face his most destructive reckoning yet. With the future of the family and the country at stake, he must face his own demons and choose whether to confront his legacy or burn it to the ground.

The series ran from 2013-2022, developing a loyal worldwide following. The film was a long time in gestation, and when it was greenlit, Murphy called it “one for the fans.”  

When I catch up with him again, just two weeks before the film’s release, Murphy is very happy with the end result. “It was pretty much from like 2019-2020 we’ve been talking about this and going through different versions of the script and working it and reworking and revising it. For me personally, I really felt that the film needed to justify its existence because I love the ambiguity of the ending of Season 6 that Tommy rode off into the sort of bucolic English hills and it was, ‘What, where’s he gone? Will we ever see him again?’ I felt that was a satisfying ending, actually, for the TV show. So therefore, if you were to make a film, it really needed to match it, and, in fact, kind of improve on it … The series is always so cinematic, but I felt like we had to open it up more.”

Peaky architect Knight told me he “really wanted to do Peaky during the war. It’s during the Birmingham Blitz — every night the place was carpet-bombed, and nobody knew if they were going to survive. My mom was around at the time and told me stories about what that was like, just obviously terrifying. And so I wanted to get that energy of the Second World War and throw our people into it, really into it.”

He noted an advantage of making a Peaky film versus the TV series is, “you can see the car blown up, you don’t have somebody explain that a car has just been blown up. So the money makes a difference. And I do believe that the fact that it’s a feature attracts cast in a different way.”

Alongside lead Murphy, that cast includes a starring lineup of Rebecca Ferguson as Kaulo, a mysterious woman from Tommy’s past; Tim Roth as Beckett, Treasurer of the British Union of Fascists; Sophie Rundle reprising her role as Tommy’s sister Ada, now an MP; Barry Keoghan as Tommy’s illegitimate son Duke who is running his own version of the Peaky Blinders; Stephen Graham back from the series as Hayden Stagg, union convener at the Liverpool docks; and Jay Lycurgo as Elijah Hayes, Duke’s right-hand man. Other series alums in the cast include Ned Dennehy, Packy Lee and Ian Peck.

Notes From The Set

Over the course of the gangster-family saga’s TV run, I traveled to various Peaky locations, mostly spending time with the gang in drafty warehouses and government buildings in cities like Liverpool or Manchester. The film also traveled to several locations, but the studio setting, Knight’s own Digbeth Loc. Studios in Birmingham, is the first time there’s been a bespoke base for the drama that indeed is playing out on a much larger scale.

During my visit, I’m shown around the place which is announced upon arrival by murals of major Peaky Blinders characters. The vast lot (which services all types of productions) houses a giant soundstage with modular studio layouts, production offices and flexible space for filming, wardrobe, set build and props — and on this day, also a host of trailers, period cars and a pair of black horses chomping hay ahead of their call time. 

Once a hub of Victorian industry, the site is particularly close to Knight’s own heart given his dad had worked there and that he had played there as a child. “(My father) used to shoe police horses … He had a forge, and it was the most amazing place, one of the places that inspired me to write Peaky,” Knight recalls. 

Murphy later smiles when he tells me Knight “willed” the studio into existence. “He bends the universe to his own will and then manifests what he desires,” he says.

I had earlier spied Murphy walking determinedly across the lot in full Tommy garb, head down and clearly concentrated. He was on his way to the first scene being shot that day inside the Garrison Pub where Tommy has come to seek out Duke. The pub, familiar to fans of the TV show, is much bigger for the film and filled with about 50 extras.  

Everything moves smoothly and with economy; the production shot about three pages a day, I’m told. After a few takes of this particular scene, I head over to see director Tom Harper who is giddy with excitement. “We made it Nancy, we’re here!” he exclaims. 

Inside his trailer after the Garrison scene, Murphy is relaxed and still in costume. His hair dyed shades of gray, he’s also buffed up compared to the silhouette of his Oscar-winning turn in Oppenheimer. Peaky Binders: The Immortal Man, he tells me, “is an incredibly physical film.”

So how does it feel to be in Tommy’s skin again? “Sort of strange, but familiar. It feels good,” Murphy says. When we first see Tommy in the film, “he’s not really living, he’s not really dead. He’s ignoring the world, he’s ignoring his family. Which is a brilliant starting point … so can you reel him back in,” Murphy would later say. Ultimately, he takes on a war he once claimed wasn’t his and “fights for all the people that were killed.”

“I’m really happy with the script. Really happy with everybody,” Murphy says. “Tom is doing a brilliant job, and that feels great given that we did Season 1 together.”

Getting The Band Back Together

This is a return to the Shelby world for Harper, who directed the back half of Season 1 of Peaky Blinders. Murphy tells me the pair had wanted to work together again over the years, and Harper “just felt right for this script … I put an awful lot of stock in re-collaboration and trust and friendships.” Murphy muses, “The longer you remain in this business, you realize how bloody small it is. If you’ve had a good experience working with someone you know, then why not repeat it?”

Adds Murphy of Harper, “He never gets off set. He’s just great. I mean he just really understands the show, he understands the character. And because himself and Otto (Bathurst) set up the whole look of the series with George (Steel), who shot all of Season 1, they really understand it. So I think when you really understand it, then you’re able to evolve further.”

Murphy told me more recently, “It’s a different challenge. You know, we’re used to making six hours of television for each season, and now we had to be compressed into two hours. So, it was challenge for all of us, but I was really keen that it be somebody who understood the Peaky world. Tom and George, they kind of went back a little bit to the look of first series, but kind of elevated and expanded it.” 

Harper told me, “Scale changes the momentum for Cillian and for some of the other people that have been doing it for a long time, but that change in momentum was quite an interesting thing. The extra cost and extra time it takes to get the few extra percentages of value are sort of disproportionate, but those few extra percentages mean an enormous amount … It was really about just pushing and taking us into that area of a greater cinematic landscape. It was immensely gratifying and pleasing to be able to have those resources to push it to the potential that we always knew it had.”

Murphy echoed that, noting, “We’ve gotten to do the set pieces. We’ve gone for, you know, practical in-camera stuff. And, you’re shooting World War II and in the UK, and it’s been done so much, so you need to find a way of doing it slightly differently. But I think if you shoot through that sort of Peaky prism, it’s always different.”

Getting deeper into the streets of Birmingham was also a pleasure for Murphy, who said, “Before, we would have, like, a section of a street, and then people are doing their shopping, you know what I mean? But this time we can really lean into the set pieces.”

Commented Harper, “We blew up a lot of sh*t. It was really fun.”

New Additions

Murphy was quite involved with casting on The Immortal Man, and told me, “Rebecca and Tim were from the very beginning, the people we were after.” 

Murphy and Roth worked together on the 2012 drama Broken. “He’s one of my heroes growing up as a young actor,” Murphy explained. Roth has said of The Immortal Man, “It properly feels like an old Second World War movie. I mean it should be, you know, Gregory Peck and Richard Burton up a mountain somewhere, doing naughty Second World War stuff. I was very pleased when we came on set to see that it was not relying on CG. It wasn’t just ‘Okay, I’ll stand against the green screen, we’ll put it all in later.’ It didn’t have that laziness about it. It had ambition.” 

Though he did not previously know Ferguson, Murphy enthuses, “I just think she’s phenomenal, and she was into the idea, and she’s just perfect casting.”

As for Keoghan, “I know Barry from Dunkirk … and from just being Irish,” Murphy says. Keoghan has recounted that he texted Murphy on Father’s Day to wish him a happy one, and received a message in return saying, “How would you like to play Tommy Shelby’s son?” Murphy also calls Lycurgo “one to watch. He’s gonna be a really significant actor.”

Keoghan was wrapping his final day of studio shooting when I ran into him briefly on his way to an intense scene with Ferguson’s Kaulo. Keoghan has been having a blast, he tells me, and will later say of Duke, “He’s childlike in moments, with his father, and then almost emulating his father when he’s not with his father … I wanted to show a vulnerability and show that a lot of it is a façade, a lot of it is put on.” The resemblance between he and Murphy becomes even more striking once you see the two on screen.

Ferguson, a big fan of the series, plays a mystical Romany woman with a sort of second sight who “can manipulate other people,” she has explained. Harper extols Ferguson’s “intelligence” and “complexity,” adding, “Her mind sort of darts and thinks about all possible things at the same time, and just gives this sort of strength and protection for her. You need that if you’re going up against Cillian and Tommy Shelby, that’s a pretty powerful thing to have.”

Musical Cues

Peaky the series will forever be associated with edgy, anachronistic scores, and for the film, composers Antony Genn and Martin Slattery returned. The soundtrack includes Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten’s haunting song “Puppet,” written for the movie, as well as a new version of Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand,” Massive Attack covers and a tune from contemporary Irish folk band Lankum.

Murphy told me it was “a very collaborative kind of endeavor … Ant and Martin know the world so well, having done it, and they’re just incredible musicians. Myself and Tom Harper and, in fact, my son, Aran, went to the Fontaines’ album launch of (2024’s) Romance. Aran was in the mosh pits, and we stood by all the dads in the balcony … The album is so incredible.”

Murphy added, “There’s a line in ‘Romance,’ the song, where Grian wrote, ‘pigs in the pen,’ and so it was almost meant to be (a pig sty is a key venue in the movie). And then he created all these original tunes with Ant and Martin, and they’re as good a piece of songwriting as I think you’ll find anywhere. They exist completely on their own, and they’re bespoke for the movie. I’m really, really proud of what we did.” 

Regarding that new version of “Red Right Hand,” Murphy says he spoke with Cave about it and that Cave “was really into the idea of singing it as an older man who has had all that life experience.”

A Return On Investment

Overall, says Murphy of The Immortal Man, “I really wanted it to be satisfying. From the very beginning, my motivation was to make it for the fans. I do think you can watch it stand-alone, but you’re going to enjoy it on so many more levels if you’re invested in the TV show, and that’s because there’s such a fantastic fan base. I felt like it wanted to be a gift to them for that investment.”