Dream team.
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has revealed that he’s working on securing Line Of Duty and This Is England star Stephen Graham for a future series of the show.
Fans are eagerly awaiting news on the TV premiere date of Peaky Blinders season five after the first full trailer dropped this morning, but it looks as if Knight is already eyeing up cast and cameos for the next two series.
Speaking to Digital Spy, Knight named Stephen Graham as a guest star that he wants to appear in the Birmingham crime period drama – but revealed that he wouldn’t be asking him to reprise his Boardwalk Empire role of Al Capone, despite the fact that the timelines crossover and the gangster was name-checked in the previous season.
“Don’t worry… we’re proceeding with [hiring Graham], but not for this series,” said Knight. “Not Al Capone – I didn’t want to go west. Because it’s a minefield once you go into Chicago gangsters. I refer to him last series, but I didn’t want to go into that.”
Knight continued: “The amount of people who have come to us wanting to be in it is quite astonishing, and really good people. So what I’ve tried to avoid before is turning it into a spot the celebrity – you know, because I think it’s quite distracting sometimes.
“But someone like Adrien Brody is a great actor – obviously, you want to put them in it. But I think now we’re coming to the final two series, I’m going to relax and open the gates a bit because there’s some amazing people who want to be in it, and I think why not.”
Asked about what role Graham could fill, Knight replied: “I’ve already got it and I’m not going to tell you!”
Knight has confirmed that he is already writing season 6, and that they “will almost certainly do seven seasons.”
As well as revealing that he wants the show to end at the start of the Second World War, Knight has also spoken of how the whole arc will end with main character Tommy Shelby being “redeemed” as a good man after all.
“I want to take him on that journey from the person we saw [in series one], to the person he will become in 1939,” said Knight. “[Series seven] will tell a different story, where Tommy Shelby – who begins as this nihilistic, looking-out only for his family person – will be redeemed, and he will become good.”
Cillian Murphy in ‘Peaky Blinders’ as Tommy Shelby
Earlier this month, it was confirmed that Anna Calvi had written the musical score for the new series.
With a new Peaky Blinders season five trailer expected to drop in the coming weeks, the hit show is expected to return to the BBC in the month ahead.
