Surprising Things About Peaky Blinders Even Huge Fans Don't Know (2024)

For nearly a decade, Peaky Blinders has captivated audiences with its dramatic (and, yes, violent) scenes and 20th century style. The show, which premiered in 2013, follows Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) and his ruthless gang as they navigate England during the period of time between the world wars. Making the award-winning series came with its challenges. How did producers compete with other hit period dramas at the time, like Downton Abbey? What did the show's star think of his iconic haircut? Read on for all kinds of juicy, behind-the-scenes secrets—and don't forget to watch the sixth and final season on Netflix right now.

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Smoking is a big part of most scenes, and all of the cigarettes were real. "I asked the prop guys to count how many we use during a series and it's 3,000," Murphy told BirminghamLive.

In an effort to be as safe as possible, Murphy and the rest of the cast reportedly opted for herbal cigarettes, which don't contain tobacco or nicotine, so they aren't addictive.

Before Steven Knight was known for Peaky Blinders, he co-created Who Wants to be a Millionaire? "The original idea was you could win an unlimited amount of money, you could just go on forever, but the questions would become increasingly impossible so you'd reach a point where… But no-one would insure that just in case so we had to think of a limit, so we thought, well, a million, why not?" he told BBC Sounds' The Media Show.

Steven Knight's distant relatives were gangsters that ran Birmingham years ago. "One of the stories that really made me want to write Peaky Blinders is one my dad told me: he said that when he was eight or nine his dad gave him a message on a piece of paper and said 'go and deliver this to your uncles.' His uncles were the Sheldons, who eventually became the Shelbys," he told History Extra.

The look is called an "undercut," and was wildly popular in the early 20th century—especially among English street gangs and criminals.

"People like the undercut thing; people go to the barber and ask for a 'Peaky cut'. It's crazy that people like it," the actor told Shortlist in 2017. "It's not grown on me in four years now. I normally keep my hair long."

"It is not fun. It's full on," former star Alexander Siddig told NME about being on set. "You walk into a room and there's a bunch of them sitting around a table all singing Peaky Blinders songs and you're like, 'Excuse me, wrong door'. They have a pack mentality and they hang out together, they're fierce."

The Fast & Furious star was showrunner Steven Knight's first choice. It was only after Cillian Murphy texted him, "Remember, I'm an actor," that he landed the part. The bold move convinced Knight that while he wasn't physically what he had in mind for the role, he could "transform himself" once the scripts were written.

The late actress revealed she watched "endless" clips of the Black Sabbath singer to learn the Birmingham dialect. "My character's obviously Ozzy in a skirt," she once joked to The Daily Mail.

Nailing the perfect Belfast accent wasn't easy for New Zealand native Sam Neill. To complete his transformation into Inspector Campbell, the actor turned to friend Liam Neeson.

Show creator and head writer Steven Knight wanted to showcase working-class people, rather than royalty and nobility—something that's rare in British period pieces. That's why he turned to Westerns for inspiration.

Producer Laurie Borg did not hold back on his thoughts on the rival period drama. "What we've tried to do is the complete opposite of Downton," he joked to Digital Spy. "Which I think is brilliant for many reasons... but for me is probably the dullest television."

Shooting out of order sometimes proved to be confusing for the actors. "We could be doing episode four in the morning and the finale in the afternoon," Cilliam Murphy told BirminghamLive. Because of this, he started having the director write up cheat sheets for him to hang up in his trailer.

It's not a coincidence that flames seemingly follow Tommy Shelby everywhere he goes. In season 1, he was even referred to as a devil. As director Colm McCarthy explained to Den of Geek: "There's definitely a sense of hell. That's very deliberate."

Acting out such difficult material and intense violence isn't easy, and leaves the lead drained by the end of filming a season. "The nature of the character is immersive. It's an incredibly exhausting character to play. You have to leave reality behind for four months," he told BirminghamLive. "I always come out of it destroyed but having felt like we have made something."

Even though the entire show focuses on Birmingham, very little filming actually happened there. The cast and crew visited towns all over the U.K., but most scenes were shot in Liverpool and the surrounding Merseyside area.

The horse professionals, called The Devil's Horsem*n, are known throughout the film industry for training animals to do stunts.

That's right—John Shelby and Michael Gray are more than just cousins on TV. The actors, Joe Cole and Finn Cole, are brothers. Joe left the show in season 4, but he still gets the scoop from his brother. "Finn does give me little tidbits. But I prefer just to watch it as a spectator now," he told Digital Spy.

Alfie Solomons and May Carleton are a couple in real life. Actors Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley first met on the set of Wuthering Heights in 2009, and got married five years later.

Playing Bonnie Gold came naturally to the actor, who grew up boxing competitively. "It kept me from going down other paths," he told i-D. "It gave me a place to dream."