Peaky Blinders is now filming its fifth series for broadcast in 2019... but one character won't be returning in the next batch of episodes.
Speaking to Digital Spy, Charlotte Riley revealed that she won't be reprising her role of horse trainer and rich widow May Carleton on the BBC series.
"I don't think that my character will be coming back," Riley said. "I mean, I would go back in a heartbeat [if asked], because I just love it so much."
May debuted in Peaky Blinders' second series, sharing both a business relationship and a romance with gangster Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy). She returned in the latest fourth series, reuniting with Tommy after years apart.
Riley told Digital Spy that she's open to appearing again in a potential sixth series, or in the long-rumoured Peaky Blinders movie. "I wonder if they'll ever do a film of it? That would be quite good. There were rumours, but I don't know if any of them are true."
She continued: "I suppose, what would you gain from making it only 90 minutes long? That's kind of the argument in a nutshell, isn't it, of why people do long-form TV?"
Riley's next project will see her reprise a different role – that of Juliette Wagstaffe, older sister to Will Wagstaffe (Tom Riley), in ITV's moody crime thriller Dark Heart.
Originally piloted on ITV Encore in 2016, Dark Heart is returning for a new six-part series. Haunted by the unresolved murder of his parents, DI Will Wagstaffe's closest relationship in the series is with his sister and young nephew Harry.
While Will's personal demons are seen impacting on his detective work, Juliette's own trauma is less obvious, Riley told us. "I think they just deal with it in different ways. He's more vocal about the trauma that he's left with – and it's more obvious how it's affecting him, given the job that he's gone into, and the way that he approaches that job. He's very dogged, and he's really tenacious in the way that he approaches things.
"I think her way of coping with it is more... she keeps a lot of it inside. I think in some ways, it probably eats away at her a huge amount more without her knowing. Because I think he has more of an awareness of how it's affected him.
"He's externalising all of his trauma, whereas she's internalising her trauma, and therefore that makes wonderful drama between the two of them!"
Dark Heart begins on Wednesday, October 31 at 9pm on ITV, with episode two following the next day (Thursday, November 1 at 9pm).
