By Peaky Blinders is big. It's an absolute whopper. When the fifth season arrives in the UK, it'll be behind only Game of Thrones as the most hotly anticipated return to TV this year. It's biiiiiiig.
But it turns out Cillian Murphy wasn't just uncertain as to whether he'd get to play Tommy Shelby for a second season - he didn't really get what the whole 'Peaky Blinders' thing actually meant.
"I didn’t understand the title," Murphy told the Guardian. "We didn’t know if the second series would come, and it was the second one when it really started to become a bit zeitgeisty, but you never know. When something becomes successful you never know how or why – it’s by osmosis."
Murphy added that he generally needs a couple of months to "shake off" playing Tommy, and that he doesn't identify with him at all. Tommy's isn't a particularly healthy worldview, to be fair.
"He’s a total stranger to me, but he’s the only character I’ve returned to in my career," he said. "He is a relentless character - he never sleeps, he never eats - his ambition is limitless. So you need to be able to embody that."
"I could never go on to another character," he went on, "firstly, because you’ve got that mad haircut, but because I need time to decompress because I’m nothing like him. I'm like his cowardly brother."
Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox
