“The main thematic drive of the show has always been family”: Cillian Murphy, Rebecca Ferguson, Barry Keoghan, Tim Roth, Steven Knight and Tom Harper on Peaky Blinders – The Immortal Man

With Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, the long-running story of the Shelby family moves from television to cinema. Creator Steven Knight appeared alongside Tom Harper and cast members Cillian Murphy, Rebecca Ferguson, Barry Keoghan and Tim Roth to discuss the film, set against the outbreak of the Second World War. 

For Knight, the idea of ending the story with a feature film had been present from the beginning, even if it once sounded unlikely. “I did an interview after the first series where I said confidently, ‘We’re going to end this second world war, and it’s going to be a movie,” he said. “It was very arrogant of me to imagine that that would happen, but it did.”

The film’s wartime setting was always central to that ambition. Knight described wanting the story to conclude at a moment when the world once again collapses into conflict. “I always wanted to end it this way; I always wanted to end it in Birmingham as the bombs drop,” he said, framing the film as the final historical bookend to the story’s trajectory from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the second.

For Harper, who directed episodes in the show’s first season, returning after more than a decade carried a strange sense of continuity. “We never realised what the thing would be,” he said, recalling the early days when the team sensed something special but couldn’t predict its reach. Bringing the story to a different medium, he suggested, is less about scale than concentration. “It’s a more singular approach to telling a story,” Harper said, pointing to the tighter focus a feature-length format demands.

For Cillian Murphy, returning to Tommy Shelby carried both familiarity and responsibility. After more than a decade with the character, the challenge was ensuring the film earned its place alongside the series. “We wanted to make something that would justify its existence,” he said. The solution, he suggested, was to return to the theme that has always anchored the story. “The main thematic drive of the show has always been family.”

Rebecca Ferguson, one of several new actors joining the franchise, spoke about the unusual experience of stepping into such a mature creative environment. “It’s nerve-wracking to walk into moments that are established,” she said, describing the sense of entering a world whose tone and atmosphere had already been shaped over years. Yet that familiarity also created an immediate sense of belonging. “It felt so wonderful,” she added.

“It is nerve-wracking,” Keoghan, who plays Tommy Shelby’s eldest son Duke, agreed, describing the surreal experience of finally stepping into a world he had admired from afar. A fan of the series long before joining the film, he recalled the moment of acting opposite Cillian Murphy for the first time. “I remember the screen test seeing Cillian as Tommy Shelby,” he said, describing how confronting the character in person made the mythology of the show suddenly real.

Tim Roth, another newcomer to the Peaky world, spoke briefly about his role. His character arrives in wartime Birmingham as a powerful political presence, though Roth was careful not to reveal much more. “He’s a manipulator, and quite possibly dangerous,” he said.

Across the discussion, the cast repeatedly returned to the collaborative atmosphere on set. Scenes were approached with room for experimentation rather than strict rigidity. “We played around,” Roth shared, recalling moments when the actors were encouraged to explore different possibilities within a scene. For Ferguson, that freedom depended on preparation rather than spontaneity alone. “The more prepared you are, the more free you are,” she said, describing the balance between respecting the script and allowing a scene to evolve.

What emerged from the conversation was a sense that The Immortal Man is less about expanding the mythology of Peaky Blinders than about bringing its central figure to a decisive point. Set against the return of global war, the film pushes Tommy Shelby toward questions that have lingered since the series began: loyalty, family and belief. As Murphy suggested, the story ultimately asks something more fundamental than survival – it asks what remains once power has been achieved. “What do you actually stand for?” he said.