Cillian Murphy Is Back as Tommy Shelby, And the Casting of His ‘Peaky Blinders’ Son Came From an Iconic Text.
The world of Peaky Blinders is about to be back on our screens, thanks to the new Netflix movie Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.
This time around, Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby is joined by his son Duke, played by the actor’s former Dunkirk co-star Barry Keoghan. During a recent appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, Murphy revealed how Keoghan’s casting came to be… and that it, somewhat fittingly, was offered to the younger actor on Father’s Day.
“He tells this anecdote way better than I do,” Murphy prefaced. “It was Father’s Day. We’ve known each other since Dunkirk, he was only a kid then. He had texted me on Father’s Day. Nobody had let me know it was Father’s Day.”
“Barry texted me, very kindly and very nicely,” Murphy continued. “And he said, ‘Hey Cil, how are you doing?’ And I said, ‘I’ll just say it to him now.’ So I texted him back and said, ‘Do you want to play my son in Peaky Blinders?’ And there was, sort of, you know when you can see people are typing? And then he said, ‘Yeah.’ He was into it.”
Meyers then asked, understandably: “Have you since told your sons that if they said ‘Happy Father’s Day’ to you, they would have been in Peaky Blinders? It went to the first person who said something to their dad.” This led Murphy to jokingly reply: “I’m easy that way.”
During a recent press conference for the film, Keoghan revealed that his own experience with father-son relationship heavily influenced his portrayal. As he put it, “It’s a real thing, stepping in to play Tommy Shelby’s son. Being a big fan of the show and big fan of Cillian, I wanted to be part of it and get my teeth into it. It was the relationship, for me, and it was the absence I leaned into, and the experience I have in some similar ways to my absence of my dad, and the echoes I’ve heard of him and the kind of figure I’ve made him to be.
“I felt that was, a humanity,” Keoghan continued. “It sort of humanizes Duke for me to show those vulnerabilities. Obviously, the kid’s going to be an absolute live wire and violent and they’re all reactions, they’re all cries for help – not to justify each and every one.”
What Is the Peaky Blinders Movie About?
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is set in Birmingham, 1940. Amidst the chaos of WWII, Tommy Shelby is driven back from a self-imposed exile to face his most destructive reckoning yet. With the future of the family and the country at stake, Tommy must face his own demons, and choose whether to confront his legacy, or burn it to the ground. By order of the Peaky Blinders… The cast of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man also includes Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Roth, Sophie Rundle, Ned Dennehy, Packy Lee, Ian Peck, Jay Lycurgo, and Stephen Graham.
“It seems like Tommy Shelby wasn’t finished with me,” Murphy told Netflix when the film was initially announced. “It is very gratifying to be re-collaborating with Steven Knight and Tom Harper on the film version of Peaky Blinders. This is one for the fans.”
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is now playing in select theaters, and will be available to stream exclusively on Netflix on Friday, March 20th.
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