Caroline Frost
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has shared how his encounter with US rapper Snoop Dogg changed his view of the drama he had created as a love letter to his native Birmingham, a city in the middle of the UK.
The prolific writer and producer can count A-listers including Barack Obama, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt among the fans who have expressed their love for the show, which ran for six seasons until 2022. But it was meeting Snoop that made him realise just how big the show really was – and that it had brought home to him the universal nature of the show “with people from Eastern Europe to Buenos Aires getting it and feeling the same thing.”
Peaky Blinders was inspired by Knight’s own childhood in Birmingham, where his mother worked for local bookmakers at a time when betting was illegal. The drama was based on stories Knight learned about local gangsters, called “peaky blinders” on account of the way they wore their peaked caps.
Knight told the BBC’s Desert Island Discs radio interview show that Snoop had told him the show “reminded him of how he get into gang culture:
“It was all about family keeping you in, and escaping from family to do the bad stuff, and then the family relocating their emotions and loyalties to follow you, and then escaping again.
“It made me understand that there is something in Peaky that is pretty universal.
“He was such a great bloke. He was so nice to talk to,” Knight added of the US rapper who is currently making new fans as one of the US ambassadors to the Paris Olympic Games, variously seen being taught to swim by Olympic legend Michael Phelps and dancing with a horse at the dressage competition.
Knight also wrote the screenplay for film Dirty Pretty Things and co-created the hit TV quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
The movie version of Peaky Blinders is on the way, with Oscar winner Cillian Murphy reprising his role of Tommy Shelby. Knight is also writing a new Star Wars script and recently opened a TV and film studio in his native Birmingham, where the Peaky film will be made.
Knight told the BBC: “It’s a fitting end to this part of the story, and we’ve got an absolutely fantastic cast. I want it to be a sort of legacy for Birmingham, but also a place where people come who want to do different stuff, brave stuff, bold stuff.”