How Birmingham City fans helped Peaky Blinders’ Cillian Murphy get a Brummie accent

Excitement is building with the first episode of the sixth and final series of Peaky Blinders set to air in the UK this week.

The Birmingham-inspired BBC One drama will hit TV screens at the end of the month, with the release date now confirmed as Sunday, 27 February.

Ahead of the final season, Cillian Murphy has revealed how Birmingham City fans played a part in helping him to develop his Birmingham accent to play the lead role of Tommy Shelby in the gangster show.

Speaking to the Radio Times, Murphy revealed that a trip to the actual Garrison pub in Small Heath with the show’s creator Steven Knight - which is just around the corner from St Andrew’s - helped him to pick up the accent.

The Irishman, said: “I hung out with Steve, and we went to the actual Garrison pub in Birmingham with his Brummie mates.

“And we’re just drinking Guinness there, and they’re singing Birmingham City songs and telling all sorts of stories, and I was recording on my iPhone, and then I took that home, and used it to try and track the accents, you know.

“And then I would call Steve and just leave voicemails on his phone in the accent and see how close I was to it.”

During the interview, Murphy went on to discuss how difficult it was for him to play somebody with post traumatic stress disorder, and how he had to make lifestyle changes to physically transform himself into the character.

He also discussed the grief that the entire show experienced after the death of Helen McCrory, who played Polly Gray, the formidable auntie and matriarch of the Shelby family.

McCrory died of cancer in April 2021, aged 52, and Murphy has previously spoken about the final season of the series being a tribute to her.

He told Radio Times: “She was a remarkable human being and a remarkable actor. And I feel very privileged to have got to know her so well and to work so closely with her.

“She really was on a different level, and our scenes were my favourites.

“We got into the swing of it where we didn’t seem to need to rehearse or anything; we would just put the two characters up, and they would pop.”

The full interview can be found in this week’s Radio Times.

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