Helen McCrory interview: Peaky Blinders series 2
On the set of Peaky Blinders series 2, we chatted to Helen McCrory about Aunt Polly, and the women in the Peaky Blinders world...
Earlier this year, we sat down on the set of Peaky Blinders series two to chat with Helen McCrory about her character Aunt Polly, feminism and depicting mental health issues on screenâŚ
What have you just been filming?
Peaky Blinders moves to London, and when it moves to London it moves to the world of Noah [Taylor] and Tom Hardy and different gangs and so it all has a much more epic scope. I think that Steve [Knight, the writer] established so much in the first six episodes that you donât need to do it any more, so thereâs a much faster pace. The scene Iâve just been doing is set in the Shelbysâ new offices, which are quite a step up from what it was, as we start to earn more money, but then get into the complications that [happen] when you expand.
Pollyâs story this year is much, much more interesting. I donât know if [Steven] made a conscious effort or itâs just what he found the most interesting from the last series, but the womenâs parts on the whole [are more interesting]. I think you have to establish that the world of the Shelbys is a manâs world, but once youâve got that up and running, then you can start to look at the womenâs world, which were much more delineated than they are now, so they are completely different characters and completely different sets and settings. Iâve had a fantastic time this year, heâs written me one of my best parts Iâve ever played.
Have you enjoyed being able to see more of the womenâs world as well as the guysâ?
Oh yeah, as a woman particularly, yes! And also because itâs more interesting as a viewer. If youâre going to create a story and shoot it in this John Ford [style], [with the] cowboy personalities of these men who say nothing and keep their secrets to themselves and go through this landscape â and itâs fictional, clearly people donât react like this, people donât slash people and walk out and adjust their collar, itâs entertainment â but what heâs done in this series is give a lot more emotional weight to my story in particular. But itâs very dramatic, itâs not the emotional weight of chatting about how exhausted I am with the mangle, itâs glamourized, itâs stylized.
Does it the Bechdel Test?
What does?! Yes, it does.
Do you think thereâs an opportunity in this setting to tell different, more interesting stories about women than we usually see in 1920s period dramas?
Yes, in the way that if youâre going to set a series in the drawing rooms of the people who ran the country, maybe behind every great man is a great woman, but that would be when everybody leaves the dinner table or when theyâre in the bedroom, you know, [the woman saying] âHector I do think you should get the bill through Parliamentâ or whatever it is. But if you actually look at the working class, the working class women [did] run the homes, those women worked hard, [they were] the heartbeat of the society, knowing where the kids are, running it all, making sure that the drunk man in the pub was picked up by somebody elseâs husband and brought home, and knowing whatâs happening on the streets, because you have to, because no one else is helping you. So yes, just by setting it in working-class Britain, which was 95% of the rest of the country, yeah it does.
Itâs a very different sort of period drama than some of the competition, isnât it?
Yes it is, and I think Steve very particularly decided that he wanted to set it in this world, and to set it in Birmingham as well, which we rarely see in drama, but of course at this time was the richest city in the world. [There was] just an extraordinary amount of manufacturing going on. You go down to those places now and theyâre shells of course, or theyâre made into apartments for businessmen or whatever, but thereâs beautiful architecture there, still.
Our hearts did sink a bit when Laurie Borg [Producer] said it was all moving to LondonâŚ
But itâs all shot in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. I think we had three days away in Chatsworth House for one characterâs home, a new character thatâs coming in, but apart from that⌠because the architecture is all still here. You go around Manchester and itâs like Gotham City with these amazing modern Shard-like buildings next to great big red brick old warehouses next to fantastic civic halls⌠beautiful architecture. We donât have it in London in the same way. So no, we say weâre going to London but we actually just went to Leeds and then came back again.
Anti-heroes and anti-heroines are quite popular on TV at the moment. How much fun is it to play a character like that, and how tricky is it to make not always very likeable characters compelling and keep audiences rooting for them?
I think that if the writingâs good enough and it shows you the complexities of the motivations of the characters⌠Also in this case these are not people who, to a large extent, had an alternative. I mean Polly presumably left school at 11, literate â we know that sheâs the financial advisor so we know that she has numeracy â but if you are excluded and you feel, particularly like the men who came back from the First World War, that there is no God, and you lose faith in your government because theyâve sent you to war, and youâve had officers send you over the edge safely from a long way away â what that does to the psyche of the men who are coming back to the women that were left there and then [were] disenfranchised once again as they gave their jobs back⌠to a people like this, if you didnât make money, criminally, what were your options? Pollyâs going to go and work in the local factory? Tommyâs going to go back, [with] high unemployment, to where? Thereâs no NHS, thereâs no social services, this was a world where people were still starving in Britain. Itâs comparatively recently that weâve had a short window of comfort, and weâre losing it again with more people going to food banks now. I think that helps you empathise with the characters.
But also, it is stylized. Nobody for a moment pretends that people are really like this, and I think itâs very clear right from the first beat, when Tommy enters on a black stallion to Nick singing away Red Right Hand, this is a romantic idea. This is not Ken Loach, this is not gritty realism. Thereâs much nicer lighting!
With all that in mind, what do you think Polly wants? Whatâs driving her?
I think at the start of the series itâs stability for her family. There are a lot of wild cards in the family. If Arthurâs not snorting it, heâs fucking it, and if heâs not snorting it and fucking it heâs trying to fight it, so heâs somebody youâve got to look after. Tommy is just constantly imploding and [sheâll] worry about him, [sheâs] terrified that Esmeâs wangling her way into the family. Itâs great, theyâve actually got [Esme] starting to dress a little bit like Polly, itâs all like All About Eve. [Polly needs to] maintain [her] power within the family and [sheâs] feeling threatened by another woman coming into it.
But as her family issues become resolved, a self-loathing comes out in Polly, a destructive self-loathing. Children make us look at ourselves. I know this from my own life, I have a six-year old and a seven-year old, and you become much more self-aware [about] what youâre doing, and how youâre doing it, because you realise that they ape you. So I think that when she finds family stability, a self-loathing comes out in Polly. So I think itâs peace [that she wants].
What do you think about how Peaky Blinders represents PTSD, going into series 2?
I think in the first series, with Danny Whizz-bang, with Tommy self-medicating, to a certain extent with Arthur self-medicating, I think the smell of the trenches is still there in Birmingham. In this series, itâs not as apparent. It is in Tommy, you feel still that thereâs a restlessness â well no, thatâs not true. In this series it is actually accentuated because Arthur really starts to go off the rails, and Polly starts trying to motivate him with morphine, with opium. People just took quick fixes at home, still so little was understood about mental health, even now no one really knows the right way to medicate or the right way to treat post-traumatic stress syndrome, itâs individual case to case. I think itâs a really important part of the drama, because I think that in drama itâs been ignored for too long.
Itâs a problem today. There was a documentary done quite recently tracing post-traumatic stress syndrome throughout literature and describing literature [about] people coming back from the Napoleonic wars and it was so similar, the shakes, the inwardness, the self-loathing, the nightmares, everything was exactly as it was. We know now all that âSunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black; Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleedsâ [a quotation from Wilfred Owenâs poem Mental Cases] we know all the First World War poets and we know much more, but itâs extraordinary how many homeless people come from the Forces, still now. What happens to men and women whoâve seen conflict and how itâs very hard to re-wire.
And [for the family] coping with people with mental health issues as well, itâs exhausting.
Is there a sense of social responsibility in of how itâs portrayed on screen?
I donât know if Iâd say that thereâs a collective responsibility. I think that individually actors are keen to get it correct and truthful because then itâs recognisable and everyone understands what weâre talking about. Also, itâs not the social services, itâs an entertainment show. But there are many more scenes this series talking about Arthur and how to deal with Arthur.
Is shellshock something that the characters are aware of?
Yeah. I donât know if they called it shellshock, but yeah. My great-grandfather came back from the trenches and he was shellshocked, and he was in a wheelchair, and it was so common. Men were walking around the street with half a face, and no legs, and we forget this, and it was all around you, and I think that the great lie of âitâs not in our familyâ⌠but itâs important that it is part of the drama.
Is that something the female characters have to deal with, without having shared that experience?
Yes, they dealt with it in as far as they were the ones that looked after [the men], and also there was [a sense of] camaraderie [in] that men would look after men. You had that in episode 1, when Danny Whizz-bang starts smashing up a pub and Tommy, who owns the pub, who normally would just kneecap him in our world, actually gives him the grace to go because he understands what the manâs been through. And the hopelessness and the helplessness that Polly feels will resonate with anyone who has a member of the family thatâs going through mental health issues because itâs such a new science and itâs very hard and itâs relentless. No amount of therapy is going to get it out as quickly as people want it to. But I think itâs treated in a way that is responsible in the way that itâs faced by everyone, not necessarily in the best way, just like in life, but it is faced and discussed.
Who do you think needs the other more, Tommy or Polly? Who is more reliant on the other for survival?
I think theyâre so locked together now. Itâs very interesting, we do a couple of scenes this year that is [like] husband and wife, clearly not in a carnal way because weâre related, but in [the sense of] getting ready to go out and weâre just chatting about a younger member of the family, and I think thatâs what theyâve become. Sheâs unmarried, heâs unmarried, and theyâre both, you know, not on drugs, which makes them stand out from the rest of the family, so theyâre both the carers. I think they need each other for different things. I think she needs him because itâs a manâs world and heâs able to do things that she canât do, and also that heâs intelligent and political, itâs Machiavellian. And I think he needs her because she looks after the family, and him.
Is he the one pulling the strings, or is it a ive relationship?
He makes a lot of decisions alone and continues to make a lot of decisions alone and she continues to keep up and round on him and be his moral⌠be his judge. So that hasnât really changed as we go into London. There is a line that he says a few times, that if anything happens to him, Polly takes over.
Steven Knight has spoken in the past about how Western films mythologised that era, and he wanted to do something similar with this era in Birmingham. Is there another particular moment in history or era that you would particularly like to explore in film or TV?
Abi Morganâs just done a film called Suffragettes. I would love to do a piece about suffragettes, but have it written like a thriller, instead of having Daphne looking out of the window and saying [affects super-posh accent] âI wonder if Charles will still love me when he sees me dragged away from Parliament Squareâ. If you look at that period, and I have looked at that period, the amount of tactics those women were using, and you had every strata of life chatting about itâŚ
I think itâs a really important issue. Iâm incredibly depressed at the amount of women now that say âIâm not a feministâ and you just think âWhy?â because youâre not being a feminist for you, youâre being a feminist for the women who are not being able to be educated, who are not being able to drive a car, who are not having equal rights and you now have them so how dare you sit on your arse and not other women? And rather than that, which obviously would be quite an angry and boring thing to watch, I think you could write a series based [at] the start of feminism, so you can understand and explore those themes, whilst making it thrilling and exciting, and not seeing it as something that was in the past, because it still isnât. It wonât be until men have maternity leave.
Thatâs really angry! What the fuck was that?!
Helen McCrory, thank you very much!
Peaky Blinders series two starts on Thursday the 2nd of October on BBC Two.
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