Interview: Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight discusses his new series A Thousand Blows

Steven Knight may not be a name everyone recognizes, but odds are you are familiar with his resume. Having written films ranging from Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises, Pawn Sacrifice, Spencer, and Maria, the writer is best known for his run of small-screen projects, including Peaky Blinders, Taboo, Rogue Heroes, Great Expectations, and The Veil. His penchant for British period dramas has resulted in some great shows, and his latest project is the Hulu series A Thousand Blows, starring Stephen Graham and Malachi Kirby.

A Thousand Blows follows Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall), two best friends from Jamaica who travel to London to seek a new and better life. Finding themselves in the violent area of London’s West End, the pair come across Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), the leader of the all-female criminals known as the Forty Elephants. They also meet Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), the most notorious boxer in London. As they clash in various ways, the series looks at how their fortunes change in the real life-or-death world of 19th-century England.

I talked with the prolific Oscar-nominated writer about A Thousand Blows, including the story’s origins and how he researched the various historical figures that inspired the characters. We also talked about the performances from Stephen Graham, Malachi Kirby, and Erin Doherty, the benefits of shorter episode counts, and whether this series will continue past season two. Check out the full interview below.

JOBLO: Hi, Stephen. How are you?

Steven Knight: I’m very good. How are you?

JOBLO: Very excited to talk to you. I’ve reviewed each of the different series you’ve been involved with. And I love the unique approach to telling these different tales. And especially with A Thousand Blows, it looks at different tales that we typically see from this era. When you were first approaching this story, how did you figure out what angle to get in there to tell these various storylines?

SK: The idea of telling Hezekiah Moskow’s story came from Stephen Graham and Hannah, his partner. He’s such a brilliant actor that anything that he presents you, you take seriously. I did some research and there’s not a lot known about Hezekiah Moskow. The fights he was in, some accounts of what he was like from other people. At the same time, I’ve wanted to tell the 40 Elephants story, which is another true story of Mary Carr, for a long time. And I just thought what would be great would be to put those two things together and imagine that Mary Carr and Hezekiah might have met because they were around simultaneously in the same part of London. And then, once that decision is made, there’s accounts of what Mary Carr and the Elephants got up to. There are accounts of what Hezekiah got up to. And you sort of match them in parallel and find ways of sort of zigzagging between the two. And it gives you a bit of a structure to start playing around and imagining. The way that I try to do it is to try and get the characters, understand who the characters are. And then I think once you’ve got them in your head, you can set them free a bit, and you can have them walk into a room together, and they can talk to each other in a way that you’re not controlling in a bizarre sort of way.

JOBLO: Something that I’ve loved about how streaming since the whole revolution was streaming and cable taking over a lot of these stories is the episode counts have become a lot shorter we don’t have this that American thing where series were twenty-five or twenty-six episodes a season and things felt like filler. A Thousand Blows is a very deliberate story. I love that at the end of the sixth episode, we see where things will be headed next. Was this always envisioned as a twelve-episode tale, or is there going to be more potential beyond that?

SK: No, I mean, it began as six episodes, you know, to see if it’s going to work, which is the normal thing. I like six. It’s the British length of six. I like eight is fine, but six feels a bit more manageable, but quite quickly, I think we were into the third episode when Disney had a real leap of faith and said, let’s just do the whole thing, let’s do two series, because they knew it was going to work. And so I just saw it as two lots of six, with not too much of a leap between the two. And I think, you know, the way we will proceed is this way: to do these six episode batches, really.

JOBLO: I saw the same thing with your series SAS: Rogue Heroes where you had those batches of six episodes. And so when you’re designing the tale and kind of trying to encompass it, what’s your approach? Do you start at the end and the beginning and find the middle, or do you start chronologically?

SK: It’s nothing logical. There was a time a while ago when I used to pretend that I was doing it in a logical way because it gave everybody comfort. But what I do do is, let’s say, you know roughly what will happen between episodes one and six. You know where you’re going to get to sort of, but keep it open and then start writing. And as I say, if you know the characters, then let the characters do that. And it’s not, for me, a logical system. It’s not like by the end of this episode, we must have reached this point. Because if I try and do that, I find it quite boring to do, never mind to watch. And I try to give authority to my fingers in a sense and just let it go and see what happens. And then I suppose it’s having done it for quite a while, you sort of naturally find yourself reaching a point of change after about 55 minutes. Lots of things have accumulated, and something new is going to happen. Bang, you can end the episode. And with streamers, of course, you try and end it in a way that doesn’t allow people to go to bed or take a break or feed the kids or anything. You try and make sure they just carry on.

JOBLO: I think that you’ve had some actors that have appeared in many of your projects. Stephen Graham is such a phenomenal actor. And I think that his ability to play characters that are, you know, I don’t want to necessarily villainous, but he can play, you know, the hard character, the great character. This feels different than other characters he’s played in the past. Was he always envisioned in this role? Did you always see him as playing this character?

SK: Yeah, it was one of the appeals for doing it. It was absolutely a direct approach from Stephen and Hannah saying, we’ve got this story, we’d love you to write it. We haven’t got much money. We’ve got very little money. And obviously, one’s agent says, no, don’t do it. But because it’s him, you think, well, OK. And it was such an appealing project. So the idea that you’ve got him absolutely alters the nature of the project because in episode one, you don’t see him for quite a while, but you hear a lot about him, and then there’s a build-up to him, and then you only see his back. Now, if you know you’ve got Stephen Graham, you can do that because you know that when you get to that destination, nobody will be let down. It’s going to be fantastic. And so it just gives you a lot of freedom to play around with stuff.

JOBLO: If you go back decades, when a story like this would have been told, it would have been told with a predominantly White cast. You don’t really get all of the female characters and the minority characters who were obviously present in that era and had very important stories to tell. Was that something that you found a lot of information when doing research about those untold stories? And did you feel that there was an important element in getting those told in this series?

SK: I always think that if you start off with the intention of, you know, smuggling a message in or saying, you know, I should be doing, we should be doing this, I think it’s not effective. If you look at what really happened, then you have the authority of the truth. So what you’re doing is just telling what really happened n the 1880s weren’t happening because people thought this should happen. They would. That’s what was happening. And so all you got to do is tell the story. And I think there’s no, it’s not like a virtuous thing to look out the window and see what’s happening. And that’s exactly what I was saying. And I think the point is that if you’re telling a true story and people know it’s, well, you know, true as far as it can be, but it’s based on true people, then people know that you’re not doing this to make a point. You’re just reflecting on what really happened. And I think that’s much more effective.

JOBLO: I think that when you get somebody like Malachi Kirby who’s able to come in and play this role, it must help. There’s like that moment with the circus in the first episode where you don’t have to kind of hit anybody over the head with it. It’s inherent in his performance and what’s unspoken. Did you find that a lot of that was coming out through Malachi when the series was getting on screen?

SK: He’s such a great actor. And what was really good, and not really the consequence of too much conversation, but in researching the real Hezekiah, what the small amounts that you could find, everybody liked him. And the thing people kept saying was he’s a gentleman. And they would also say he was gentle. Now he’s a bare-knuckle boxer. So there you’ve got those two things. He’s able to beat somebody to a pulp in a ring and he’s a gentle person, you know? So I tried to write that, but as soon as you see Malachi playing that, you see that absolutely, you know, he’s got the potential to do the other thing, but fundamentally he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, you know? And he’s a nice man and he wants to do nice things. And it’s just the performance really reflects that better than any words can express.

JOBLO: In that same regard, Erin Doherty is so phenomenal here. Outside of getting in the ring and being a bare knuckle boxer, she is playing this character as a fighter in the truest sense of the word. Did you feel it was the same in that portrayal as what you found with Malachi?

SK: Absolutely. And it’s all based on the real Mary Carr, who was a real person. And unlike Hezekiah, there’s quite a bit of stuff on Mary Carr. And most of it is court cases and transcripts from trials where somebody’s writing everything down word for word, which is so unusual. And when you get word-for-word testimony, you get all the oddness and weirdness of how people speak and what they’re like. And Mary was this incredible person who would be charged with whatever in court. The reporter from the newspaper will say that Mary Carr turned up, and she was in black velvet. She had black fur. She had five ostrich feathers in her hat. I mean, an ostrich feather is a big deal. It’s huge. So she’s turning up for court dressed like this. And they say she’s got six gold rings and she’s got diamond rings, you just get this person who’s coming into this place of jeopardy to probably be put away in prison for a bit. And, you know, you find out about what her childhood was like, so brutal. And yet she’s fighting back and rising above it. So when you’ve got that for real, it’s sort of, you know, it’s up to you to try and reflect that as well as you can. And she does it so brilliantly. She’s so strong. It’s amazing.

JOBLO: Well, I love the series. I cannot wait to see the back half of the series and see how everything ties up. I really appreciate your time.

SK:Thank you so much. It’s an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

A Thousand Blows is now streaming on Hulu.