Steven Knight Weighs in on the Shocking True Story That Inspired Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

Caroline HallemannSat, March 21, 2026 at 2:00 PM UTC

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The True Story Behind the Peaky Blinders FilmNetflix

Over the course of six seasons of the Peaky Blinders TV show, Steven Knight chronicled the life and exploits of Tommy Shelby, the opportunistic Birmingham gang leader-turned-British MP. And throughout the series, the plot was peppered with references to historical figures—think everyone from Winston Churchill and Oswald Mosley to Charles Sabini and a slightly fictionalized Joe Kennedy—and noteworthy incidents.

“What I've tried to do, first of all, is find history that hasn't been remarked upon too much. Sometimes it’s hidden history,” he tells T&C of his approach to incorporating real life people and events into his story telling.

“I find that history books tend to write history as if whatever happened was inevitable: that this happened, then this happened, so therefore, obviously this would happen. But I find real history to be more chaotic. And there are all sorts of things that could have happened. I'm always interested in that more chaotic history. Secret history especially is really appealing.”

Cillian Murphy and Steven Knight on the set of The Immortal Man.Netflix

In Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (a feature-length film set in the Peaky universe out now on Netflix), Knight concludes Shelby’s story by once again turning to the past. This time, he eschews boldface names and zeroes in on a little-known plot by the Germans during the Second World War.

Here, Knight breaks down Operation Bernhard, and speaks with T&C about bringing Peaky into WWII, his family’s connection to the movie’s moving dedication, and why he made Tommy a writer.

Throughout the series, you used real people as characters, like Diana Mitford or Winston Churchill or even Sabini. But that was not a prominent part of the storytelling in this movie. Talk me through that decision.

I think of the history hooks, the pieces of history, as nails that hold the thing up. And the history in this was the Operation Bernhard, the true story of the forging of the [British] money in a concentration camp. Parts of the plot were kept secret by the government for 50 years because at the time they didn't want people to lose faith in the British currency. But the fact is that the Germans did try to swamp the economy with money and they succeeded to an extent whereby the Bank of England withdrew 10 pound notes in the middle of the war and after the war redesigned the currency because there were so many forgeries around it.

Before we get to Operation Bernhard, I want to ask specifically about Jack Nelson, who was somewhat inspired by Joseph Kennedy. Given Joe Kennedy's involvement in the UK prior to World War II, did you ever think about bringing him back or his niece Gina back as a character for the film?

It's a fascinating story. The fact that Joseph Kennedy was basically writing to the President of the United States saying, “This war is won by the Germans and the British are going to lose, so we might as well make our peace with the Germans.”

But that involved London and it involved the government because he was the ambassador, obviously. And it was tempting to have Tommy Shelby, the MP, dealing with that world, but I just felt that wasn't the Peaky world I wanted for this movie. I wanted Birmingham, I wanted to be on the streets, and I wanted Tommy to have withdrawn from the world. So he wouldn't have been involved with Churchill or anyone that he would've been involved with before.

James Frecheville as Jack Nelson in the Peaky Blinders TV show.BBCThere's an off-repeated quote of yours about how Peaky Blinders was originally a story set between the two world wars that was going to end with the first air raid siren. At what point did you think the Peaky Blinder story could continue into World War II and that you wanted it to?

It was too tempting to have Birmingham during the Blitz because Birmingham was very badly bombed. And in those days when people didn't know if they're going to still be alive tomorrow, I think the whole population became a bit more “peaky.” There was a lot of hedonism. There was a lot of live now because tomorrow we may die. And that's always been like a Peaky idea ... So I just wanted to explore that world and have that explosiveness involved as part of the problem.

Related to that, why did you choose to include the bombing of the Birmingham Small Arms Factory in the beginning of the film?

That's a real event. It really happened in 1940. And my mother was working at the BSA at the time and she was loading explosives into artillery shells, but she wasn't there that night.

She wasn't on the shift, but she might have been. And so that story was always told to me about that night and that bombing. And I just thought I wanted to use that as the catalyst pretty much for how the whole thing runs up.

Talk me through the decision to dedicate the film to those workers who died.

I just think, well, the people who were killed were offered the chance to go to the shelters, but they decided to carry on working because they wanted to help the war. And I thought if we're going to use that, then we should acknowledge that these are real people who gave their life. I think it was a fitting tribute.

Similarly, walk me through the decision to start the film in a concentration camp.

I wanted to emphasize that this story is real, that this is what happened. And it's so extraordinary. As ever, what really happened is way more interesting than anything you could ever make up. And interesting in a horrible way, obviously, in this case, but the Germans brought together people who they thought would be useful in doing forgeries.

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So there were people who had done design and people who'd worked with lithographs and people who were artistically good, and the Germans brought them to this concentration camp. And that's where they made the forgeries. And they were so meticulous about the writing and having people rub the bills so that they didn't look brand new. They changed the pH of the water that they used because German water had a different PH in order to, when they were making the pulp for the money. It was incredible. And the Bank of England said it was pretty impossible to tell the difference between a forged note and a real note. They said it was the best ever forgeries that they'd ever come across.

You’ve said that Operation Bernard was classified for decades afterward it took place. When did you come across this bit of history?

I had read something about it a few years ago, and it sort of stuck in my mind. And so when it came to placing this story in Second World War, I revisited and just couldn't believe how appropriate it was and how useful it would be because it's about cash given to black marketeers and gangsters because they won't object to introducing the money to the society. So yeah, it was a gift really.

Murphy returns to the role of Thomas Shelby one more time.NetflixIt's an understatement to say there's a lot of media made about World War II. Were you thinking how this story would kind of sit in that collective? Were you looking for a lesser-known story from that time period?

Always. I always think that certain things get overlooked either because governments don't want them to be revealed or, I don't know, especially since it didn't culminate in the destruction of the economy, it sort of gets overlooked, but it was an attempt to do that. And just such an eye-catching plan, if they dropped the notes from planes—the original plan was to just drop the money from planes over the cities. It was just such an ambitious thing to do.

In terms of production design, when you were recreating Blitz-era England, was historical accuracy the priority?

The reality was awful because people were being killed, but the look of a bombed city is so evocative. And so what the team did is they just looked at photos of Birmingham and London after the bombs and recreated how that looked. And it does give you this post-apocalypse sort of feel because the smoke is still rising, the flames are still burning. And that was how it really looked. The whole row of houses would disappear overnight and just be turned into smoldering rubble.

The aftermath of a bombing in Birmingham in August 1940.Mirrorpix - Getty ImagesIn particular, the scene where Tommy's on the horse, it's so striking. What did you want that scene to communicate?

Obviously it's a reference back to the very first scene where Tommy Shelby is riding his horse into our lives, if you like, into Small Heath. And there's a real swagger about him and menace about him. It feels very Western. The music, the Nick Cave song is very swaggery and confident.

And what I wanted to do was to recreate that, but with the weight of all the grief and experience and the love and the hate that has gone on since. And then that's why you see Tommy walking slowly, there's adulation, but he doesn't really acknowledge it. He's covered in mud. He's been in a fight in a pig pen. This is life. This is what life does to you.

And when we played the original Nick Cave song, it felt too confident. So we asked Nick to re-record, which he did, bearing in mind all the stuff that has happened to the people, to the actors and musicians involved, as well as to the characters, and just give it that feel. And it really works because it now sounds as if time has taken its toll.

Tommy Shelby rides his horse through Birmingham once again, in a reference to his first scene in the show.NetflixDid you want this movie to stand alone, without the whole history of the series?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it succeeded because there are people who I've spoken to who said, “I've never even watched [the show],” who loved the film. What I didn't want to do is start explaining stuff in words to an audience that maybe haven't watched it, because I think that kills it dead for everybody, especially the people who have watched it. The way I looked at it is, if you write any film brand new that's never been done before, there is a backstory to all of those characters. They've lived a life in your mind. The advantage with this is that we've seen the backstory and the backstory is out there. So Netflix were very keen that people could watch this without ever having seen the show. And that's exactly what's happened.

But did you always want this story to end with Tommy going back in a tunnel?

Oh God, yeah. Absolutely. The tunnels have been so central to this. It's never explained, but when we see him go down to the wine cellar and go back through the years, and then as the traumatic experience, then anyone who had never seen the series would begin to understand what's going on. And then when he goes back in and we see all those wartime images, then we understand that this is a trauma that he has to overcome in order to succeed.

And then just one last question: why did you make Tommy a writer?

I don't know. Maybe I want to be Tommy Shelby I don't know. You know what I mean?

No, the real reason is because he doesn't talk a lot. He didn't talk to people. He wouldn't open up his heart to someone, and he's not been a good father, and he wants to leave something to his sons that's almost like, “Don't do what I did, and here's what I've learned.” And I wrote quite a lot of that book because we had to shoot pages of it, some of which wasn't used, but there had to be something on the page when they shot the book, and I started writing. I absolutely loved it. And Tom, the director of Killian who read it, said, "You should finish that. "

And I might just do that. I might write The Immortal Man.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”