Peaky Blinders season 5 star says show is "disgustingly violent"
Peaky Blinders star Helen McCrory has defended the gangster drama's right to be "disgustingly violent".
Over its five series, Peaky Blinders routinely shows brutal violence and sadistic murders as Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) and his family do absolutely anything necessarily to maintain their control over Birmingham.
Speaking to Digital Spy, McCrory – who plays Aunt Polly – was asked if she thought the realistic violence in the series might normalise the behaviour for young viewers.
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"No," McCrory insisted. "I think the reason that it is very violent and it's really horrible and you should look away.
"I've only seen Episode 1, and there's a whole bit... so I look away from the screen. I, as Helen, can't watch it. I think it's disgusting, gratuitous violence. It is… no, not gratuitous. Disgustingly violent. But it is. And it should be."
McCrory went on: "I think it's much more disturbing than somebody slashes somebody's face or somebody shoots somebody and it’s all just the end of it.
"It should be horrifying and you should have the people who are responsible for the violence either unable to self-medicate or having mental health problems, or all the things that do happen to people, if you kill other people – because it is not a natural state of affairs.
"And anybody who looks at the violence of Peaky Blinders and some sort of gun slashing scheme and thinks, 'That exactly is what I want to do'…I mean, sick."
Her co-star Aidan Gillen — who plays the Shelbys' fixer Aberama Gold — argued that creator Steven Knight does have an ultimate payoff in mind for the extreme violence in Peaky Blinders.
"I think [the show is] full of people without moral codes," he said. "I mean, there's some kind of… you know, there's some kind of a code going on. I think probably by when it reaches its end, we're going to see that violence has consequences.
"That's usually the way it goes with shows of this nature. I don't see it as being populated by a gallery of morally upstanding people. There's some honour, there's some love, there's some family ties and all that. I think it's more of a lack of a moral code that's more interesting to me."
The upcoming series will see the Shelbys face their most difficult enemies yet when Tommy goes to Parliament to take on the British Union of Fascists.
Peaky Blinders seasons 5 returns to BBC One on Sunday, August 25 at 9pm.
Obsessed With… Peaky Blinders hosted by Digital Spy's Editor, Laurence Mozafari, is out now and available to listen to on BBC Sounds.
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