Peaky Blinders star teases Tommy's breakdown in season 5
Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy and creator Steven Knight have addressed Tommy Shelby's deteriorating mental state during the upcoming fifth season.
The new episodes will see Tommy continuing his quest to go legitimate as he heads to Whitehall, where he clashes with the real-life fascist leader Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin).
Speaking to Digital Spy, Knight mentioned that Tommy is going into the political battle haunted by the horrors of World War I from a decade earlier.
"Tommy is an MP for Birmingham – for part of Birmingham. And he blurs the line between the respect a 'Godfather' would have in an area, on his home turf, with that of an MP," the writer explained.
"So he's sort of doubly enfranchised and doubly powerful. And yet, at the same time – you know, in other series, he’s always faced a nemesis. In this one, indeed, he has some powerful enemies. But in this one, his biggest enemy is himself. So he’s struggling.
"But what I'm trying to do over the scope of the whole thing is, you know, the post-traumatic stress will never go away, and it never does, because that's the reality of it. But I wanted it to be that when he came back, he was totally frozen. Everything was frozen.
"But bit by bit, it started to thaw out, and especially in this. That's when the pain comes. When the numbness goes, the pain comes. And that's what he’s starting to feel. Even though it's 10 years after the war, he’s starting to feel things, and he's not sure he wants to."
Cillian Murphy also described Tommy's inner-struggle as being as difficult as any political conflict he faces with Mosley.
"I think this year feels to me, a bit more about the inside of Tommy's head, a little more, whereas last year was very much like external forces, you know?" he said.
"In the guise of the Mafia, it was pretty conventional what he was dealing with. There was obviously, his own, sort of, psyche and his mental fragility, I think that's always apparent, but this season it seems to me that it's more explicitly that, more about his wrestling with his own head and that's fantastic to play."
The actor also agreed with Knight that Tommy teetering on the verge of a breakdown boils down to him never processing his World War I experience.
"I think it probably all stems back to that, it's often been talked about in the show, like sort of the pre-First World War Tommy and the post, and they're such different characters and I think that's informed by that sort of experience," he noted.
"I think we've seen in terms of the relationships now, he's become a father a couple of times and you can see how he's trying to wrestle with that and the fact that these men really just medicated themselves. You know, didn't have any sort of actual, proper help."
Peaky Blinders will move to BBC One when it returns later in 2019.
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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