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The Custard TV: Our chat with Peaky Blinders star Helen McCrory

Aunt Polly is Back

Michael Lee | August 25, 2019 | The Custard TV

As we build up to Series 5 of Peaky Blinders at the end of the month, Our Michael Lee sits down with members of the cast to find out what we can expect.

It’s the day of the Peaky Blinders series 5 launch in London. Before the screening, we gather to chat with the cast. Helen McCrory bounds in after the designated meeting time “I’m so sorry I’m late! I was being interviewed“. She takes a look around her “He’s not here now so I can blame him!”

Where do we find Polly at the beginning of the series?

“It starts with the crash and they lose a lot of money very very quickly and she’s back on the streets- not literally! You see her enjoying all the luxuries and then you see her realising she doesn’t have any left.

Continue reading The Custard TV: Our chat with Peaky Blinders star Helen McCrory

Categories Panel Discussions Peaky Blinders Video

VIDEO: The Peaky Blinders Cast on Returning for Season 5 | BFI Q&A

Peaky Blinders cast members Helen McCrory and Sophie Rundle join writer-creator Steven Knight, executive producer Caryn Mandabach and new cast member Sam Claflin at the BFI Southbank to talk about the fifth season of the BBC’s Birmingham-set gangster drama.

 

Categories Interviews News Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory reveals the Peaky Blinders scene that was just too much for TV

Aunt Polly’s original reaction when son Michael came home was very different in Peaky Blinders

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Remember that scene where a hungover Polly (Helen McCrory) stumbled home in her party outfit from the night before, only to find long-lost son Michael (Finn Cole) waiting on her doorstep?If McCrory had her way, the reunion would have been a lot more stomach-turning – but the actress’s first take was vetoed. Continue reading Helen McCrory reveals the Peaky Blinders scene that was just too much for TV
Categories Damian Lewis Interviews Peaky Blinders Print Media Quiz

Helen McCrory: ‘ I don’t think I’m deep enough to have mental-health issues’

On Badass Women and Being Married to Her ‘Best Friend’

by Gavanndra Hodge | The Telegraph | August 9, 2019

She’s straight-talking, hates housework, dresses to kill, and lives life her way – convention be damned. Turns out Helen McCrory has plenty in common with her badass Peaky Blinders character Polly.

Helen McCrory, the multiple-award winning actor, is holding what looks like a moist slice of turkey. ‘What is that?’ I ask. ‘It’s a face mask, darling. £1.99 from Superdrug,’ she says, rubbing it against her neck. ‘It’s going to make me look like a teenager.’

We are standing outside a café on the Regent’s Canal, cyclists and prams whizzing by. McCrory is wearing a floral tea dress, silver Zadig & Voltaire boots, sunglasses and a VIP wristband from a Bob Dylan concert she went to, five days ago. ‘I am never taking it off,’ she says.

There is a sort of rock-star swagger to Helen McCrory, 50, a charismatic, don’t-give-a-damn cool with her chipped red nails and posh-voiced sweariness. She likes to party, to wear top hats and vintage frocks, and there is the inevitable doubling of glamour that comes from her marriage to the actor Damian Lewis (Brody from Homeland, more recently Bobby Axelrod in Billions), with whom she lives in a tall, narrow house in Tufnell Park with their children Manon, 12, and Gulliver, 11.

Continue reading Helen McCrory: ‘ I don’t think I’m deep enough to have mental-health issues’

Categories Interviews Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory on why she loves playing Peaky Blinders’ Polly Gray

Plus, why Aunt Polly is Misunderstood

by Megan Sutton | August 8, 2019 | Good Housekeeping

Although in real life most of us strive to be good citizens, for actors there’s lots of fun to be had in pretending to be someone with a darker side. That’s certainly true for Peaky Blinders star Helen McCrory, who much prefers playing a baddie.

“It’s much more fun, it’s loads of fun playing the baddie,” she told press including Goodhousekeeping.com/uk at a preview ahead of Peaky Blinders season five.