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BBC Media Centre: Interview with Helen McCrory – Peaky Blinders Series 3

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Helen McCrory plays Aunt Polly Gray

Polly watches the family and can see who is coping in this new world and who is not. The situation becomes very much sink or swim, with Polly definitely swimming.

— Helen McCrory

Where did we leave off with Polly in series two and how do we find her in series three?
We left Polly in series two having been reunited with the son that had been taken from her when he was young. She understandably feels hugely guilty about her past and wants to defend him with everything she has. Campbell (played by Sam Neill) sees this weakness in her and uses it to humiliate her, and she compromises herself in order to save her son. Polly is further humiliated by the fact that her son and everyone else knows what she has done and so she does what Peaky Blinders do, and she kills Campbell.

How does Polly reconcile her actions in series two with her conscience?
At the beginning of the third series you find a woman that, as a Catholic, is damned as a murderer. This series explores what happens to Polly’s soul and her mind as she carries the knowledge that she has killed a man. It is interesting to see how she battles with her conscience while still being part of this world that continues to be involved in killing.

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Categories Interviews Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory interview: ‘I have no interest in ‘strong female characters’ – I want complexity’

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Polly is Back

by Jess Denham | Independent | April 25, 2016

The award-winning actress talks to Jess Denham about why it is harder to play a rapist than a rape victim, wanting to star in a suffragettes thriller and, of course, Peaky Blinders series three

Helen McCrory battles with self-loathing as Polly in Peaky Blinders
Helen McCrory battles with self-loathing as Polly in Peaky Blinders
Sitting in the bar at London’s Soho Hotel, casually-dressed with steaming mug of coffee in hand, Helen McCrory looks every bit the down-to-earth mother-of-two and nothing like her intimidating Peaky Blinders matriarch, Polly. Behind her informal appearance and attitude (she briefly pauses our interview after just two minutes to ‘catch up’ with a co-star) is a formidable character bubbling with intellectually-formed opinions; her actor’s voice, as rich and distinctive as a full-bodied Merlot, commanding respect. Though she stands little at 5ft 3”, she is most certainly fierce.

McCrory is with me today to talk about the BBC’s hit 1920s drama, named after a brutal Birmingham gang who sewed razor blades into the peaks of their flatcaps, and back for its third series in early May. She returned to Peaky Blinders having finished playing the unscrupulously evil Madame Kali in Penny Dreadful, a character skilled in the Dark Arts with a similar drive for reaching her goals as Polly. This series, she promises a new script that delves much deeper into the emotions and psyche of the characters, especially her’s and lead actor Cillian Murphy’s, who plays blue-eyed mob boss Tommy Shelby. “We’re going to places and doing things with the performance that we just haven’t done before,” she says. “It’s quite nerve-wracking as an actor. You feel vulnerable.”

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Categories Media Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory: ‘Marry someone you love and someone who you like. I am incredibly lucky.’

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 Helen McCrory shares the secrets behind her successful marriage to Damian Lewis

Chrissy Iley | April 23, 2016 | Daily Mail

She’s the feisty star of Peaky Blinders with forthright views on nudity, politics and why actors aren’t role models. He’s the Homeland heart-throb with an OBE. So who’s boss in the McCrory-Lewis house? The actress reveals all to Event…

In the flesh Helen McCrory's a fierce, sexy woman with refreshing views on nudity, the NHS and the gender pay gap in Hollywood 

In the flesh Helen McCrory’s a fierce, sexy woman with refreshing views on nudity, the NHS and the gender pay gap in Hollywood

Helen McCrory is rather pleased her husband, Homeland and Wolf Hall star Damian Lewis OBE, has been objectified as a pin-up, with topless shots from US TV series Billions plastered over the papers and glossy magazines alongside other British hunks Tom Hiddleston and Aidan Turner.

‘It’s lovely. Every wife wants to be with someone everyone finds attractive. Just like every husband wants to feel their wife is attractive,’ she says, perched at the bar of a London members’ club in high black boots and a black high-necked fitted dress with a sexy split in the skirt.

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Categories Broadcast Media Events Readings Video

Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis Read From The Frankenstein

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by Jess Gormley | The Guardian |  April 14, 2016

Helen McCrory and Damian Lewis read extracts from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at the Keats-Shelley Prize 2016 in London, marking 200 years since the novel’s inception. Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1816 and it is now regarded as one of the key gothic novels of the romantic period. Riona Millar, 16, won first prize in the young Romantic award for her poem on the theme of ‘After Frankenstein’

Source: The Guardian