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.
BBC | You Tube | July 30, 2019
There are only a few actresses who have been able to portray a mother who commits heinous crimes while maintaining her image as the savior matriarch. Going by this record then, British actress Helen McCrory has time and again excelled in roles that proved a mother is not only committed towards the well-being of her children but can be selfish enough to disregard the affairs of the world solely for the benefit of motherhood. Her characters might not be diverse but the confined roles that she plays have been executed until the last morsel has been squeezed out of those characters.
At the moment, McCrory is best known for her role as the Shelby matriarch, Polly Grey, a gypsy woman who is able to talk to spirits but at the same time commits a murder in the cleanest possible way. Polly Grey is one of the leading women on BBC One’s ‘Peaky Blinders’ but unlike her fellow characters, Polly holds the upper hand when it comes to the Shelby family business. As the company’s treasurer, Polly decides where the money goes and what happens with it, and let’s keep in mind this is a woman who lives in the early 1910s, a time when due to World War I men were out in the battlefield and women for the first time were taking control over business.
December 11, 2017 | Tripwire
♦ Peaky Blinders season 4 began on 15 November and it has been a pretty eventful series so far. Here’s a chat with one of its cast members Helen McCrory, who plays Polly Gray, from the BBC themselves…
With Tommy’s actions landing members of the family in prison at the end of series three, where do we find Polly at the beginning of series four?
We open the series on Polly, Arthur, John and her son Michael being led to the gallows. In this moment, which is a real turning point for Polly, we see her believing that she’s going to die. She calls on the Virgin Mary to bring the spirits of her mum, her dad and her daughter to her. In that moment, she believes she sees her daughter’s face and from this moment on Polly believes that she’s living with the spirits constantly around her. Either she’s had some sort of mental breakdown and is unable to cope with reality or she really does see the spirit of her daughter and therefore has this newfound understanding of life. Once you take away the fear of death in someone, they have a sort of immortality. Her near death experience mirrors Tommy and Arthur’s time in the trenches. So these three characters are united in this fearless attitude towards life at the beginning of this series, which is what makes them so dangerous.
Continue reading Helen McCrory Talks Peaky Blinders Season Four
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Contains spoilers for Peaky Blinders series 4
“Can you heal that?” asks Helen McCrory. That being the surprise arrival of a raft of coppers to cart the Shelby family off to prison at the end of series three. Even if there was a rescue plan all along, when a family member has put a noose around your neck and made you believe you were seconds from death, is forgiveness possible?
“The strength of the family is whether it can get together despite that and continue or not. This series is about that test,” says McCrory. Her character, Aunt Polly, “hates the man that runs the family,” she continues. “Even though she is a matriarch and he is the patriarch, will she unite or will she take him down?”
Polly’s experience on the gallows in the opening episode of Peaky Blinders series one has given her a new understanding of herself. “She has a fearless quality that makes somebody very dangerous, when they no longer fear death,” says McCrory. “There’s no stopping her.”
Continue reading Peaky Blinders series 4: “there’s no stopping” Aunt Polly
