Tag: Polly Gray

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.

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

Categories Interviews Peaky Blinders Print Media

Helen McCrory from Peaky Blinders on playing lethal Aunt Polly

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Helen McCrory as Aunt Polly shows it isn’t just the men who are deadly in Peaky Blinders

By Matt Bungard | November 17, 2014 | The Age

Did you have to do much research into the actual Peaky Blinders gang before you took on the role?

There’s not that much written about the Peaky Blinders – there’s about two or three books that touch on them, and that touch on the violence in Birmingham and the gangs that were going around in the north of England at the time. But what I did do is I spoke a lot to (program creator) Steven Knight, and he was inspired by stories that his father told him. [His father] had been sent to deliver a message to his uncle, and he was terrified; he had to go to a part of town that he’d never been to. He went down Garrison Lane and knocked on the door and went into a smoke-filled room, and saw it was an illegal betting shop. And in the room, behind the glass there were these three men drinking homemade gin out of jam jars and were wearing the most beautiful three-piece suits and peaked caps, surrounded by piles of money. And his father became obsessed with this world – he didn’t ever join it, but he found out all these stories and passed them on to Steve. And so really, Steve is the person that all the actors go to to talk about these stories and he knows all these characters; they all existed. So it was through him, really. Like a lot of this history, it’s passed on orally but isn’t written down.

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Helen McCrory: “How dare you sit on your arse and not support other women?!”

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Peaky Blinders’ Helen McCrory on playing Aunt Polly, working-class Britain – and the lack of feminism in today’s society

by Andrew Burns | The Big Issue | October 15, 2014

How much have you enjoyed creating season two?

Polly’s story this year is much, much more interesting. I don’t know if Steven [Knight, writer] made a conscious effort or it’s just what he found the most interesting from the last series, but the women’s parts on the whole [are more interesting]. I think you have to establish that the world of the Shelbys is a man’s world, but once you’ve got that up and running, then you can start to look at the women’s world, which were much more delineated than they are now, so they are completely different characters and completely different sets and settings. I’ve had a fantastic time this year, he’s written me one of my best parts I’ve ever played.

It even passes the Bechdel test. Does it offer a more interesting perspective of women in period dramas?

If you actually look at the working class, the working class women ran the homes, those women worked hard, they were the heartbeat of the society, knowing where the kids are, running it all, making sure that the drunk man in the pub was picked up by somebody else’s husband and brought home, and knowing what’s happening on the streets, because you have to, because no one else is helping you. So yes, just by setting it in working-class Britain, which was 95% of the rest of the country, yeah it does.

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