Manchester's history is cotton and wool. Birmingham's is iron and steel.
Steven Knight
Expect the unexpected, is what I'd say about 'Taboo.'
In terms of the symbolism, I think that if you do it right, writing is a bit like dreaming.
There have been times when I've shaved twice in the same morning because I've forgotten I've shaved already.
Horses do sense things way before people.
There's such a wealth of literature from the 18th century and 19th century, George Eliot... Jane Austen... that's all about a genteel high society, relationships, all of that stuff. There wasn't ever really, apart from Dickens, a literary evocation of working class life.
Any attempt to recreate a world of 1814, or 100 years before that - I think it's important to understand that the people of the time had a different concept of what reality was. Their reality was much more haunted.
Getting 'Millionaire' right was as hard as writing 'Dirty Pretty Things.' Harder. In the pilots, contestants kept wanting to take the money; we had to find ways - the lifelines - of keeping them in the seat, answering the questions. But there is so much snobbery about popular culture. A game show just isn't valued as much as a novel.
It's such a gift when you know who you're writing for and you know that that actor is capable of so much that you can relax a bit.
I'm not a great film-goer, and I never have been.
To get a game show into production is as challenging and as intellectually demanding as it is to write a novel or screenplay.
Dialogue is what I like doing. It's what I am good at doing.
I want to make people see that evil is seductive and that we need to be careful.
I think certain periods of history don't get dealt with because I think historians, and it's their job, but they look back and look for patterns. They look for sequences and they look for reasons, and certain periods of history don't fit with the general pattern of 1500 to the 20th century, during which there's the creation of the United States.
Locke' is a different way of making a film as well as being a different sort of film.
I will never unravel the mystery of how a script gets into the hands of certain people.
I write about what worries me and, hopefully, things worry me a little bit earlier than they do some other people, purely because I am a writer and it is my job to go out there and be worried by things.
I've had more reaction to 'Peaky' than anything. People react really intensely.
I want to be influenced by the world not TV or film.
Writing, when it works, one needs to access whatever it is that creates dreams.
What I like about 'Taboo' just in general, even in writing it, you are not certain what the motives are sometimes because these characters are so odd that you let them speak for themselves and you're never quite sure where it's headed.
There's always a concern over budget with film too but people are more extravagant when they're making a feature. In television everything's tight, everything's paired down and it's just a question of making it look expensive.
The problem with prequels is you're limiting yourself as to where it can go.
I think the East India Company represents what we would think of as a very modern approach to the world where everything was counted, every penny was counted.
TV is a writer's medium, the writer is in charge effectively. So what you write is what gets shot, so in that sense I prefer it. But in terms of the scale of it, features are fantastic.
My dad's uncles were illegal bookmakers who were known in the area as Peaky Blinders, that's the stories I heard.
You can make somebody bad for a long time, and people love it when they then do one good thing and it's almost like a triumph. Actors seem to enjoy it more.
I'm not a big fan of prequels to be honest.
Once upon a time there was a physicality to the business of investigating a serious crime. There were objects, pieces of paper, even good old-fashioned fingerprints. Today it's different. Because all of us are routinely and voluntarily giving the intimate details of our lives to all kinds of people whether we realize it or not.
I just don't like cinemas very much. And when I do see a film it depresses me.
I do lots of projects in film and TV. You have some that are lucky, and some that are unlucky.
With TV, your structure is determined by the series not the episode. You can have incident without consequence to the character, but keep your eye on the ticking clock of the series.
You meet people and you hear the way they talk and the way they behave, and that subconsciously gets fed into the characters you create 'cause you have to make them flesh and blood somehow.
I find in Britain people are both more arty and more willing to rip you off.
So many American and international producers want to shoot in the U.K. because of our crew base and tax incentives.
Peaky' has attracted a lot of attention from different disciplines in the arts. It was originally going to be a ballet, which is Ballet Rambert, and there is also a lot of music artists who offer their music to the show to be used on the soundtrack.
There used to be grandparents who would say that if you were misbehaving the Peaky Blinders would get you, they were the bogeymen.
Well directing TV is very time-consuming, so if you are going to direct TV, a season will take a year out of your life.
I think the best actors do both. I think they fulfill what you want them to do, in terms of the vision for the whole piece. And then they always bring something that does surprise you and shock you.
Any question about narrative storytelling is answered by Dickens.
There's a convention in English stuff that if something is more than 100 years old, people have to say 'do not' instead of 'don't. They have to say 'will not' instead of 'won't.' People are speaking in a way that is not accessible or normal. And people didn't ever speak like that.
Peaky' is a very personal thing for me because it's based on stories that I was told as a kid by my parents. At the very beginning, I tried to have other writers involved but it just didn't work.
There's no writers room, or any other writer involved. I write everything from beginning to end. Maybe it's just me not being able to let go of something, especially with 'Peaky.'
I was doing two things at once for quite a long time. I was working in television and writing novels.
I think it's a bit like saying a painter does a painting everyone loves and it's 40% blue paint, so from now on you have to paint paintings that are 40% blue. That's the film industry at its most blunt, which is why it's constantly bats and spiders and superheroes.
With any period piece I think the thing to do is forget that it's not contemporary when you're writing and to have the characters feel as much as possible like characters that you would know.
I think an under-recognized fact is that TV has changed because the screens have, we now have these massive screen in our homes... so it's worth making your show look good.
No, I don't actually look at Twitter.
Whenever I went to L.A. the first thing people said in the meeting, no matter what it was about, was how much they loved 'Peakys.' So Hollywood was really going for it which is always a good start. Also Snoop Dogg is a big fan.
I'm a big Birmingham City supporter and seeing the fans dressed as Peaky Blinders is one of my proudest moments.
