Tim Roth reshaped his Peaky Blinders character as working class

Tim Roth joins the cast of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man as Beckett, a British fascist sympathizer who arrives in Duke Shelby’s world during the film’s WWII-era story. The movie follows Cillian Murphy’s Thomas Shelby returning from exile and confronting his illegitimate son, Duke, amid a cast of returning series regulars and new additions.

Roth said Beckett was originally written as an aristocratic figure, but he asked to flip the character to a working-class, schoolteacher-type. He felt someone from that background could “speak your language” and communicate with the Peakies in a way an aristocrat could not, a change that altered class more than dialogue.

The actor also drew on personal history to shape Beckett. Roth described his father’s experience as an American airman and immigrant who worked in British factories and enlisted in World War II; that background informed how he approached the character’s wartime motivations and aftermath.

United Kingdom

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