Helen McCrory: My Peaky Blinders and Deep Blue Sea roles aren’t so different

McCrory opens up about playing a stern matriarch and a judge's wife
Smoke signals: Helen McCrory as Hester in The Deep Blue Sea
Richard Hubert Smith
The Weekender

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The Brummie gangster Helen McCrory plays in Peaky Blinders shares similarities with her character in The Deep Blue Sea, according to the actress.

McCrory, 47, who plays Polly, the stern matriarch of the criminal Shelby family, in the BBC2 drama, stars in Sir Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play as Hester Collyer, a judge’s wife left suicidal after her affair with a drunken war veteran collapses.

She said there are similarities between the women, with Peaky Blinders set in the industrial Midlands in the years after the First World War and The Deep Blue Sea — staged at the National Theatre — taking place in a London of rationing and recovery after the Second.

She said: “They were both born at times when men had gone through this terrible cruelty and brutality and were coping with it.

“They were unable to discuss their emotions and therefore the relationships they had with their wives or lovers or daughters or mothers suffered. But I think Polly has a lot about her — if Hester had a bit more Polly we wouldn’t have a play. I can’t see Polly trying to top herself.”

McCrory, whose husband Damian Lewis was in the audience, said the role was “brilliantly written” by Sir Terence, but she added: “You do a disservice to the writer if you feel that every night you do it you must do it as if it’s the first night you’re doing it in 1952. You’ve got to take a risk and perform it in a slightly new way.”

The third series of Peaky Blinders ends tonight on BBC2.

The Deep Blue Sea will be in the Lyttelton repertoire until September 21.

Peaky Blinders Series 3 Premiere

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