When it came to landing a giant of a storyteller for his latest series, actor Stephen Graham was glad of the inspired prediction made by his wife.
Graham and Hannah Walters – who is also an actor – had set up Matriarch Productions with the goal of providing a platform for underrepresented voices and stories.
The company had boarded as co-producers on TV series A Thousand Blows – a gritty new show about a group of people battling for survival in 1880s London. Walters, says Graham, was convinced that Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight was the perfect fit for the series.
“Hannah, in her geniusness that is Hannah, basically went: ‘I know who’s gonna write this. Steven Knight will write this. I’ve been talking to Julie, Steve’s assistant and we’re getting on like a house on fire. And I know exactly this is the kind of thing that Steve will love’,” recalls Graham.
“She sent it, and within four days he’d come back, he said: ‘Let’s zoom. I’d really love to get involved with this. It’s the kind of thing that I love, and I’ve got some ideas’.” Debuting on Disney+ on February 21st, A Thousand Blows sees Knight bringing his energy for period storytelling audiences have seen in Peaky Blinders. It tells the story of Hezekiah Moscow and Alec Munroe, best friends from Jamaica, who migrate to London and are thrown into the heart of the city’s thriving bare-knuckle boxing scene.
The fights are run by the city’s famous Queen of the Forty Elephants, Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), the head of a powerful female crime gang. Graham plays Henry ‘Sugar’ Goodson, the East End’s most formidable boxing warrior.
The star of The Irishman and Boiling Point embarked on an intense diet and exercise regimen to bring audiences a character unlike any he’s played before.
“I wanted to try and create someone that was extremely, a million miles away from myself. For his style of fighting, it’s a case of survival. I wanted to create an archetypal male figure that we have seen in ages gone by.
“I wanted to try and get back into that mindset and create that kind of man who is extremely stoic, keeps all of his emotions inside and fights for everything that he has. That context was me trying to get as big as I possibly could within the time frame, be like a little bulldog.
“For me, it was a case of a cross between Mike Tyson and Lenny McLean, who’s a bare knuckle fighter – that brutal element of by any means necessary, he will win that fight. What we managed to do was bring the elements of the characters outside of the ring into the ring. I think that was an important key element for it.”
Graham and Walters set up Matriarch in 2020 with the aim of telling stories of underrepresented people. “It’s not necessarily for me to play these roles in the beginning, but what I am trying to do, and what me and Hannah are very passionate about, is creating stories that really look at life that we never really get to see in many ways and the kind of characters that we wouldn’t normally get to see.”
His interest was sparked by a photograph of the real-life character of Hezekiah Moscow, a charismatic Jamaican man who comes to London in search of fame and fortune. He’s played by Malachi Kirby, who won a BAFTA television award for his role in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe and recently starred opposite Jessie Buckley in Wicked Little Letters.
Kirby, who had reached out to his agents six months earlier expressing an interest in playing a boxer and a real-life character, was fascinated at the prospect of playing Moscow. “I was having this kind of out of body experience of: what’s happening, this is the thing that I was looking for, and then I’m reading it, because it’s still got to be a good script, right? It’s still got to be something worth doing.
“I’m reading it and reading about these characters, and reading Hezekiah. But what struck me is as interested as I am in Hezekiah, I’m actually interested in all of these characters. I’m interested in the world and that, for me, got really exciting.
“The fact that Stephen Knight has written them all in such a way where there’s no real one hero or one villain, everyone has the opportunity to be either. It’s very rare to come across a story like that where you have these incredible people of integrity, and flawed, but without judging anybody. It really leaves it open for the audience to decide how they feel about people. The writer isn’t doing the audience’s job for them.”
For his part, Graham agrees that Knight has a particular skill for world-building when it comes to bringing period characters, their goals and ambitions to life. He should know – Graham starred opposite our own Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders as Hayden Stagg, the formidable union man. He will star in the highly anticipated Peaky Blinders movie, due for release later this year.
Many of the characters in A Thousand Blows were real people, says Graham, adding that they are equal in their ultimate goal, which is to survive.
“But it’s also how they survive. It’s how they get by on a daily, day to day basis – as we all do in many ways. And then there’s laughter, there’s humility, there’s joy, there’s fear, there’s anger, there’s all of these things.
“I think that’s what Steve (Knight) is beautiful at doing, is capturing these human emotions within the context of the story that he’s telling. I’ve heard Steve say: ‘no better fiction than fact’ and I think that’s one of the geniuses of his writing. He brings these things, these people who have really existed. Ninety per cent of our cast, the actors playing these parts, these people actually lived. That’s how we’ve created this whole thing. Steve has taken all of these wonderful characters and created this beautiful world, and then it’s just those telling these humane stories within that context.”
- A Thousand Blows launches on Friday, Feb 21, on Disney+
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