What Happened When Peaky Blinders Creator Had Beer With Snoop Dogg

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has said US rapper Snoop Dogg told him how much he identified with the show.

Mr Knight told BBC Radio 4: Desert Island Discs how the rapper spoke about his life and family when the two met, and said the show “reminded him of how he got involved in gang culture.”

Meeting Snoop Dogg, the creator realised that Peaky Blinders “is quite universal”, with people from Eastern Europe to Buenos Aires “getting it and feeling the same way”.

Mr Knight, who based the hit series and a forthcoming film on stories from his parents and his own childhood in Birmingham, also co-created the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

Peaky Blinders The series follows gangsters in 1920s Birmingham. The series ran for six seasons, from 2013 to 2022, and stars Cillian Murphy, who won the Best Actor Oscar for Oppenheimer this year, as Tommy Shelby.

Mr. Murphy will reprise his role as Shelby in the film version.

The show has aired in 180 countries and counts celebrities such as Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise among its fans.

Mr Knight described his encounter with a famous fan Snoop Dogg and his manager in a room – the rapper smokes, he drinks beer and the manager drinks gin.

Hearing about Snoop Dogg’s life was “really interesting,” he said.

“It was all about the family keeping you inside, you escaping to do bad things, then shifting their emotions and loyalties to follow you, then escaping again,” he said.

“He was a really great guy. It was great to talk to him,” Knight added.

Mr Knight, who grew up the youngest of seven children, said Peaky Blinders was inspired by the mythical stories his parents told him about their childhood.

When her mother was about eight or nine, she worked for bookmakers – called the Peaky Blinders – at a time when betting was illegal.

As an adult, she worked as a cleaner and in a factory, sticking superglue to the soles of her shoes so she could get to work when it snowed.

His father was a blacksmith who worked in a Roma camp and a nearby scrap metal yard.

“The people we met were so larger than life, so rebellious, they were so on the other side of the law, but really warm and great people,” Mr Knight said.

He wanted to bring some of that “respect for one’s own life” to Peaky Blinders, showing that people who live “big, glamorous, dramatic lives” have emotions and passions that “are the same as everyone else’s”.

Mr Knight said he began writing poetry when he was around 10 years old. His first job after university was writing adverts for local radio in Birmingham before moving to work in radio and production in London.

It was in London that he and two colleagues created Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the TV game show that enjoyed worldwide success.

He also wrote the film Dirty Pretty Things, nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2004, and three novels.

Mr. Knight is currently writing a Star Wars screenplay and recently opened a television and film studio in Birmingham called Digbeth Locwhere the movie Peaky Blinders will be filmed.

“It’s a fitting end to this part of the story, and we have an absolutely fantastic cast,” the writer said. “I want it to be a kind of legacy for Birmingham, but also a place where people come who want to do different things, brave things, daring things.”

He also launched a programme to fund courses for local people to train them in careers in the film industry.

“We want it to be absolutely part of the community and for local people to be able to walk to work,” he said.

Mr Knight said growing up working class “you have no expectations of yourself” and it took him until he was 35 to think “I can actually do this”.

Today, whenever he gives talks, like recently at his old school, he says, “You have to understand that you’re just as good as anyone else, you just haven’t had the same guidance.”

Steven Knight will be on Desert Island Discs at 10:00 BST on Sunday 11th August and is then available on BBC Sounds.