Peaky Blinders veteran Sophie Rundle remembers late Helen McCrory: "It's devastating that she's not here to finish it"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

You’ve been playing Ada for 13 years, do you look back at those early performances?

I find it so awkward watching them. Who is that child who clearly doesn’t know what she’s doing? Also, I now have my babies. So, my Peaky bookends for me are young girl straight out of drama school and being a newly postpartum mother. My second son was 12 or 13 weeks old when we did the film.

Did that make filming The Immortal Man tough?

Maybe being that tired and delirious was quite helpful but it was an enormous undertaking. The Peaky team were amazing but it’s crazy to be filmed at this time where I’m really vulnerable and my body is different and I don’t quite know what I’m doing. I am petitioning for a little ticker tape to run across the bottom of the screen saying, “This woman has just had a baby.”

Did you realise that Peaky Blinders would have such an impact?

Peaky’s changed our expectations of British television. People who love the show will get in touch and say, “We named our daughter Ada.” So, you feel this sense of duty to do it right. But it’s only now that I appreciate quite what an extraordinary beast this whole thing has been. It was one of my first jobs, and I remember thinking, “All jobs must be like this, so the next TV show I go on will be like this as well.” It’s only when you make other shows that you realise quite how extraordinary this has been.

Is there a unique camaraderie among the cast and crew?

It’s amazing. Everyone goes off and has these incredible life experiences, people are winning Oscars or having babies. It’s life and death. And then you come back and you put the costumes on and you’re like, “Oh, here we are again.” It was amazing to watch when Cillian got an Oscar. It was so right, so justified, so brilliant. I still feel like the girl that’s just out of drama school who’ll never catch up to her older siblings. I’ve always been deeply in awe of Cillian and Helen McCrory.

Is it strange to still film without Helen?

Helen was formidable as Aunt Polly and as Helen. She was so amazing to watch on set, the things that she would add, the ideas that she would come up with. I was just trying to catch up for most of it.

It would have been impossible to have imagined she wouldn’t be here to finish it; that’s why we all wanted Ada to take Polly along almost. In the last series I wore this suit, and that’s all for Helen and for Polly; in honour of her. It’s devastating that she’s not here to finish it but it’s her legacy and I would love to think that I help honour Helen’s character in any way.

Are you happy with what happens to Ada in the film? it’s quite momentous...

I was pleased, that’s what you want to happen in these big mythic pieces. You want it to be as explosive as the character has been. I’m trying to speak in code, but it’s a fitting punctuation to the past 14 years of my life. I do kind of wish I could start from the beginning now, with all that I am and all that I know now and do it again. But then it wouldn’t be what it became. So maybe that ignorance and that “Let’s just do it” energy is what’s powerful.

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