Barry Keoghan talks 'shaking off all the cobwebs' to join Peaky Blinders

"I have a process I do, and I've not done it for a long while, so I'm excited and nervous at the same time," Keoghan tells Entertainment Weekly.

Barry Keoghan knows you don't f--- with the Peaky Blinders, which is why he's "excited and nervous" to join the franchise for the upcoming movie.

"Yes, yes, yes — I can't wait for that," Keoghan told Entertainment Weekly at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. "[I'm a] massive, massive fan of the show, and Cillian [Murphy]'s a good friend and I f---ing admire him as an actor as well. So just looking to get into that and getting my process now — I have a process I do, and I've not done it for a long while, so I'm excited and nervous at the same time."

Barry Keoghan attends the premiere of "Bird" during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Lightbox on September 07, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. , Peaky Blinders Season 6, Episode 1 Cillian Murphy
Barry Keoghan, Cillian Murphy on 'Peaky Blinders'.

Olivia Wong/Getty; MATT SQUIRE/Netflix

Murphy's fan-favorite character Tommy Shelby is returning in a new follow-up Netflix movie from original series creator Steven Knight, and it was recently announced that Keoghan is joining him — however, details about his new character are being kept under wraps. The Saltburn alum, who was promoting two films at this year's TIFF (Bird and Bring Them Down), said that his nerves come from returning to set after taking a little break from acting.

"Just being on set, that rusty feeling again," he said. "Just shaking off all the cobwebs. I've been doing a lot of promotion and I've been chilling, and I think people get scared when they find themselves having free time. I think sometimes it's the best thing to grow as an actor and as a person, and so I've had that time and I'm looking forward now to getting in and doing the creative, method-y thing."

Although he acknowledged that going method for Peaky Blinders could be difficult in this day and age. "They had no phones back then, so I'm going to be off my phone," he joked. "Going to have to write letters."

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Peaky Blinders first debuted on BBC Two, moving to BBC One in 2018 for its fifth season, but the show reached new popularity when it began streaming on Netflix. The period drama originally aired 2013-2022 for six seasons following gangster Tommy Shelby and his Peaky Blinders crew, loosely based on the real Birmingham gang's exploits in the aftermath of World War I.

Knight has been very outspoken for a long time about his plans to follow season 6 with a film. "I'm calling this the end of the beginning," Knight previously told EW of the final season in 2021. "We're going to end the series as it is at the moment, but we're going to do the movie, which we'll shoot in 18 months time, maybe a little bit longer... After that, according to how the film structure falls into place, we'll set in motion some spinoffs that will be part of the same universe."

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