Tommy Shelby’s brother Arthur played a key role in all six seasons of “Peaky Blinders”… but in the new “Peaky Blinders” movie, he’s nowhere to be found.
“Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man,” which premiered on Netflix this past Friday — read our review here — hit fans with a number of bombshell twists, but maybe none was bigger than the revelation that Arthur, played by Paul Anderson on the series, had died off-screen. Even more gutting, we later learned that Tommy actually killed Arthur in a fit of rage, sending Tommy into a spiral of guilt that isolated him for years. (Arthur’s death was shown in flashbacks, but we never saw Arthur’s face clearly.)
It was stunning to see one of the show’s main cast members dispatched like that, but series creator Steven Knight explained to /Film that Arthur’s death was all part of the plan from the beginning, pointing out that Tommy Shelby has “done some pretty bad things, so it’s going to take a lot for him to be so guilt-ridden that he would withdraw from the world. And all through his life, I think of him as being a good man doing bad things for a good reason, and the good reason has always been his family. Now, for him to have done what he did, for him to have killed his own brother, is huge. It’s the thing that has made him the person he is when we first join the film. So, it’s a question of giving him something that big that he then has to redeem himself through doing the good thing at the end.” (Tommy later teamed up with his son Duke to stop a Nazi plot to flood the British market with counterfeit money, with Tommy dying in the process.)
Arthur was a key part of Peaky Blinders’ success
Still, it had to sting for “Peaky Blinders” fans not to see Paul Anderson reprise his role as hotheaded gangster Arthur Shelby in the new movie. From the very first episode, Arthur was a powder keg ready to explode at the slightest provocation, acting as Tommy’s enforcer and dispensing his violent brand of justice “by order of the Peaky F**king Blinders.” He was Tommy’s trusted righthand man, and even when he flew off the handle — which he did a lot — Tommy kept him in the fold. Arthur later found God and made a sincere effort to clean up his act, but he descended into a severe opium addiction in the final seasons. (Anderson has had some real-life drug issues as well: He pled guilty to four counts of drug possession in January 2024 after being caught with crack cocaine and amphetamines.) But Arthur and Tommy were still tight when the show wrapped up, with Arthur helping his brother escape certain death one last time in the series finale.
Despite being written out of the movie, Anderson has no ill will for his “Peaky Blinders” collaborators, telling Page Six he has “nothing but love and respect for the ‘Peaky Blinders’ family.” He is still on “good terms” with series creator Steven Knight, he has “enormous admiration” for co-star Cillian Murphy (who plays Tommy), and he hopes the movie will be a “huge success.” Netflix is working on a “Peaky Blinders” sequel series as well, so maybe, even if it’s just in a flashback, we can still see Anderson as Arthur Shelby one more time.