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Price and Coverage Match Limited by State Law. Yeah This is Moraca. He won an Oscar for his performance in the movie Oppenheimer.
Now, Killian Murphy is back in the new movie Peaky Blinder's The Immortal Man. and talking with Sunday morning's Seth Doan. You know this restaurant? Yes, been had plenty of dinners here over the years. Yeah, it's a great spot.
Lived here for around. We live in Dublin now. Yeah.
So it's been a while, yeah. What is it like being back in London? It's always lovely, I love London, you know, I love coming back, yeah. Very formative city for me. Professionally?
Personally? Personally and professionally, I guess, you know, making theater here when I was young was very important for me. We made a play called Disco Pigs and we brought it. to the Bush Theatre in London when I was like twenty. 21 or something.
I had a great run and what do you get out of theatre that that you don't or that's different from film? I guess it's the live thing, you know, it's that that that sort of That energy in a room with the audience, you know, when the words hit the air and the kind of emotions hit the air, and it's so precarious. I've often talked about this: how, like, at any time, theater can just collapse and go wrong. It's all working by the will of the audience, and the will of the. Performers, you know, but yet you could conjure up these vast worlds, and it's where I learned how to act really on theater, on theater stages.
Do you have a desire to do it again? Maybe, yeah. Takes an awful lot of audio. psychically and physically. I mean uh at this point what makes you select A character.
Just follow good writing, if you can find it. And that might mean like I'm not working for a long time because it's It's rare, it's precious, you know, good writing. before you're Oscar, sometimes people would describe you as an underrated Actor. that changes with the Oscar. I guess it's not for me to decide.
Did you feel a shift at all in how you were perceived? After winning an Oscar? Nothing really changed for me in terms of professionally or anything else. No, I don't have uh an interesting answer on that. I like I said, it was magical and so kind of overwhelming and beautiful.
But then you go back to the work. Does it take some pressure off to win an Academy Award? Like, okay, well, at least I've done that? Um. Or does it add pressure?
I don't really know. I mean, you know, I made a couple of films after Oppenheimer. I made this little film called Small Things Like These, and then I made a film called Steve. I suppose if it helped get those films that were very important to me and those stories out into the world, if that helped, then I'll take that, you know, I'll lean into that.
So maybe that helps in that way. But I I he just kinda keep on going. I mean, I was 48 when that happened as well, so you know, I don't or forty-seven, whatever, I was old. You know, you're kinda pretty set in your ways at that stage, you know what I mean? Even at the top of Peaky Binders, the movie it says, you know, Academy Award winner.
I mean, it's it's part of the brand. I guess so, yeah. I guess so, and that's why, you know. It is one of those kind of iconic things in in our industry, you know, and You know, you just feel very humbled to be in that club, I suppose. I don't think about it very often.
What is it that initially drew you to the character, Tommy Shelby.
Well, my journey in my career has always been trying to track down great writing, trying to have a nose for great writing. You know, I read an awful lot of books as a youngster. And I just love story and Like, I brought up Ender Walsh, and he gave me my first ever job making a show called Disco Pigs when I was. Just turning twenty and it was a great piece of writing. And that kind of set the bar for me.
So since then, I've just been chasing great writing. By accident, I came across these two episodes of Peaky Blinders, the first two episodes, and I kind of knew instantly it was excellent. Great, great, great writing, extremely original, extremely. unique, extremely confident. What does that mean?
In its vision, you know, and in what it wanted to be as a show, like Birmingham, Between the Wars, in Britain, working class. characters, you know that that was something that hadn't been explored in In the UK before. And are you looking for something specific in a character? No, no, everything is a kind of a surprise, but only that I had never played a character like that before, so it has to represent a challenge or something new. At that time, I never played that kind of physically imposing character, I guess.
That sort of menace, I'd never really kind of explored properly.
So it was brand new, and I'd never done long-form television either. What does great writing mean? to you. I think it moves you. And I think it also excites you, and you can never predict where it's going.
If it's predictable, I think the audiences are so clever, so smart. If it's something that they've seen before, or if it's recycled storytelling, they're out, you know? Whereas well Peaky was always really fresh and that was Steve's is Steve's genius. You Grow, grow up as a person, you see you age in over the years of the six seasons. Do you think you changed as an actor as well?
I hope that it's you get better. Like. That it's very rare there's a you know a few actors have had that thing of having given a script And to play a character at that point in their lives, and then to map it parallel to your own life. Fictionally, over the course of six seasons on a movie.
So, effectively, 38 hours of. Character work, and that's rare.
So I hope you get It helps you expand and and develop as an actor, yeah. How do you get into a character like Tommy? I did an awful lot of reading about Britain between the wars, about the effects of. What we now know as PTSD, and you kind of have to figure out like the physicality and figure out the walk, figure out the voice, figure out the costume, figure out the mannerisms, figure out the. Energy of the character, all that stuff.
Tommy has a walk. Yeah.
And that's something that when you do that walk, it also pulls you into character. Totally, yeah, I mean it it's all uh And I suppose that's the blessing of having that length of time, you can develop it. But he's a decorated soldier.
So we need to have that. menace and that power, physical power, you know, which I'm not a big guy, I don't possess possess that naturally.
So we had to work on that. What do you think draws people to characters who do such terrible things? Yeah.
Gosh, I really wish I had a good answer for that. I don't. No, I think People know Would probably know to avoid a character like that in real life across the street and all that, but I think it's when there's these kind of cracks. And the humanity kind of comes through, that's what I think is appealing to people, you know. And particularly over a long form television, you can really begin to excavate that and shine a light on that.
It's really, really contradictory. You know that he can. commit these heinous acts, but then love his family and it's just the classic kind of gangster. thing isn't it? Um So I don't really know the r the the right answer.
There's many, many of those people that we know that by our own moral standards we'll have nothing to do with, but yet we want to spend time with. Fictional idea. Are you drawn, do you find yourself drawn to particularly complicated or complex or Tormented characters. I think that's where good art exists generally. Certainly in the art that I enjoy, it's never easy.
It's a little tricky, you know? Snap. reductive because human behavior is so Weird. Um That's the stuff that I like. What's it like to live with a character for so long?
Well I did an awful lot of work in between, you know? It doesn't feel like, you know, you're doing You constantly live in that character? Is it like riding a bike? Like, oh, yeah, this is this guy again. I'm back to playing him again.
It became. More familiar as I went on, but each time it required some amount of limbering up, you know what I mean? And conditioning and getting back into the mindset. It wasn't just like getting a haircut and walking on set. Uh I never got to that level of Ease with him.
It was always that distance to travel, you know. Did the haircut help? Yes. Yes. But for you, a film, I look back at interviews, you said I'd make one if there's a reason to make one.
Yeah, I was kind of using that to because it was the question that every single journalist asked me, so I had to figure out a pat answer to get through every interview. Because at the time we were developing and working on the script.
So, but it was kind of in the air about like whether or not we'd make it.
So you knew you'd probably make it, but didn't want to divulge that? Yeah, 'cause we were in the process of kind of figuring out how we could make it into a two-hour piece of story as opposed to a six-hour season, you know, and how could we tie up all the ends? How could it be satisfying for the fans?
So there was a lot of work involved in it, you know. I read that you don't love this, that sitting down to do an interview, to promote a film. No, I no, I I enjoy this. I enjoy a like a you know, uh considered Chat about the teams and the work that I enjoy. I think it's The more condensed Version of it.
It's very hard to sound bite something you've worked for years and years on. But I enjoy a good conversation about work. I really do. I guess I'm like, I'm realizing, I guess I'm just a bit, I'm just quite a shy person.
So that makes me maybe potentially a shit interviewee. But they say acting is like the shy man's revenge. You know what I mean? Because you can be whoever you want. Yeah.
Do you feel that's the case for you? I think so. I certainly feel very comfortable on stage, a very comfortable. inhabiting somebody else's shoes, you know. How important is the not working part of your life?
I mean, it's hugely important for me. I don't have that a huge amount of stamina, you know, so I think particularly as I get older, it's nice to just stop and be with your family and And just um take a take a breather and I think it's important to just be a human being in the world. and not be You know, like... In a kind of a bubble, you know. How do you st make sure you're not into much of a bubble.
Or can you? I guess by taking those by insisting on those long breaks, really, that's how I do it. I'm just. Being at home, you know.
So go back to Ireland, be with your wife, yeah, and your kids. That's it, yeah. It's really uninteresting. What are you doing in that non-work part of your life?
Well, I'm doing, I mean, I'm working in terms of producing and reading and stuff, and that keeps me going, but just watching films, going to gigs. Walking the dog. It seems that Ireland really holds a very deep part of your Part. Yes, I think so. I probably, and it's probably become more important as I've gotten older.
I think when I was a young actor. I spoken about this before, I was very keen to show that I was An actor first and an Irish person second, so that I could go off and play like American parts and English parts. There have been a lot of successful Irish actors. Exactly. But then what happens is that the trajectory normally leads you back home, as it has done for me.
It's been nice making Irish projects. recently and working with Irish people, so It's just a, for me it's a natural economy. journey I suppose. Is there a way to s kind of give us a sense of what it what you feel like when you're back home in Ireland? Versus here in London or another place?
It just feels safe here, it feels familiar. How are you? in tune, I think, with the ni with nature and with kind of the landscape and The music just feels like Or it should be, you know. Music's been an important part of your life for a long time. Yeah.
Do you have any? latent, remaining kind of desire to be a A musician. I play away, you know, and I'm I'm always music adjacent in what I do, you know, like I'm like very involved in the score for PK. You know, I do this radio show where I play. play a lot of bands and music that I like.
Yeah, on the BBC. Yeah.
But how did that hosting that come about? I went down there as a guest a couple of times. I loved that radio station, Six Music, and And then they asked me if I come in and sit in for someone's show, and then I did, and I enjoyed it. It's like making. Do you remember when we were kids we would make mixtapes for your friends?
Of course. Like, playing recording at the same time, and I used to make loads and loads of those when I was a kid, and they felt like a really. considered gift to give somebody. And so that's what it feels like when you're making a radio show. You're just doing it for the BBC.
Yeah.
And lots of people are listening to it. Yeah, well, a few. Do you write music? I I mess around, yeah. It's a nice outlet when you're not working.
It's a nice way to be creative, is to play. Do you play for anyone else? I mean, w I I sometimes get together with my pals and play, you know. Uh it's a lovely non-verbal way of communicating. What initially was it that drew you to acting early on?
I think it was a segue from music. You know, we talk about music, and I think it was that live experience of. Trying to create that energy in a room, you know. I always, like I said, I always felt very comfortable on stage. Not very comfortable in a room full of loads of people, but comfortable forming in it.
Natural thing to move from music into theater, I think. I've always said. That's kind of the less that people know about you, the more you can inhabit the character, you know, and just portray that character as honestly and convincingly as possible. Because they don't think, oh, here's this guy who I know this and this about. Yeah, yeah.
And inevitably that becomes a little bit eroded, I suppose. If you're in more high-profile work, well you try and preserve it as best as you can. How do you try to preserve it? Because you're certainly doing high-profile work with that. I guess so, yeah.
I don't know, it's just it's there's a tension always, yeah. There's a tension. How does it play out for you? Um I guess you do take the work deadly seriously and you promote the work because you want people to see it and then you just go quiet. And that for me, you means going back to Ireland, walking the dog, being outside.
Oh, that, yeah. Just seeing a friend. Go quiet, yeah. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening.
And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday Morning on the free Odyssey app. or wherever you get your podcasts. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistants' assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.
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I'm really back. School Spirits returns. Why am I here? London Dead. Disruption on this campus will not be tolerated.
If I look crazy, it's because that's how I feel. I don't know how to live in two worlds. Secrets lurk. There are others beneath the surface. They're not like us.
We need to get out of here.
Now. School Spirit's new season now streaming only on Paramount Plus. Yeah.
