Peaky Blinders has been hailed for its dramatic fighting scenes, the shootouts between the Shelby’s ad opposition firms etc – yep we love it all. But there was one scene that involved a gun, Tommy and a beautiful noble steed.
In the first episode of season five, we were all geared up for the gangsters to face their next showdown but we were all in tears around 10 minutes in.
As Tommy walked slow-mo over to a group of his guys all stood around a massive, freshly dug grave, we all wondered what on earth was going in there.
Suddenly, the frame cut to a beautiful shot of Tommy and his son Charlie’s stallion, but what wasn’t so beautiful was the fact he had a gun to its head.
We learnt he was euthanising the poor thing, as the horse was in fact ill something Charlie later contested was in fact a cold-blooded murder.
As he pulled the trigger, the horse fell in this award-worthy cinematic fashion, which sent fans into a frenzy at the time.
And low and behold, Anthony found a way and we were all treated to that immensely flawless – albeit very upsetting – scene.
In a recent online Q&A, the director explained how the team managed to film the shot.
“It was all done for real, it was all done in camera,” he said, while clarifying they didn’t actually shoot the horse – phew!
He told of how they worked closely with The Devil’s Horsemen, the leading film-industry horse supplier in Europe.
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“Steven had actually written into the script and we don’t see it,” he said, before he and The Devil’s Horsemen pulled it off.
“The horse was trained to do that move and it was on a pulley system, so there was a guy at the back of the horse where he pulls this lead which yanks the horses head back and rears the horse up.
“We dug up [the earth around the horse] and out in softer earth then out the grass back on top of it so that it was cushioned for the horse to land on.”
He added: “We had two camera and did it maybe three times because the horse gets used to the actions.”
Anthony went on to explain that Cillian Murphy, who plays gang-leader Tommy Shelby, was on a countdown off-camera and only performed the action of shooting the horse, adding the sound in later.
“I was really proud of that sequence because that was one we had to discuss a to about health and safety,” he said.
But nevertheless, they pulled off a stunning shot and yes, that horse still deserves an award!
Peaky Blinders is available to watch on both Netflix and BBC iPlayer