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Kelly Rissman
US News Reporter
Steven Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders, thought that Game of Thrones was a kid’s show until he cast Aidan Gillen in his own series.
Speaking at the Royal Television Society conference in London, Knight admitted that due to his young son’s obsession with the HBO show, he’d dismissed it as being for a younger audience.
During a conversation with BBC journalist Katie Razzall, Knight said that his son had asked for a boxset of Game of Thrones for Christmas, which he purchased without questioning the content of the show after seeing that it featured dragons.
It was only when Irish actor Aidan Gillen was suggested to him for the role of Aberama Gold in Peaky Blinders and was told that he played the brothel keeper Lord Petyr Baelish in Game of Thrones, that he realised the George RR Martin show covered a lot of adult themes.
Responding in shock, Knight said: “What are you talking about? It’s a kid’s show!”
Game of Thrones is one of the biggest shows that HBO has ever made. It came to an end in 2019, despite Martin having not finished his two remaining books in the series.
Recently Martin expressed frustration about writing the new books on his Not a Blog page, saying that although he has produced “new pages” he has struggled to find “solace” in his writing.
He explained: “Writing came hard, and though I did produce some new pages on both The Winds of Winter (yes) and Blood & Fire (the sequel to Fire & Blood the second part of my Targaryen history), I would have liked to turn out a lot more.”
The 75-year-old has also lashed out at the prequel series House of the Dragon, saying that the HBO show “weakened” the overall story and that a lot had “gone wrong”.
Peaky Blinders meanwhile is set to make a comeback after Netflix confirmed that the period gangster show, set in Birmingham, will be made into a spin-off movie.
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The show, which starred Cillian Murphy as gangster and businessman Tommy Shelby, ended in 2022 after six seasons. The creator, Steven Knight, has since been vocal about wanting to wrap up the story in a follow-up film rather than with a seventh season.
“Thomas Shelby returns. A Peaky Blinders Film starring Cillian Murphy is coming to Netflix,” the streamer shared on X/Twitter, alongside a photo of the movie’s script.
