Helen McCrory on why she loves playing Peaky Blinders’ Polly Gray

Although in real life most of us strive to be good citizens, for actors there’s lots of fun to be had in pretending to be someone with a darker side. That’s certainly true for Peaky Blinders star Helen McCrory, who much prefers playing a baddie.

“It’s much more fun, it’s loads of fun playing the baddie,” she told press including Goodhousekeeping.com/uk at a preview ahead of Peaky Blinders season five.

However, Helen believes the Peaky Blinders matriarch is “all heart” deep down.

“She’s not all bad, Polly. Being part of a razor-wielding gang is obviously not UN work but within that she’s all heart,” she said.

Helen credits the long run of the series in giving time for Polly’s complexity – and softer side – to be explored.

“I certainly didn't expect the first time I was whacking poor Joe Cole [John Shelby] over the head with a gun repeatedly to the floor and screaming… that three years later [I’d be] sitting there looking at a globe saying: ‘I think my children have been lost here and it's breaking my heart and I need to find them,’” Helen said.

“It makes for interesting because [writer Steven Knight is] constantly changing who she is. And as long as comes out of my face, it’s still Polly,” she added.

As well as this evolution of characters, Helen loves the show’s style, which she says comes in a large part from a heavy-duty smoke machine.

“They looked great. It’s so cinematic because it’s so textural, it’s before cleanliness and the computer age. Nothing films better than texture.

“Every single scene we do they just pump the smoke [in] and then if you can't see a hand in front of your face, that's when they start rolling,” she explained.

With season five about to air on BBC One, and six and seven beyond that on the horizon, there’s lots of scope for characters to evolve hugely still. But where does Helen want Polly’s journey to end up?

“Steve talks about going up to the Second World War… I'd like to finish it when you feel - unlike in the First World War when Polly held a position that was going to be lost as soon as that was finished - that Polly would be in a position that would be continued.”

Episode one of Peaky Blinders series five will premiere on BBC One on Sun 25 August at 9pm.