Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has spoken about how meeting American rapper Snoop Dogg changed his perspective on the drama he created as a love letter to his hometown of Birmingham, a city in the central United Kingdom.
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The prolific writer and producer counts A-listers like Barack Obama, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt among the fans who have expressed their love for the show, which ran for six seasons until 2022. But it was meeting Snoop that made him realize how big the show really was — and that it made him appreciate the universal nature of the show "with people from Eastern Europe to Buenos Aires getting it and feeling the same way."
Peaky Blinders was inspired by Knight's own childhood in Birmingham, where his mother worked for local bookmakers at a time when gambling was illegal. The drama was based on stories Knight heard about local gangsters, nicknamed "peaky blinders" because of the way they wore their caps.
Knight told the BBC radio interview programme Desert Island Discs that Snoop had told him the show "reminded him of how he got into gang culture:
