Sam Claflin says he was so starstruck when he joined the cast of Peaky Blinders and met Cillian Murphy that the director had to tell him to calm down.
The Hunger Games actor, 32, plays Oswald Mosley in the forthcoming fifth series alongside Murphy as Birmingham gangster, and newly established Member of Parliament, Thomas Shelby.
He told A list: “I’m the biggest fan boy. Genuinely when I got to set and heard Cillian start talking as Tommy Shelby I started fangirling a little bit. The director had to go ‘Sam, bring it down, bring it down’.”
Claflin had watched the first episode of the hit series with his wife Laura Haddock, with whom he shares a son and a daughter, before binge watching the entirety on being cast.
“I don’t want to ruin it for people,” he said. “I’ve told my wife but I’ve managed to keep a lot a secret.”
He is next on the big screen in The Corrupted, out next Friday, in which he and brother Joseph play siblings. He said: “I’m a proud older brother. I was watching him really perform and fly.”
Sam plays ex-con Liam who spends time in prison for an armed robbery. He said “bizarrely” the role was “closer to home” than his previous roles as a young banker in Me Before You and a member of Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club in The Riot Club.
“I feel like this was closer to home than a lot of other parts I’ve played – in the working class environment – a lot of my mates in high school were in that environment,” he said.
“Since graduating from drama school I’ve found myself playing upper class all the time and that is so far removed from who I am.
“I’d never even met someone who’d been to a private school before I moved to London. There are aspects that felt close to home – the murder and the prison were a little far removed...”
