At a meeting with his agents way back in January 2022, Malachi Kirby recalls for the first time describing his dream project when pondering the direction his career may take next.
Kirby, whose star was soaring following a BAFTA-winning performance in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, said he wanted to fulfil a life-long dream of playing a boxer, wanted to tell the story of someone who had existed, wanted to find a project set in the past and fancied his next gig being based in London.
“I never thought that would end up all being the same job,” says Kirby three years on as we chat in the weeks leading up to premier of Disney+’s A Thousand Blows.
In what was an incredible bout of serendipity, Kirby’s agents soon after received the scripts for A Thousand Blows. Steven Knight‘s latest drama series spotlights Hezekiah Moscow, who was indeed a real-life bare-knuckle boxer who journeyed from the Caribbean to London in the late Victorian era. The only bit Kirby hadn’t prefaced was that Moscow used to be a lion tamer.
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“It was one of the easiest decisions I ever had to make because I felt like I’d already made my mind up before the script came,” says Kirby.
One of the biggest swings taken since Disney+ set up in the UK, A Thousand Blows stars Stephen Graham and The Crown’s Erin Doherty and follows the fortunes of Hezekiah and his best friend Alec (Francis Lovehall), who arrive from Jamaica to the English capital. Graham is Sugar Goodson, a dangerous, veteran boxer who Moscow immediately gets on the wrong side of. Moscow also attracts attention from another character based on a real-life person, Mary Carr (Doherty), the infamous Queen of the Forty Elephants who sets about exploiting his talents to further her criminal enterprise.
The show is vintage Knight – the prolific scribe whose recent credits include Spencer and Maria – and has more than a shade of his smash BBC hit Peaky Blinders, which is currently being turned into a movie.
“Hezekiah’s story struck a chord with me because I love that era,” says Knight, who adds that his dad loved to box.
Knight says he had always wanted to tell Moscow’s story parallel with that of the Forty Elephants, an infamous gang of Victorian women led by Carr which stole from glitzy stores like Harrods and Selfridges. They were dubbed the Forty Elephants as they used to put so many clothes on when they raided stores that they would resemble the magnificent mammals.
“You have this big melting pot of London which was the capital of the world at the time and all kinds of things going on that as a writer of fiction you wouldn’t dare make up,” adds Knight. “So to put all those things together, the madness of London and the weirdness of real life gives the oxygen you need to write something.”
With dollops of ambition and a splashy cast, Knight and producers set the series up with Disney+’s UK team from early on at script stage rather than pitching to local broadcasters. “The main thing we wanted was to be left alone to do what we want and that is exactly what happened,” he adds. “I love working with the BBC and the creative element of that is wonderful but in this case we were left alone and given a good budget. What more can you ask for?”
That Disney dollar helped bring to life the show’s sets and costumes, for which Knight and the cast are eternally grateful.
“Our aim was to bring to life these beautiful words in front of us and we had such wonderful sets,” says Graham, who works with Knight on Peaky Blinders. “You’d open a drawer in a room and and the stuff that was in it was just wow. It gave you the freedom as an actor to really immerse yourself in the role.”
Boxing training
And immerse himself he did. Graham, who boxed as a teenager, spent six months getting into shape on a diet of chicken, rice, eggs and broccoli. Working with coaches, he wanted to create a style somewhere between Mike Tyson and notorious bare-knuckle boxer Lenny McLean aka ‘The Guv’nor’. At the same time, he watched the back catalog of his acting hero Bob Hoskins, who he says inspired him with the physicality of his performances.
In an early Thousand Blows scene, Graham’s character Sugar breaks someone’s hand with his head, and the Irishman star wanted to channel that deranged action into everything about his character.
“Once I brought that into Sugar’s first fight I think that tells you just as much about Sugar as we could over seven, eight, nine series,” he explains. “We instantly know the kind of man this guy is. I wanted to bring back that archetypal, old-fashioned man back on screen.”
Kirby also spent time training with two boxing coaches who journeyed over from Thailand, and Graham says working with Kirby was “an art form,” adding: “We became like two dancers, working over and over again on getting the fights right before even shooting a frame.”
Doherty’s character Mary Carr also gets plenty opportunity to explore her physicality. Carr is a bad-ass gang leader with more than a touch of emotion and Doherty says it was “inspiring to portray a strong woman” in today’s taboo-smashing era.
“They are an all-female gang but their success wasn’t based off their gender in any way,” she adds. “We all hit a point where we thought this feels like something fresh and new. Has gender therefore ceased to be an important factor?”
Doherty, who played Queen Anne in The Crown and stars alongside Graham in Netflix’s upcoming Adolescence one-take thriller, says the industry has also moved on from a time when there was a “lull” for female actors trying to get work between the ages of 30 and 50. Most of the actors playing Forty Elephants members sit within this age bracket including Hannah Walters, who runs A Thousand Blows producer Matriarch Productions with Graham. “We are finally at the point of saying, ‘Who gives a crap, it doesn’t matter’,” adds Doherty.
Doherty pays tribute to Knight for giving the women in the story agency. “He’s one of those creatives who comes into your life and you’re just pinching yourself,” she adds. “I was on set with Stephen Graham pulling apart a scene and we just thought it was like poetry. If you look at it and pick it apart he has written a verse.”
Female gangs feel in vogue this year given that the BBC is prepping Dope Girls about a crime boss in Soho’s underworld, but Knight rejects this notion.
“For me this moment has lasted 12 years because I’ve wanted to tell this story for 12 years,” he adds. “I don’t see the depiction of Mary Carr and the Elephants as a consequence of some fashion. That story is worth telling.”
With Kirby’s character Hezekiah Moscow, A Thousand Blows is also representing a person rarely seen in shows depicting the Victorian era.
Kirby, who broke out in History’s Roots remake and played Caribbean-born campaigner Darcus Howe in Small Axe, reveals that he and co-star Lovehall spent time in Jamaica prior to filming in order to learn history and perfect the accent.
“As much as I know the accent and culture it still felt like I needed to do some work especially because it’s set so long ago,” says Kirby. “One of my first instincts was to go to Jamaica.”
Kirby spent time with an accent coach along with a historian and architect. “I didn’t even know there was a Jamaican dictionary from that time so that was great,” he explains. “There’s the accent and the words, but then also what happens in between the words. How did [Jamaican people from the time] express themselves through sounds not just words?”
All in all, these different characters, themes and explorations contribute to the “melting pot” that Knight was after when he first decided to cross bare-knuckle boxing with all-female gangs robbing department stores.
As Peaky Blinders shifts from small screen to big and beyond, Knight is confident he can make A Thousand Blows his next franchise.
“It’s like following a rope in a smoky room,” he adds, in typical ‘Knight-ian’ fashion. “As long as people want it and the story works you just keep following.”
A Thousand Blows is produced by The Story Collective, Matriarch and Water & Power Productions. EPs are Kate Lewis, Damian Keogh, Graham, Walters, Tom Miller and Sam Myer. Water & Power developed the original idea of a series about the real-life boxers. Matriarch then came on board and sent to Knight who came on board as writer and creator. The Story Collective then boarded as co-producer and sent to Disney.