Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has said he was invited to meet Snoop Dogg as he said the rapper told him the show “reminded him of how he got involved in gang culture”.
Knight, 65, said he had found that the programme had a “pretty universal” reach, as people from “Buenos Aires to Eastern Europe” could understand its characters were “the same as anybody else”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Knight said: “His (Dogg’s) manager Ted met me, and we went up to the room and he’d built this thing to smoke about a foot long.
“I’m drinking beer, Ted’s drinking gin, and we have this conversation and Snoop was saying that Peaky reminded him of how he got involved in gang culture, and in the south central and Detroit.
“But it was really interesting because it told me the story of his life and it was all about family.
“It was all about family keeping you in and escaping from family to do the bad stuff and then the family relocating their emotions and loyalties to follow you and then escaping again.
“He was such a great bloke, he was so nice to talk to, but it just made me understand that there is something in Peaky, that one has luckily come across, that is pretty universal, I think.”
He said he felt the show was relatable as it showed working class people as “larger than life” rather than viewing them from the perspective of “aren’t they hilarious or isn’t it a shame”.
Knight added that a lot of Peaky Blinders had come from stories his dad had told him from when he was a child.
The writer added: “Most things about working class people are like either, aren’t they hilarious, or isn’t it a shame.
“It’s not true, I think that misses the whole point, to see working class live from that perspective is so reductive.
“I experienced it with my dad when we used to go shoeing horses, like in the gypsy scrap metal yard, people that we would meet were just so larger than life, they were so rebellious.
“They were on the other side of the law, but they were but really warm, and great people.
“I know that sounds like a contradiction but I wanted to get some of that respect for one’s own life into this, that these are people are living big glamorous, dramatic lives, and that the emotions and passions of these people are the same as anybody else.
“And try to create what turned out to be fortunately, like a global landscape, where people in Eastern Europe, and people in Buenos Aires, and people in Rio are getting it and feeling the same thing.”
Along with Peaky Blinders, Knight is one of the three creators of the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? game show, and has also written the screenplays for Dirty Pretty Things and The Detectives.
Knight included Bob Dylan’s I Want You, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ Red Right Hand, and Birmingham City anthem Keep Right On To The End Of The Road, sung by Harry Lauder, in his record selections.
The episode of Desert Island Discs will air on BBC Radio 4 at 10am, and will also be made available on BBC Sounds.
