Netflix and the BBC announced Thursday that Jamie Bell will take on the role of Duke Shelby in the upcoming Peaky Blinders sequel series, becoming the third actor to play Tommy Shelby’s eldest son and the lead character of a new chapter in the franchise that begins filming now in Birmingham.
The show has already been ordered for two six-episode seasons. A first look image of Bell in character was released alongside the announcement.
The series is set in the 1950s, ten years after the events of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, the Netflix film that premiered last month, and follows the next generation of the Shelby family as post-war Birmingham becomes the battleground for a new era of the franchise.
Who Is Jamie Bell?
Jamie Bell, 40, is a BAFTA-winning English actor best known to most audiences as the title character of Billy Elliot, the 2000 film in which he played an eleven-year-old boy from a mining town in County Durham who secretly trains as a ballet dancer.
That performance earned him the BAFTA for Outstanding British Performance. He was fourteen when the film was released. The role made him a household name in the UK before he was old enough to drive.
In the decades since, Bell has built a varied and serious body of work. He played Rocketman’s Bernie Taupin opposite Taron Egerton’s Elton John in 2019.
His most recent major role was in All of Us Strangers, the 2023 Andrew Haigh film in which he starred opposite Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in one of the most critically acclaimed British films of that year.
He has also appeared in Shining Girls on Apple TV+ and a string of other prestige productions.
The casting positions Bell as a legitimate dramatic lead rather than a stunt hire, someone with both the physical presence the role demands and the range to carry a long-running crime drama on his own.
The Role He’s Taking Over
Duke Shelby, the illegitimate eldest son of Tommy Shelby played by Cillian Murphy across six seasons of the original series and in the film, has now been played by three different actors across the franchise.
Conrad Khan originated the role in Peaky Blinders Season 6, the show’s final season, as a teenage Duke being introduced into the family fold.
Barry Keoghan then took over for The Immortal Man, playing Duke as a young adult fighting alongside his father during World War II.
The film premiered on Netflix thirteen days before this announcement, the turnover from Keoghan to Bell happened remarkably quickly.
Bell will play Duke in the sequel series set a decade after The Immortal Man, in the early 1950s.
The official logline describes him as “older, wiser, more ambitious, and most certainly more dangerous.”
The framing suggests the series will complete the transformation of Duke from Tommy Shelby’s uncertain heir into something resembling the show’s new center of power, the equivalent position his father occupied for six seasons of television.
The Rest Of The Cast
Charlie Heaton will co-lead the series alongside Bell. Heaton, 31, is best known internationally as Jonathan Byers in Stranger Things, which ran for five seasons on Netflix.
He has since appeared in Industry on HBO/BBC, the prestige drama about young finance workers in London, which significantly expanded his dramatic range beyond the supernatural horror context of Stranger Things.
His character in the Peaky Blinders sequel has not been disclosed, the announcement confirms he is part of the Shelby world but does not specify his role.
Jessica Brown Findlay, known for Downton Abbey and the Apple TV+ series Silo, joins the cast in an undisclosed role.
Lashana Lynch, who played MI6 agent Nomi in No Time to Die and the lead in The Day of the Jackal, also joins in an undisclosed role. Lucy Karczewski, known for the Broadway production of Stereophonic, rounds out the announced cast in what will be her television debut.
All four women’s character details are being held back for future announcements.
Creator and writer Steven Knight said in a statement,
“I am thrilled that we are announcing a new era of Peaky Blinders, moving the story to post-war Birmingham in the early 50s. We are incredibly fortunate to have Jamie Bell taking the role of Tommy Shelby’s oldest son, Duke, and to have the incredible Charlie Heaton also leading the cast. There are more exciting cast announcements to come, and Peaky is on the road again.”
When Is This Show In The Peaky Blinders Universe?
The original Peaky Blinders ran for six seasons on BBC Two and BBC One between 2013 and 2022, winning the BAFTA for Best Drama Series in 2018 and building a massive global following largely through Netflix, where it became one of the platform’s most-watched British shows.
Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby became one of the defining TV characters of the era, a Birmingham gang leader turned political operative whose story moved from the aftermath of World War One through the 1930s.
The Immortal Man, the film that bridged the original series and the new sequel, was directed by Tom Harper and written by Knight.
It starred Murphy returning as Tommy alongside Sophie Rundle, Stephen Graham, and Barry Keoghan.
The film ran in theaters for two weeks before debuting on Netflix, where it was the platform’s number one film globally for two weeks following its release.
The sequel series picks up the story a decade after that film ends, moving the timeline into the early 1950s, post-war austerity Britain, Birmingham in reconstruction, and a new generation of Shelbys inheriting a criminal empire in a changed world.
The show is now filming at Digbeth Loc. Studios in Birmingham, with additional filming recently reported in Stoke-on-Trent. Mike Barker, who directed The Testaments, is directing the first episode.
The series will premiere on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK and globally on Netflix. Exact premiere dates have not been announced.
Netflix is currently listing it as Peaky Blinders (Sequel): Season 1, though the production has also been referred to internally as Peaky 1954.
