The Film and TV Gods work in mysterious ways, folks. After sharing a grand total of one scene together in “The Dark Knight Rises,” actors Aidan Gillen and Tom Hardy would eventually go on to appear in another scant handful of scenes throughout their overlapping tenures on later seasons of “Peaky Blinders.” If that had been the end of their journey together, it would already be interesting enough. But each one ended up taking things one step further, and it has everything to do with something both well-traveled actors know a thing or two about: accents.
In his conversation with /Film’s Ben Pearson, Gillen recalled the shared influence of Bartley Gorman. As it so happens, /Film has previously written about the real-life legend behind Hardy’s notorious (dare I say mythical?) Bane voice, but Gillen revealed that he himself took certain voice cues of his own from the self-proclaimed “Gypsy boxer” when it came time to portray the deadly, yet charming mercenary Aberama Gold on “Peaky Blinders.” According to Gillen:
“I kinda based a character accent on the same guy that I think [Tom Hardy] might’ve based his original Bane voice on, but it sounds quite different. It’s a [self-proclaimed] Gypsy boxer called Bartley Gorman […] I’d read somewhere that Tom had been studying this guy, Bartley Gorman, who was a bare-knuckle Gypsy in England. Then I did ‘Peaky Blinders’ and Tom was in it, and one of my first scenes was actually with him. I was doing my [version] — and I studied this guy also, because I thought it’s subtle, and it’s strange, and it just sounds old-fashioned, and it just sounds properly Gypsy. But Tom didn’t mention it. He was too busy being Hasidic, Alfie Solomons. But, great actor.”
