Why Peaky Blinders’ Grace Was the Hardest Role to Cast

The gritty world of Peaky Blinders is populated by complex, morally ambiguous characters who constantly straddle the line between hero and villain. At the heart of the Shelby family saga, Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby commands the screen with magnetic intensity, while Helen McCrory’s Aunt Polly serves as the pragmatic backbone and voice of reason. The Shelby brothers rally behind Tommy’s ambitions, each adding layers to the family’s rise in post-war Birmingham’s underworld. Yet, despite the show’s strong male ensemble, the casting director behind the series reveals that the most difficult role to fill was not one of the Shelby brothers, but Grace Burgess — Tommy’s enigmatic love interest and undercover spy.

Shaheen Baig, the BAFTA-nominated London-based casting director responsible for Peaky Blinders’ first four seasons, shared her insights in a revealing interview with Interview Magazine. Baig, who hails from Birmingham herself, found casting the male characters straightforward, but the role of Grace presented unique challenges. Unlike the Shelby men, whose rugged charisma was essential, Grace had to embody a nuanced “sensibility” — a delicate balance of strength, vulnerability, and intelligence to hold her own amid a male-dominated cast.

“Grace was the hardest, actually,” Baig confessed. The show’s debut season marked a fresh start creatively, directed by Otto Bathurst, and Baig was determined to find the perfect actress who could bring authenticity and depth to Grace’s character — a pioneering female operative working undercover for the Crown to infiltrate Tommy Shelby’s world.

As a Birmingham native, Baig was especially sensitive to capturing the right regional feel and dialect, enduring countless auditions with “really bad Birmingham accents” before zeroing in on the ideal actors. While she quickly recognized Paul Anderson as Arthur Shelby and Joe Cole as John Shelby, and considered Cillian Murphy’s casting a “massive gift” that made Tommy accessible to a broad audience, Grace’s casting proved more elusive.

“The tricky part about Grace was finding someone with the right sensibility with all the lads,” Baig explained. “There are a lot of lads in Peaky.”

Ultimately, Annabelle Wallis was cast as Grace Burgess, delivering a performance that captured the character’s layered nature: strong-willed, determined, and capable of matching Tommy’s intensity. Wallis herself has reflected on the role as a “personal challenge,” praising the show for allowing her the freedom to explore and experiment as a young actress.

Grace’s journey — from undercover agent to Tommy’s wife — became a pivotal emotional thread within the narrative, and Baig’s painstaking search underscores how vital that role was to the series’ texture. In a show built on anti-heroes and blurred moral lines, Grace had to be a figure who could stand apart yet fit seamlessly into the fierce Shelby family dynamic.

This behind-the-scenes glimpse into Peaky Blinders casting reveals that while Tommy Shelby may be the show’s iron-willed leader, it was the delicate art of finding Grace — the heart amid the chaos — that proved the hardest casting puzzle to solve.