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 com.