Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight only regret is killing these 4 characters - find out who

The Peaky Blinders creator, Steven Knight, has not shied away from killing off some strong characters over the years on the show. However, in a Season 5 finale watch-along with Esquire, he revealed four characters whom he wished he didn't have to kill.

Some of these characters he wished he had kept in the story, as they were brilliant additions, and for some, he was just in awe of their talent and wished it could've been the other way around.

The list includes some major characters like Major Campbell, played by Sam Neill, and some minor yet impressive characters such as Aberama Gold, Barney Thompson, and Malacki Byrne. Here's what Knight revealed about these Peaky Blinders deaths.

Peaky Blinders creator reveals four characters he wishes he hadn't killed

This Esquire watch-along for the Season 5 finale was full of behind-the-scenes gossip about the show, and some tidbits and secrets you'd never find out otherwise. Among these characters that Knight wishes he hadn't been so trigger happy with, Aberama's is one death that hurt and angered the viewers as much as it did Knight.

Aberama Gold, a Gypsy hitman, played by Aidan Gillen made his first appearance in Season 4 of Peaky Blinders, where he's hired by Tommy. Aberama accepts the job, but in return, wants Tommy to train his son for professional boxing. Aberama and his son become close to the Shelby family and even closer to Polly Gray as she agrees to marry Aberama. However, he is killed off in an ambush by the IRA, and Knight wishes he'd have injured him instead:

"I should have kept [Aberama] alive; I could have just wounded him."

Another character whom Knight wishes he had kept around was Cosmo Jarvis' Barney Thompson. Knight was especially inspired by Jarvis' talents and felt his addition to Peaky Blinders should've lasted longer:

"There’s him playing Barney Thompson who’s just brilliant and I really wish I’d kept him alive now because he’s such a good actor."

Then there are some characters that the story demanded were killed off, regardless of how talented the actors were or how great their characters were. A minor character in Peaky Blinders who'd fall under this category was Tom Vaughan-Lawlor's Malacki Byrne, an IRA member who threatens Tommy and is subsequently killed off.

"The other one is Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, who played Malacki Byrne and it's quite a small part, but he just took it over, and he was brilliant. But sometimes you have to do it because the story has to move on, and there's obvious examples of characters who've gone."

Another character in Peaky Blinders who falls in this category is Sam Neill's Major Campbell, a character that Knight had most trouble parting ways with. It must be painful to create these characters and be placed in a position where they have to be killed off, at least Knight seems to think so. He reveals that he second-guessed himself every step of the way when the time came for Major Campbell's character to be killed off, but the story demanded it, and so it had to be done:

"A great one was Major Campbell, and I thought we'd got to the end of that duel between Tommy and Campbell and I was writing episode six of that series and I thought 'I can't just send the script to Sam Neill.' So, I phoned him up explained and he just said, 'I don't want to die' so I said 'OK, I'll think about it,' and did think about it and then a week later said 'I think we've got to do this,' and he was fantastic about it."

It's the creator's boon to make these characters and then have to kill them off for the story. Nevertheless, we might get to see some more of that in the Peaky Blinders movie as Knight takes us back into the Shelby world.

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