Benjamin Zephaniah on the real-life inspiration behind his ‘Peaky Blinders’ role
The legendary British writer and pioneering dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah sadly died in December 2023 following a battle with cancer. Although his body will not, Zephania’s spirit will live on in his unique and varied body of work and the many memories of those who admired it.
Zephaniah’s career was centred on literature, but he also held lofty stakes in music and performance art and even picked up a prominent acting role in the TV series Peaky Blinders. In the popular BBC drama, the poet portrayed Jeremiah Jesus, a street preacher based on a real-life Jamaican man named Jimmy Jesus, who served in the British Army during the First World War.
During a 2018 interview with Birmingham Live, Zephaniah recalled being excited about the role when he landed it in 2013 but had apprehensions about its success. “The day we started filming, and the second day and third day it was like ‘Is this going to work?’ ‘Are people going to get this, a gangster thing set in Birmingham?’” he said.
“When the first episode went out, all of us were on the end of the phone, trying to find out how it went down, and looking at Twitter and everything like that,” he continued, remembering the early rumblings of success.
Overall, Zephaniah’s character was received as warmly as the series itself. However, he noted that some viewers criticised his accent. “Some people complained about the accent, but it went down well,” he said. “The BBC warned us that after the first episode, people would complain. After the second episode, they would complain a bit less then, by the third episode, they would forget about the accent and be into the story.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Zephaniah gladly noted. “Nobody talks about the accent now. People talk about the drama and what’s happening. It fills me with pride.”
Zephaniah’s character was also targeted with a degree of scepticism early on regarding historical accuracy. As a period drama, some viewers questioned whether a Black man would have been present in such a position in the streets of Birmingham in the 1920s.
“People say: ‘Why is there a black guy in Birmingham at this time?’” Zephaniah remembered. “A lot of people don’t realise I’m based on a real character who fought with a battalion from Birmingham in the First World War. He went back to Jamaica and missed his pals from Birmingham so much that he came back to Birmingham.”
The poet’s character was acquainted with members of Birmingham’s criminal underworld and practised his religion in a somewhat expressive and memorable fashion. “He was a slightly off-his-head character who went round the streets of Birmingham preaching hell and damn fire,” Zephaniah added.
Born in Birmingham in 1958, Zephaniah was brought up in a working-class environment and experienced the city’s contemporary gang culture first-hand. After being expelled from school in his teen years, he fell into the vicious circle of gang life.
“We are pack animals; we don’t do very well alone,” Zephaniah said of human instinct. “We don’t do well for mental health reasons. But also, for survival reasons, we need each other. There are gangs of all types. Politicians are gangs of a type. All kinds of people need to hang out together.”
Fortunately, Zephaniah moved to London at the age of 22 to join a more nurturing crowd. “When I wanted to get away from gangs, I got up in Northfield and drove to London, where I joined another gang,” he said. “It was a gang of poets and creative people.”
The dub poet expressed his gratitude for Peaky Blinders and, following its success, revealed his wish to back more contemporary drama based in his home city. “What I would like to do in the future is a really good contemporary drama set in Birmingham,” he said. “The BBC and other people have got to be brave enough to do something contemporary, even a good film, but certainly a good TV drama set in modern-day Birmingham. I’d love to be involved in that.”
Watch Benjamin Zephaniah perform as Jeremiah Jesus in Peaky Blinders below.
