The A Thousand Blows’ Cast and Creator Break Down the Period Drama’s Surprisingly Modern Story

When we think of the Victorian era, we tend to think of certain types of characters, as assumption that goes double in the world of period dramas. From stories about the queen who gave the period its name to relationship dramas and adaptations of Charles Dickens novels, these sorts of shows almost always feature white characters of a certain social status and a great deal of internalized emotional constipation. So let’s just say it: Hulu’s violent, emotionally prickly A Thousand Blows is definitely not your typical Victorian-era historical drama

The series, which hails from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, is a gritty look at the underground world of Victorian bare-knuckle boxing, and its story follows the kinds of marginalized, frequently overlooked characters we rarely see in this genre. Bristling with class tensions and violence of many varieties, the series is an ode to the survivors and scrappers of the time, but one whose themes will feel all too familiar to modern audiences. And, according to the show’s creator, that’s on purpose. After all, despite the years between the setting in which this story takes place and our present day, the concerns and cares of the lives of the people at its center are much the same. 

“It’s about the characters for me, and making sure you get the characters right,” Knight tells Paste. “I think if you liberate the time period from what’s expected of it and you just imagine that these are people like us, which they were. I’m looking out right now at a street in Notting Hill, which was probably built in the 1860s. There was a time when this was all mud and there were people just walking along…the chimney sweep would be walking by, there’d be horses, there’d be carriages, there’d be coal, there’d be smoke. It was a real place where real people got by, and I think if you can try and reflect that in the show, it makes for better drama.” 

Knight admits that the period between 1870 and the Second World War in England is particularly fascinating to him, because “it was pretty Wild West, what everybody got up to”. 

“There was so much going on, especially in Britain, when the Empire was at its peak and then it started to collapse and all of those things, and the world looks amazing,” Knight says. “There’s a lot of smoke and a lot of horses and guns. There are fewer rules, and there are fewer enforcement of rules. It’s just a good time.”

Unlike its spiritual cousin Peaky Blinders, however,  A Thousand Blows is a fictional story that’s based on a trio of all-too-real figures from history. And though many of the basic facts about the day-to-day lives of people like Mary Carr, Sugar Goodson, and Hezekiah Moscow are lost to time, the frequently unexpected and often “transgressive” nature of their stories is part of what appealed to Knight’s creative instincts.

“Listen, I’m not smart enough or clever enough to invent these people,” he laughs. “They’re so amazing. Hezekiah Moscow arrives in London in the 1880s from Jamaica, wanting to be a lion tamer. That’s true, you couldn’t make that up. And he ends up being an incredibly successful bare-knuckle boxer. Mary Carr was a real person who was the Queen of the Forty Elephants. That was a real thing, these 40 women who formed a notorious gang of thieves who terrorized London. You couldn’t make that up. These people really existed at the same time. So what I thought was, I’ll try and imagine that Hezekiah Moscow and Mary Carr might have met. There’s no proof that they didn’t. So who knows, maybe they did. That’s what this is about. It’s taking real people, putting them together, and exploring the madness and wildness of the time [they lived in].”

Knight is certainly no stranger to writing characters who push boundaries and are forced to forge their own paths. A Thousand Blows continues this trend, weaving together the lives of three very different people to form a cohesive narrative whole.  Grizzled fighter Sugar Goodson is struggling to adapt to a changing world in which his way of fighting (both literally and figuratively speaking) is slowly disappearing. Mary Carr, whom Peaky Blinders fans will be pleased to know Knight himself likens to “the Tommy Shelby” of A Thousand Blows, is a criminal who breaks plenty of rules in terms of what society expects from her as a woman. And Hezekiah, of course, is a Black immigrant trying to make his way in a city that is frequently hostile to men like him. 

“It was an honor,” Malachi Kirby, who plays Hezekiah, says when asked about playing the story of a very unique Black man in Victorian London. “I think what was special about it was knowing that this really happened. The whole show was built off this photograph of Hezekiah Moscow that existed somewhere in the 1880s. Being able to find out about him was beautiful to me, becuase you don’t usually hear these kinds of stories, hear about Black men of that era who aren’t enslaved or in servitude. So to be able to tell his story, to bring him to life through my creativity and imagination, was just such a joy.”

A Thousand Blows seems to love shaking up pop culture’s traditional idea of what the Victorian era was supposed to be and look like. Rejecting the idea of the period as the sort of prim, proper, vaguely repressive time it’s largely remembered as, the series focuses on the diversity of London during this period, particularly the lives of those who were often forced to live at the margins of society and endure significant hardship that, of necessity, helped shape the people they became. 

“I think there’s a tendency, when you read about people from the 19th century, to assume that they have these terrible lives. That’s just what it was like then. They coped because that was what they were expecting. They were used to it. The fact is no one is used to that,” Knight says. “Human beings are born the same in every new generation And they were suffering and would have responded in the same way that [that we would today]. So I try to imagine a modern person in that situation and how they would turn out.  I think what they would probably be is pretty hard, pretty unforgiving, and pretty cynical.”

This is certainly true of Sugar, and Graham’s performance frequently allows the audience to glimpse pieces of the lonely damaged man who exists beneath the hardened fighter’s exterior. According to the actor, finding the very real pain underneath all the stoicism and rage was key to doing so. 

“He’s a man who’s scarred by life itself,” Graham tells Paste. “He’s had to survive tremendous adversity. Steve and I came up with a backstory for him from the very beginning, that you can see in the relationship between him and his brother. His father was killed on the streets of London, and then his mother put them both into a workhouse at a very young age. You have to understand how fucking hard it was back in those days just to get from day to day and find a piece of bread and some clean water to drink it was almost impossible. You had cholera, you had syphilis, you had all of these horrific diseases. And on top of that the workhouses were appalling places. So to survive that himself—obviously, that leaves scars.”

According to Knight, the origins of Sugar’s bellicose demeanor (not to mention his fighting skills) actually come from a surprisingly protective place.

“Sugar looked after his little brother and was always in fights—that’s why he’s such a good fighter,” Knight adds. “He starts off doing the right thing: He’s protecting his little brother. But in the process of doing that, he becomes really, really good at fighting. So the bad outcome, the person he ultimately becomes, it comes from a good intention, which is something I think is always interesting in drama.”

“For me, Sugar’s a very complex individual. He’s got a sort of twisted stoicism,” Graham adds. “He sacrificed everything in order for his brother to have a better life, which meant he went without in certain ways. He’s never been held or told that anyone loves him. He’s been on his own. And he uses [boxing] to fill that pain.”

Sugar is hardly the only character in A Thousand Blows who has ended up hardened by the events of their youth. 

“With Sugar, as with Mary, I wanted to create two characters who have no faith in gentle emotion because it just gets you into trouble. It will destroy you,” Knight says. “You’ve got to be hard. You don’t show weakness, you don’t relent, you don’t show pity, you don’t show mercy because these are people who through their lives have found out that if you do that, it comes back to get you.”

It’s these sort of familiar emotional beats that help A Thousand Blows feel timeless, despite the specificity of its setting and story. 

“Thematically, this show is still quite relevant for a modern audience,” Graham says.”[Our] three central characters are all trying to fight through adversity. We have the old guard in Sugar, who hates change and wants everything to stay as it is. Hezekiah represents the opportunity for progress and possibility. And then there’s Mary, who represents the constant striving to achieve better things despite the confines you’re born into. Yeah, I think those ideas are all very human and familiar. Because if you look at it—a lot of things haven’t changed much. We’re still trying to survive, still having dreams and aspirations that are being crushed by society in certain ways. Still fighting.”

A Thousand Blows is currently streaming on Hulu. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB

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