Peaky Blinders star Sophie Rundle admits she is 'scared' of her own character

Sophie Rundle is "scared" of her own 'Peaky Blinders' character.

The 35-year-old actress played Ada Shelby in the acclaimed BBC One drama series that focused on career criminals in Birmingham just after the end of World War I and admitted it is only once she puts her blonde tresses under the dark wig that she feels she "becomes" the daughter of the gangster family.

Speaking on ITV's 'This Morning', she said: "She scares me, and I am her! I put the wig on and I become Ada Shelby I guess."

Sophie - who played the role over the course of the entire series from 2013 until its finale in 2022 - reflected that the success of the series is probably owed to the advent of streaming platforms as she recalled the initial response as being favourable but quite small before it exploded in popularity.

She said: "It's mad...but when we did the first series, 10 years ago now, it just kind of came out and people liked it. But then streaming platforms kind of emerged over that time and I think it's because of them that this huge fanbase grew and grew. It grew with it, it became this huge thing which was kind of nice. We didn't have that thing of doing the first series and then it was this big splash. It kind of became its own beast and we didn't really notice it happening.

"At one point I went to Italy and I was walking around in this little town and there was a 'Peaky Blinders' bar. I thought 'Hmm, that's strange' and then I noticed it was getting bigger and bigger."

The Buckinghamshire-born star has played a number of roles on TV that have requried her to use a Northern accent and is now appearing as PC Joanna Marshall in the Manchester-based ITV1 thriller 'After the Flood' and admitted that she now feels like an honorary Northerner.

She said: "I've spent so long being a Northerner. Do you think I could actually get a membership now? It's just been so long and so much of British telly is filmed up there and it's become my other personality, along with Ada Shelby."