HOME / ENTERTAINMENT / TV

'Peaky Blinders': 5 times Polly Gray was a complete badass

As the mother, the aunt, and the enemy, Polly Gray treads on the main line as closely as Tommy but she always puts family first.

Polly Gray, commonly known as Aunt Polly among the Shelbys, is the matriarch who has been holding together the Peaky Blinders clan since the gangsters were children. Steven Knight-created show, 'Peaky Blinders', follows the infamous Birmingham gang from the early decades of the 1900s when they were led by the Shelby family. Starring Cillian Murphy as the Shelby patriarch, Thomas Shelby, and Helen McCrory as the matriarch, Polly Gray, the Peaky Blinders have been positioned around these two other-worldly characters who stand at par with each other. 

The one exceptional feature about a Knight script is that genders do not get to play their allotted roles, but they are all treated the same on whatever platform they are based on. While on one hand, Thomas is the sadistic anti-hero whose virtues are just as strong as his sins, Polly is the mother-figure who refuses to let the family run by men. Polly has not only spearheaded every strategy of the Peaky Blinders but she has often taken up the role as Thomas' secret weapon in the times when Thomas had completely lost his grip on himself. As an anti-heroine Polly Gray treads on the grey zone where on one hand she is the ruthless businesswoman who can make offers over a dead body, on the other hand, she is a vulnerable mother who does not want her son to enter the bloody business.