While Cillian Murphy lost out on the role of Batman in “The Dark Knight” trilogy, Christopher Nolan shared that after seeing his longtime collaborator in “Peaky Blinders,” it things could play out differently. As gangster Tommy Shelby, a role Murphy landed with a five-word text, he now sees what he didn’t in his presence back when casting “Batman Begins.” Nolan said Murphy projected scale in an all-new way in the television role.
“That’s an iconic character with an oppressive presence, where he walks into the room, and everything goes quiet, and he owns that space,” Nolan told Murphy about watching him play Shelby in the Deadline conversation. “In the way Batman does, or an iconic character of that kind. There’s a physicality that’s extremely confident and strong in everything he does, in every gesture.”
Murphy said he wasn’t offered physically imposing roles like Shelby earlier in his career and that landing the role of Scarecrow was the perfect part for him early in his career as he would eventually work his way up to be an even more significant presence on the big screen.
