Emmett J. Scanlan appears with an intense stare, a warm Dublin accent, and a dark beard so perfectly formed that he looks like one of Leonidas’s mighty Spartans. The actor is speaking to us from his home in Cheshire, where he is proudly describing his one-year-old son. “Look at him there,” he says, showing a video on his phone, a wide grin over his face: “... that’s my boy, Ocean-Torin. It means ‘Chief of the Ocean’!”
Having finished filming the next season of Peaky Blinders, in which Emmett plays an even bigger role, as well as the police drama The Tower (written by Homeland scribe Patrick Harbinson) and the Irish gangster series Kin, the actor is looking forward to spending more time with his family. “There’s nothing as important,” he tells me. And by the look on his face, you know he means it. The kind of deep conviction he shows speaking about his own life and family echoes the sort of characters he portrays on screen. These are men: fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. And like so many men, they have the capacity to be brutal, often harbouring an untapped vulnerability that the actor accepts is a part of his own nature. It’s within these emotions that Emmett likes to play, and his strong performances for both Kin and The Tower have earned him resounding critical acclaim. So, before the final series of the phenomenal Peaky Blinders turns his life on its head again, The Rake talked to Emmett about his work, his future and fatherhood.
Video by Marcus Ebanks
