Sophie Rundle on After the Flood & What She Knows About the Peaky Blinders Movie

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Fans of Peaky Blinders will be overjoyed to have Sophie Rundle back on their screens as a character who possesses all the same gumption and drive as the formidable Ada Shelby. Rundle is starring in a new crime thriller airing on Britbox in the US and ITV in the UK.

Rundle leads the limited series thriller After the Flood, and plays police officer Joanna Marshall, who becomes obsessed with an unidentified man, who is found dead in the aftermath of a devastating flood. Adding to that, Joanna is very pregnant and must fight against her co-workers and partner who want her to take it easy.

In the series opening, Joanna’s pregnancy is revealed as she wades through high water in her police uniform. This immediately sets Rundle’s character up as a defiant woman who refuses to succumb to the pressures that often push mothers out of the workforce — Peaky Blinders fans know Rundle’s character in the hit show also shared this mindset.

“I think it was a really smart setup to have her and to have her pregnant throughout the series,” Rundle told Reshma Gopaldas in an exclusive interview for SheKnows. “As soon as you tell people you’re pregnant, you become this kind of vehicle for this baby, and you become a kind of conduit for everybody else’s opinions and everybody else’s attitudes and assumptions about what you can and can’t do.”

Throughout the series, we see Rundle’s character, Jo, grapple with opinions held by her partner, mother and society as a whole about what she is capable of, all while she attempts to unpack the mystery at the center of the show.

As Rundle notes, anyone who has ever been pregnant will likely relate to Jo’s need for selfhood and her desire to maintain her independence as her body starts to feel less and less her own.

“I think we have a long way to go with how we approach pregnancy,” Rundle notes. “Every pregnancy is different. You know, for the same woman, every pregnancy can be different. So we mustn’t be making these assumptions about it and I think we do need more support and empathy and open mindedness.”

After nine years of playing one of Peaky Blinder’s strongest female characters, its clear that Rundle is careful about selecting roles that center female stories. So, what about reprising her role as Ada in the critically-acclaimed show?

“Everybody asks me about the Peaky Blinders movie, including my mom, she’s like, ‘give me the [gossip]’. And I’m like, ‘I don’t have it. They don’t trust actors with it,'” Rundle jokes.

The series wrapped with an explosive finale in 2022 but its creator, Steven Knight, has long teased plans to close out the show with a film. In March, Knight said the show’s lead, Cillian Murphy, was on board and filming is set to begin in September.

“I think what is amazing about the Peaky Blinders movie is that there is still there’s appetite for it. That’s incredible.”

“It is up to people far more impressive and important than me,” Rundle says of the project. “Cillian is busy dominating the world and it’s between him and Steven Knight, you know, it’s their story to tell.”

But Rundle is definitely in if the show’s creator and lead actor/producer are game. “I’m Peaky for life,” she says. “It’s it’s such an important part of my story and it’s such a fun world to be a part of how could you not love it?”

After the Flood is available on demand on Britbox.