A Thousand Blows is a new television series hitting HULU this week. Inspired by the true life stories of a group of characters battling for survival in the brutal East End of London in the 1880s. Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe, best friends on the run from Jamaica, find themselves thrust into the criminal underbelly of London’s thriving bare-knuckle boxing scene. As Hezekiah finds fortune and fame through the art of pugilism, he attracts the attention of the infamous Queen of the Forty Elephants, Mary Carr, who sets about exploiting his talents to further her criminal enterprise. Meanwhile the menacing and self-declared emperor of the East End boxing world, Sugar Goodson, determines to destroy Hezekiah whose ambitions to fight in the West End threatens everything he has built. What ensues is a battle of the old world against the new.
Malachi Kirby stopped by to chat with us about playing Hezekiah and getting trained for the series.
In A Thousand Blows you play Hezekiah Moscow; what appealed about the character and do you see any of yourself in him?
Steven Knight did an incredible job of creating this well-rounded man who is not perfect but also is not very goody two-shoes, he’s charming, he’s honourable, he’s quick-witted, he’s a thinker, which is one of the things that struck out to me the most. I read this script and I could hear him thinking on the page; it’s just credit to Steve Knight, you don’t get that a lot, and also there’s the physicality about him. I get to work out on set every day in order to play him, and yeah, just everything about him really. I think probably what resonated with me the most, is he’s been through so much trauma in his life; he goes through the Morant Bay rebellion in the past, and his parents were killed in that, and he’s gone through that, and he hasn’t taken that trauma and wanted to kind of take out revenge on everybody. I think that’s something that struck me most about him, is he comes to the same land where the people were from who killed his parents, without a chip on his shoulder, ready to just meet everyone, greet everyone as they are, and love people, and be kind to people, and honour people; I think it’s a beautiful trait about him.
Yeah, sort of the opposite of Sugar…
(laughs) Yeah! Yeah!
Even though Sugar thinks that they’re alike, they’re not the same person. Where Sugar just gives in to his instincts all the time, Hezekiah is much more controlled.
So, there’s a version, I think, where Hezekiah, if he had been through everything that Sugar’s gone through, might grow up to become something like him, if he makes the same decisions. I like to think that there’s a version of Sugar that was very similar to Hezekiah at the time; there’s like, maybe a few years apart between them now.
Yeah, there’s a part of me that kind of wants them to work together at some point in the future and just be friends (laughs).
It would be nice, in a perfect world.
This is an incredibly physical role for you, like you said, you’re training every day on the set. What kind of training do you have to do to prepare for the role?
Well, so yeah, for me, I’d never boxed before; I’d never really watched boxing before this, so there was a lot for me to learn in a very short space of time. But also, it was kind of helpful because it wasn’t like the modern day boxing that I could learn today in any club. It was old school boxing, and the story that we tell is just before boxing becomes a sport. So, we’re still in bare knuckle world, we’re still coming from like the wrestling aspect of things. And so I didn’t need to unlearn anything, if that makes sense, everything was fresh to me, in terms of being underhand, and yeah, just the technique of everything. And also, Hezekiah isn’t a boxer when we first meet him, he’s a fighter, but he hasn’t boxed before, so everything that he’s doing is instinctive, and basically just trying to survive and get out of the way. But I had a great coach, Jamal from All Stars Boxing Gym; he was a professional fighter, and David who came over from Thailand, and they were both training me for months and months, to not just teach me how to fight, but teach me the respect that comes with the sport and the foundation of it. Both of them have such a huge respect for the sport, and so I’m glad I was learning from them; it really opened my mind up to what it actually is; it’s not just two people punching in the ring, like there’s a craft to it, there’s an art to it, even. And yeah, it doesn’t take intelligence to get in the ring, but it takes intelligence to get out of it; I think, so I had a lot to learn in the short space of time.
Yeah, absolutely. I speak to a lot of fight coordinators, and they say that every fight scene should tell a story, like have a beginning, middle, and an end to it, do you think that’s true?
Yeah, it’s one of the first things that we discussed about the fights, is that they’re not just trying to sell some news that look good, but tell a story of who these two people are in the ring, and the fact that what they bring into the ring has come from outside, and all of them have their own different fights, all of them have their reasons for why they’re in the ring. Some of it is for money, some of it is for ego and pride, some of it is something deeper than that, and so we wanted to tell that story in every single fight. What are they fighting for? With Hezekiah, it changes the first time we see him fight, and the last time we see him fight, at least in this series, like his reasons for fighting significantly change, and so it was really fun exploring that with him, and how that changes physically.
You have some wonderful scenes with Mary, played by Erin Doherty; how did you work with her to create that chemistry on the screen?
I love Erin, honestly; she is a breath of fresh air as an artist, and she is an artist, honestly, she’s a true artist, from when she first came in to do the screen test, it was across the board, everyone was like, yeah, that’s her, you know what I mean? She brought an element to Mary that just wasn’t even on the page even, as well as she was written, so honestly. I enjoyed every scene with her; every time we got to work together, it was a great day, I think probably the scene where you first see their characters meet, just outside the boxing room, is probably my favourite; if I had to pick one, there was like just sparks on that day, and it was such a fun scene, and it was so spontaneous, and we had like 150 or 180 extras in that day, who were all incredible, and also generous with their energy. There was very little to imagine; you had people breathing fire, and people banging drums, and it was just such an atmosphere, and so to me, on that day, yeah, that felt like, if this is what this job’s gonna be like, this is gonna be a fun journey.
Yeah, with all the set design, and costumes, it must be very easy just to get into that world straight away.
That was incredible; I’ve never been on a set like that in my life, especially not in the UK, like the level of detail. I think most of the budget probably went on the set, and it didn’t even feel like a set. It felt like someone had just built a small town; even now, you can go there, and it’s like, every single brick was hand-painted, like the level of detail that they went to. You open a drawer, and there’s something relevant inside, and you open a door, and there’s a room inside; it’s not just like walls that will fall down, if you lean on them; it’s a real place you could have inhabited, and lived in. I found myself building memories there in real time, remembering, oh, this is where that happened, and this is where that happened, as we’re shooting, and it’s still there for us to see, and if something gets blown up, it stays blown up. So, we’re looking at it as, oh, I remember when that happened, and it was such a rare thing to have real-life memories, as both the actor and the artist, whilst we were shooting. So often, I think you’re in a set, and after you’ve shot something there, it gets taken down, and a new one gets built, but all of it remained there, so, yeah, that’s the realism of all.
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat; I can’t wait to see the next part. Best of luck with it.
Thank you, bye-bye.