LOS ANGELES, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Stephen Graham and Malachi Kirby say their new show, A Thousand Blows, premiering with all episodes Friday on Hulu, offered physical and linguistic challenges. Kirby, 35, stars as Hezekiah Moscow, a Jamaican immigrant to London in the 1880s who develops a talent for boxing.
Graham, 51, plays Sugar Goodson, the boxing champion who wants a rematch with Hezekiah after their first bout. In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Graham said creator Steven Knight's writing required more than just an East End accent to do it justice.
"The poetry of the writing is there from Steve so it's a different way of talking in many ways," Graham said. "I'm from Liverpool so my accent is completely different to the accent of Sugar from the East End of London. The language and the dialogue between all of the characters through Steve's writing is, in many ways, poetic but it's also authentic and true of the time."
For Kirby, his grandparents were Jamaican but he was born in England. Furthermore, the actor said the Jamaican accent 145 years ago is not the same today.
"Both in England and Jamaica, people would express themselves differently a couple hundred years ago," Kirby said. "Although my heritage is Jamaican, there was a vocabulary that I've never come across before in some instances with portraying Hezekiah."
In A Thousand Blows, Hezekiah and his friend, Alec (Francis Lovehall), face trouble even finding a room to rent due to the racism of London boarding house owners. To supplement his boxing earnings, Hezekiah befriends Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), the leader of a gang of female thieves.
"I think he's a quick study generally," Kirby said. "He has a very quiet intelligence and emotional intelligence. Although there are naive ways about him, I think he's very perceptive so I think you put him in any environment and he'll learn it very quickly."
Meanwhile, Sugar presents violence and bravado to the public. Graham said he enjoyed exploring the motivations that might not be as apparent to Sugar's neighbors.
"He's a very complex individual which was a joy to play," Graham said. "He's a million and one miles away from Stephen himself, both physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally."
The show's boxing matches required both actors to train, marking Kirby's first time in the ring.
"There's a lot of work to do not just in terms of physically changing but just learning the art of boxing, down to the feet, up to the hands," he said.
For Graham, Sugar's physicality was also tied to his emotional state.
"It's important for us to be able to look like we are fighters and we move like fighters," he said. "Each fight is choreographed to the most minuscule of detail. I think the whole fight between the two of us, there was maybe 45 moves possibly, all broken down into sections. So we rehearsed meticulously."
Kirby recalled that all of his fights were filmed in one week. He had to memorize each separate choreography and perform it for cameras.
"Basically think about doing like six or seven different dances and then just doing it literally day after day after day and remembering all of the moves," Kirby said. "My brain just died."
