A Thousand Blows returns for second season as actors felt like they ‘never left’

Less than a year since we had the first, there’s a second season of A Thousand Blows about to release.

Inspired by true life stories from London’s East End back in the 1880s, the show introduced us to bare-knuckle boxer Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), new kid on the block from Jamaica Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Queen of an all-female gang Mary Carr (Erin Doherty).

Produced by Graham’s company with his wife Hannah Walters, Matriarch Productions, the Disney+ series is created by the creator of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight.

Getting rave reviews last year, we were left with a number of unanswered questions as we saw Mary leave for New York with no clear answer if Hezekiah would follow her.

But while we’ve had to wait all this time for the new episodes, it turns out the actors got the answers much faster.

“It felt like we never left,” Kirby tells LADbible as Doherty explains: “Because we kind of didn’t – we basically had like a week hiatus in between.”

Yep, while we’ve all waited this past year for more A Thousand Blows episodes, the actors only had a week break in between filming.

Kirby points out this is obviously an advantage ‘when you enjoy the show’ itself.

“If we didn’t it would be awful,” he adds, “I could’ve gone for another two to be honest."

Doherty says she just wanted to get straight in with things, keen to carry on the story of her Eastender gangster.

“I remember just wanting to start shooting it,” she says. “Because, where we left them in season one – it’s such a cliff hanger that you’re like, ‘I’m so ready to tell the rest of that story’. It felt inevitable.”

Mary Carr and the Forty Elephants gang. (Hulu)

The star says there’s been a big ‘journey’ for Mary between the two seasons.

“I think she’s had the blinkers on for so long, quite rightly for necessity to survive, but you see her take them off essentially this season and really go, ‘Yes I could cross the finish line over here on my own and hooray I did it but I’m gonna have no one around me,’” she says.

“So for me this season drives home that importance of going somewhere together. That’s like Mary’s big awakening.”

And for Kirby, he’s given us a bit of an extra teaser of what the second season holds.

He adds: “I think what surprised me most was who we see return to the show… just gonna leave it there.”

Kirby as Hezekiah. (Hulu)

Doherty also praised her Adolescence co-stars, Graham and Walters as this continues her work on their shows.

“I think a show’s success is always kind of fed from the top down and they are the epitome of just sharing the love and seeing the value in every single person being on set on any given day,” she explains.

“They’re just so devoted to levelling the playing field in that way and then allowing people to make the best work that they can. The fact that this has come from their company, but they were so generous in going, ‘Well what do you think? What do you want to bring to this?’”

Season two of A Thousand Blows launches on 9 January on Disney+