There were three options [in Allied], which were for [Bred Pitt] to shoot [Marion Cotillard], for them to escape, or for her to pull the trigger, which is a heroic act to spare him. When I was thinking about how it would end, a long time ago, I think I tried each of them to see, but two of them did not work.

The time came where I was able to write an original screenplay [Allied], and it would be read and noticed. I had a meeting with Brad [Pitt], just around the time that he was making World War Z. I basically told him the story and said, "This is what I want to do," and he really responded, so that helped me put the thing together and write it.

I'm very, very excited because I'm just completing Episode 6 of Series 4 [of Peaky Blinders], which again I think is the best yet. And I'm loving it and it's not like work, it's not like a labor, I love doing it, and the boys are coming back and they're loving the scripts.

I think that it's not a bad thing to not be too versed in the vocabulary of cinema, because you start to think that certain things are allowed and not allowed.

[2015] it's a time that there's a clash of ideologies, similar to the Cold War. I think that a story like this has been waiting to be told, and I think it's a fresh look at the whole earth-shattering business of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

With FX in particular, they've been fantastic and were really hands off. I mean, it helps that you've got Ridley Scott on your side.

James Delaney as an individual is sort of like a grain of sand in an oyster who is irritating all of them. But for me he's a creature of the time, like the industrialists who started the Industrial Revolution who extricated themselves from their class and their background