You may know certified national treasure Stephen Graham from roles such as stressed-out chef Andy Jones in Boiling Point, struggling alcoholic Joseph or skinhead antagonist Combo from Shane Meadows’ The Virtues or This Is England, or murderous mobster Anthony ‘Tony Pro’ Provenzano in The Irishman. But chances are, you’ve never seen him in a role quite like his latest: Henry ‘Sugar’ Goodson, a fearsome bare-knuckle fighter from Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight’s new Victorian-era boxing drama series, A Thousand Blows. And as it turns out, neither has Graham himself.
Sugar is an enigmatic character in the show – a self-made man, head of a boxing empire, more familiar with using his fists to express himself than his words. Playing him required an intense bodily transformation for Graham. “My objective was to get big,” he tells Empire, in our world-exclusive new issue. “I thought, ‘I’m going to eat – literally – sleep, dream this character’, in terms of the physicality.” That meant hitting the gym for months ahead of shooting. “It was five solid days a week of training,” he explains. “Five meals a day, loads of protein, ice baths. I became like a proper athlete.”
The level of bulking up that Graham went through meant that when it was time to get on set, even he didn’t recognise himself. “I’ve never been that big,” he recalls. “It changed the way I sat, the way I conducted myself. The first day of filming, the director went, ‘Do you want to look at the playback?’ And I remember going, ‘Is that me?!’ I couldn’t believe it.” One thing’s for sure – we certainly wouldn’t want to step in the ring with Sugar.
Read our full interview with Stephen Graham in Empire‘s February 2025 issue, on sale Thursday 19 December. Pre-order a copy online here. A Thousand Blows comes to Disney+ in early 2025.