The Kennedy Connection Behind the New Villain in Peaky Blinders

Peaky Blinders has always had a penchant for mixing fact with fiction to craft a compelling story—notably, the Peaky Blinders themselves were a real life gang, albeit a very different one than the Shelby family in the show—and its sixth and final season is no exception. Along with the return of Oswald Mosley, the real-life political figure who plagued Tommy in season five, the show's latest chapter brings in some new figures to antagonize everyone's favorite Birmingham bad boy, including the notable introduction of Jack Nelson, the uncle of Tommy's cousin Michael's wife, Gina.

When Gina (played by The Queen's Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy) exploded onto the scene in season five, fans had plenty of theories about who the conniving American might be, especially with the revelation that she had gang ties. Now, we have a much better idea of what exactly those ties are, and how much they borrow from a very famous, real-life American family—the Kennedys. In fact, there's a particular overlap between Uncle Jack and one specific Kennedy family member, Joe Kennedy, the father of president John F. Kennedy.

Who was Joe Kennedy?

Joseph Kennedy Sr. is perhaps now best known for the political success of his descendants, including his sons, JFK and Robert Kennedy. Born in Boston in 1888, Kennedy received an impressive education, graduating Harvard in 1912 with a degree in economics. He would go on to become a banker, a stockbroker, a real estate mogul, and an importer, before eventually finding his way into politics as the American ambassador to the UK between 1938 and 1940.

While Kennedy's methods of amassing his wealth have certainly raised plenty of eyebrows, as he participated in what today we would likely call insider trading, and was accused of bootlegging, among other crimes. However, despite accusations, he was never convicted of any wrong-doing.

Is Jack Nelson based on Joe Kennedy?

Peaky Blinders creator and writer Steven Knight tacitly confirmed to Den of Geek that Kennedy was an inspiration for Uncle Jack, but it doesn't take too much digging to see how much the two figures have in common.

Like Joe, Jack in Peaky Blinders is a Bostonian with significant political ties. In the show, Jack travels to England to buy import licenses for the top Scottish and Irish whiskey distilleries looking to do business in America at the end of Prohibition—a move directly out of Joe Kennedy's book. In real life, the businessman made significantly money off the import licenses he acquired for Haig & Haig Scotch whiskey, Dewar’s, and Gordon’s gin, among others, through his firm Somerset Importers, selling 150,000 cases of Scotch alone in its first full year in business. A decade later, Kennedy reportedly sold Somerset for $8.5 million (more than $140 million by today's rates)—money he used to help build the Kennedy dynasty.

Even his traveling companions have a major parallel. Tommy tells Michael in the season's first episode that Jack will be traveling to England with Gina, and along with them will come Jack's wife, his mistress, and the son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933, Joe Kennedy made a starkly similar trip, traveling with his wife, Rose, his mistress at the time, Kay Halle, his son Joseph Jr., and, you guessed it, James Roosevelt, the oldest son of FDR.

Like Jack in the show, Kennedy was also known to be anti-Semitic, and in his role as ambassador to the UK, he ultimately counseled the President to appease Hitler's fascist regime in Germany by abandoning the British and committing to an isolationist approach to the conflict. This certainly seems to play in to Jack's role as a crony of fascist Oswald Mosely and his wife, Diana Mitford, on the show, though it's not clear whether Mosely and Kennedy ever socialized in real life. Kennedy's own politics ultimately led him to be recalled to the US, losing his ambassadorship before the end of WWII.

All of that said, Peaky Blinders's Nelson is definitely a fictional character. While Kennedy may have been suspected of shady dealings over the years, we don't know whether he was involved in violent crime, especially to the degree that Nelson is on the show. As Knight told Den of Geek, "As ever with Peaky [Blinders], you look at history and you take real facts and fictionalise them." He added, "What really happened in the 1930s with these powerful people, is something that, as a writer of fiction, you wouldn’t dare to create because it’s so insane. So it’s trying to take some of that madness and chaos of reality and put it into the story.”

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