On Wednesday (July 5), the production team of BBC’s “Peaky Blinders” TV series revealed that the campaign of Florida’s GOP Governor, Ron DeSantis, utilized a clip from their show without obtaining the necessary permission.
The claim stems from a video shared by DeSantis’ team last month. The video criticizes former President Donald Trump’s support for LGBTQ rights and highlights the governor’s more conservative stance.
In the video, the character Thomas Shelby, portrayed by actor Cillian Murphy, makes a brief appearance alongside other male characters from TV and movies, such as Patrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale in the 2000 film “American Psycho.”
In a statement made on behalf of the Peaky Blinders team, the show’s producers shared that they could confirm that the video utilized by Ron DeSantis’ campaign contained footage of a character played by Tommy Shelby that was not authorized or obtained with authorization.
They added that the ad’s “narrative” didn’t have their support or endorsement, and instead, they “strongly disapprove of the use of the content in this manner.”
On the last day of Pride Month, DeSantis’s War Room released a video that criticized Trump’s support for the LGBTQ+ community and hailed his own stance toward the trans community, and had initially been tweeted by the user Proud Elephant.
The ad also received adverse reactions from those within the GOP, specifically Log Cabin Republicans, a coalition of LGBTQ+ Republicans, who lambasted the DeSantis campaign shortly after it reposted the video, saying the video wades into “homophobic territory.”
