Why Sam Neill Left Peaky Blinders After Just Two Seasons

One of the late actor Sam Neill's most memorable TV roles was as Inspector Chester Campbell on "Peaky Blinders"... but he didn't play the role for long.

Neill — who died Monday at the age of 78 — co-starred on the Netflix gangster drama from the start, making his debut in the series premiere as Campbell, an Irish cop who was eager to bring gang leader Tommy Shelby to justice. By the end of Season 2, though, Campbell was killed off, and Neill was off the show. So why did Neill leave the cast so early? 

It was purely a creative decision, series creator Steven Knight revealed to the U.K. newspaper Express, and it wasn't an easy one, either. Of Neill, he said, "I just think he's brilliant. He's such a great bloke and so nice. But I thought this has run its course." He nearly changed his mind, though, when it came time to break the news to the actor: "I phoned him up and said, 'Sam, this character has been brilliant, he's been fantastic.' And he said, 'I don't want to die,' and so like a coward, I said, 'Oh OK, I'll have another think.'"

Knight did eventually go through with it, however, and "as soon as it was definite," Neill accepted his fate, Knight recalls: "He was like, 'Absolutely, fantastic.' He's brilliant, but yeah, he didn't want to die." 

Sam Neill's character Inspector Campbell served as the main antagonist to Cillian Murphy's gang leader Tommy Shelby for the first two seasons of "Peaky Blinders," more than willing to bend the rules to bring down Tommy's criminal enterprise. Campbell also employed barmaid Grace, played by Annabelle Wallis, as an undercover operative, having her report back on Tommy's activities even as she was falling in love with Tommy. (Campbell had a creepy romantic fixation on Grace, too, that went unrequited.)

But Campbell went too far when he tried to exploit Polly's love for her son Michael by offering to free Michael from jail — if Polly would perform sexual acts for him. (He later sexually assaulted her as well.) Polly may have been the toughest member of the Shelby clan, though, and she proved it when she gunned down Campbell in a phone booth in the Season 2 finale... while he was on the phone with Churchill, no less.

The "Peaky Blinders" saga continued on for four more seasons after that, as well as a follow-up movie, and will live on even further with an upcoming Netflix sequel series starring Jamie Bell as Tommy's son Duke Shelby. And although he was only in the cast for a couple of seasons, Sam Neill remains a huge part of the show's enduring legacy.