The sixth season of Peaky Blinders premiered on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK on February 27, 2022, and later on Netflix in June 2022. The much-awaited sixth and, sadly final, season of the now famous series pulled viewers right back into the lives of Birmingham’s notorious Thomas ‘Tommy’ Shelby and his crews’ gangster lives. While the season brought many familiar faces to the screen, viewers also encountered a few fresh faces making their debut in the show.

One such character is Jack Nelson, played by actor James Frecheville. It becomes pretty clear right from the get-go that this is an important character moving forward, and many questions regarding the character’s arc naturally filled the minds of viewers.

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With Tommy having amassed his fair share of enemies through the seasons, many individuals in the Peaky Blinders series have made Tommy’s death their prime goal in life. Another rival gets added to the list of Tommy’s ever-growing adversaries with the series’ latest character Jack Nelson. Read on as we attempt to settle the question of who was Jack Nelson? What was he up to in season 6? Here’s all we know about Uncle Jack.

Updated August 2022 by Jessica Peerez: If you’re excited about Peaky Blinders season six, you’ll be happy to know we’ve updated this article with additional info about Jack Nelson.

Who Is Jack Nelson?

     Netflix

Bostonian gang leader Jack Nelson is positioned as Gina Gray’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) powerful uncle and her husband, Michael Gray’s (Finn Cole) boss in the United States. In the show, he’s been portrayed as a character with many political connections and has a sizable import-export business. The character is referred to as ‘Uncle Jack’ in the season 6 premiere. In a bid to do business with the character, Tommy Shelby (​​Cillian Murphy) meets with Nelson’s associates to talk about a potential business opportunity after Prohibition ended back in the United States.

After the meeting goes down badly, Shelby tricks Michael Gray into carrying opium and gets his cousin locked in prison by tipping off the cops. Determined to get his business offer heard, Tommy approaches Gina with the business opportunity with Jack Nelson but yet again gets rejected. Shelby threatens to do business with the Solomons family in the US instead – Jack Nelson’s rivals.

At the end of the episode, we catch Tommy visiting Michael. He reveals that Jack Nelson, his wife, mistress, son (and friend of President Roosevelt), and Gina would all be going to London to do business, leaving Micheal enraged. Shelby had previously teased that Nelson’s hidden past and high-society connections have made him an influential figure who has to keep this public image clean.

Who Played the Role of Jack Nelson?

With the premiere episode itself, it’s clear that Jack Nelson will be an enigma this season of Peaky Blinders. It’s again clear from the same episode that he and Thomas Shelby will have a lot of interactions as the season progresses. But, despite so much importance given to this character in this episode, he isn’t actually on it. Fans only get their first glimpse of the character in the second episode of the season, titled “Black Shirt.”

Jack Nelson is played by actor James Frecheville. As reported by Express UK, Frecheville is a 30-year-old Australian actor and is best known for his role as Joshua “J” Cody in the 2010 Australian movie Animal Kingdom. His character was the youngest member of a criminal family. His experience playing the criminal role served him well on Peaky Blinders.

The report also stated that Finn Cole, who played the role of Michael Gray, portrayed the role of “J” in the TV series adaptation of Animal Kingdom. The actors reunited in the final season of Peaky Blinders.

Who Is Jack Nelson Based On?

Peaky Blinders has a track record for basing many of its characters on historical figures; the same applies to its final season. Season 6 included Oswald Mosley, Diana Mosley, and Winston Churchill. Although Jack Nelson, too, fits in the mold of being a real-life historical figure, given his strong gang presence, as seen in the series, it has been confirmed that Nelson isn’t a real-life person. A fictional work of the writers, Nelson is an invention unique to the Peaky Blinders show.

However, it has been reported that Steven Knight, writer of Peaky Blinders, took inspiration from a real-life person – Joseph P. Kennedy (1888 - 1969). He is the father of U.S. Senator Bobby Kennedy and the 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy. There are quite a few parallels between the real-life and reel-life characters. For instance, like Jack Nelson, Joseph Kennedy imported English liquor to the U.S. in the aftermath of Prohibition. After, he traveled to London with a similar group, like Nelson in the series. A similarity crops up again in that both Kennedy and Nelson are Bostonians with significantly strong political ties.

Despite drawing inspiration from Kennedy, Jack Nelson still remains a strictly fictional character. Despite many suspecting that Kennedy had his own share of underhand dealings, it cannot be ascertained with certainty that he was as criminally inclined as Uncle Jack in the Peaky Blinders series. Steven Knight talking to Den of Geek, said:

If you haven’t gotten your fill of the final season of the Shelby gang yet, you may be happy to know that a Peaky Blinders movie is in the works, which is set to take place in the 1930s.

“As ever with Peaky [Blinders], you look at history, and you take real facts and fictionalize them. There is a resonance with Boston, with senior politicians.”