The Crown star plays the leader of The Forty Elephants, an all-female gang that pilfered the city, in Steven Knight’s upcoming series A Thousand Blows. “I had no idea they even existed,” Doherty admits. “I can't believe that we haven't - even in the smallest of history classes - heard about these women… I just couldn't get my head around it!”

Knight is no stranger to stories centred around gangs operating in the criminal underworlds of major cities, but A Thousand Blows marks a strong departure from Peaky Blinders. We join the Forty Elephants in the 1880s, against the background of illegal underground boxing in Victorian London. Doherty stars alongside Malachi Kirby (Roots) as Hezekiah, a Jamaican trying to make his way in London, and Stephen Graham (Boiling Point) as Sugar Goodson, the terrifying boxer he encounters. The all-female crime-syndicate is based on the real Forty Elephants gang who were in action from the 1870s to the 1950s in the Elephant and Castle area of London, which gave them their name. Mary Carr was, in Doherty’s words, “the original Queen”, succeeded by the better-known Alice Diamond.

This isn’t Doherty’s first experience bringing a real-life figure to screen, having acted alongside Olivia Colman and Helena Bonham Carter in series two and three of The Crown. Research is one of Doherty’s favourite parts of taking on historically based roles, but when tackling Princess Anne, the limitless videos, articles and information available was almost a hindrance: “the pool you’re diving into is just immense. I had a point where I was like, ‘I just can’t look at her any more’, and just had to decide, ‘I’m doing this version of her.’”

The process was different going from the Princess Royal to the Queen of the Elephants: for one thing Mary Carr is relatively unknown, whereas Princess Anne has limitless people who feel like they know her. “In hindsight, I don’t know how I managed not to crumble under the pressure of being someone everyone has their own opinion of,” laughs Doherty.

Introducing Mary Carr to the world, then, seems like a small task. Doherty treated the limited information on the Forty Elephants as “a backbone” and then used that as a launch point for “imaginative creation.”

“It was really special, because then you got to grow it into some weird Frankenstein thing… I felt like I could bring something to this person we know nothing about.”

Although material on Mary herself was also scant, Doherty found herself falling down “the rabbit hole of history” and into 1800s living conditions, which became realised once on set: “a lot of what I find inspiring about playing people of a certain era is discovering that what they did was just necessary and logical.

“You can't really understand that when you're sat at home in 2024. You can only figure that stuff out when you're on set, in the costume.”

The costuming inspired in more ways than one. The sheer mass of Mary’s skirts created mannerisms for her. “I cannot tell you the weight of those skirts… I found it really helpful because it kind of felt like armour. It's also quite restrictive so that added something to the walk.

“Everyone started coming up to me being like, ‘I love what you're doing with her walk’, and I was like, ‘I'm genuinely just trying to walk!’”

A Thousand Blows opens with Mary giving birth in front of a crowd of onlookers, whilst her entourage pickpockets the audience. This is taken directly from a Forty Elephants strategy, using filled pigs’ bladders to fake the birth. Thankfully, the costume department found Doherty a different option.

As the leader of a crime syndicate whose main income was pickpocketing, it was important that Doherty had the skills to back it up. Attending classes on how to pickpocket was an eye-opening experience: “it makes you look at the Tube differently… Anyone could do it! It’s all about confidence, which is such a basic lesson of life.”

Whilst Stephen Graham, as Sugar, focuses on being in the boxing ring, Doherty and her ‘Elephants’ had ample time in the audience to practice their pickpocketing. “We were on the outskirts but on set all day, so we were trying to keep each other entertained.

“I genuinely ended up pickpocketing loads of the supporting actors, and one of them had a little packet of shortbread in his pocket that he was clearly saving for a break… But we were mid-shot, so I had to very quickly shove it back into his pocket, because obviously it’s not in period.”

Mary is a tenacious and complex character that you can understand and see some vulnerability in, despite all the pickpocketing, threats and vague air of violence. Once you get to know Mary better through the course of the series, it’s easy to see why Doherty fell in love with her – which is actually a rule for all of her characters: “I have to genuinely be in love with everyone. And if I’m not in love with them, there’s something very wrong.

“There's something that was amazing about being plonked in the brutal reality of what London would have been like back then, because you were immediately on their side. You're like, ‘Of course I would have gone and robbed Harrods.’ If you have the genius to come up with that plan, why wouldn't you?”

In 2025, Doherty is going from strength to strength. Next up is a project co-created by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne. Adolescence will be filmed in a famously testing single shot, detailing the story of a schoolboy arrested for the murder of a classmate. Graham will play his father, and Doherty the psychologist assigned to his case.

The surreal nature of working with industry legends is still not lost on Doherty, although she has previously collaborated with both Graham and Thorne. Thorne is known for authentic hard-hitting human stories and Doherty reckons the secret to his success is being normal: “I think you've just got to be real in order to understand human beings and get human voices on paper. He's just this normal dude who's a genius at what he does.”

On Graham, who is similarly known for raw and brutal dramas, she says: “I’d work with him forever. Something I love about theatre, is that you're constantly learning. Just get yourself in front of Stephen Graham and you're constantly learning.”

Beyond her work on screen, Doherty keeps up with her first love, theatre. Currently starring in Mike Bartlett’s Unicorn as part of a throuple alongside Stephen Mangan and Nicola Walker, she finds theatre to be an irreplaceable experience. “There’s something so addictive about surrendering to the live nature of it”, she reflects. “You don’t get that on screen.”

Watch A Thousand Blows on Disney+ on 21 February 2025.