Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy said it was "very strange" to return to the set without his co-star Helen McCrory after she passed away last year.
The 45-year-old actor described Helen, who died following a battle with cancer, as the "beating heart" of the show.
Helen, who died at her home aged 52, starred as Polly Gray in the BBC One series since it began in 2013.
Her devastated husband and actor Damian Lewis broke the news that she had died in April last year.
Filming for the sixth series of the show started in January last year, but had to be postponed due to Covid - meaning that Helen missed filming her last scenes in the show.
Cillian, who plays the mysterious Tommy Shelby told Esquire UK : “We were just reeling throughout the whole thing. She was a dear, dear pal and she was the beating heart of that show, so it felt very strange being on set without her.
“The difficult thing to comprehend is that, if it wasn’t for Covid, there would be a whole other version of this show with Helen in it.
“But she was so private and so f****** brave and courageous. She was inspirational. People throw that word around, but she genuinely was."
Speaking fondly of the actress, Cillian said: "It’s just… I still can’t believe she’s not here. It doesn’t make sense. I’ve never lost anyone like that – who was young and a friend. It was very confusing."
He added that Helen, who starred in several of the Harry Potter films and James Bond Skyfall, was a "magnificent person".
The sixth and final series of Peaky Blinders, which follows the mischief and mayhem of the Shelby brothers, is set to be released this month.
Once the series has aired on BBC, it will be available on Netflix six months later.
Episode one of the new series will be titled 'Black Day' and will be the first of six.
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After the series it's been confirmed that a Peaky Blinders feature film will air, with its creator Steven Knight revealing details to Variety: "I am going to write the feature which will be set in and shot in Birmingham and that will probably be the sort of the end of the road for ‘Peaky Blinders’ as we know it.”
The Irish actor said that he is still "shocked" how a little show on BBC Two climbed to the worldwide status that it has now.
The Netflix series became the most popular show in 24 countries across the world.
He will also star as J Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb” in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.
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