Paul Anderson at Comic Con Astana: Peaky Blinders in Central Asia

A character travels further than the actor who plays him. That is the part of this business people outside it tend to miss.

In the first week of August 2026, roughly 4,000 miles from Small Heath, tens of thousands of people queued in the Kazakh capital to see a Birmingham gangster from a BBC drama that finished filming years ago. Arthur Shelby got there before Paul Anderson did. Anderson simply followed him.

A record in Astana

Comic Con Astana is the largest pop-culture festival in Central Asia. Its fifth-anniversary edition ran from 6 to 9 August 2026 across two venues in the Kazakh capital — Barys Arena and the Alau Ice Palace — and closed on a reported 76,000 visitors from more than 40 countries. Opening day alone brought around 16,000 people through the doors, described by Kazakh state media as an absolute record for a first day in the festival’s history.

Anderson was one of four international headliners — the first time the festival has carried four at once — alongside Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones and Iñaki Godoy and Taz Skylar from Netflix’s One Piece. He took the main stage to talk through his career, answered fan questions, held a press conference, and worked autograph and photograph sessions across the weekend.

This is the best Comic Con I’ve ever been to.

Anderson’s verdict, given to Kazakh media at the festival. He also told a press conference that the drive in from the airport made him think he had landed in Los Angeles, and that he had not met a single rude person on the trip.

Why Arthur Shelby travels

There is no published viewing data for Peaky Blinders in Kazakhstan, and we are not going to invent any. The evidence is simpler and better: Kazakh outlets announced Anderson not by his name but by his character’s. “By order of the Peaky Blinders”, ran one headline. Arthur Shelby was coming to Astana.

That is what a genuinely global character looks like. It does not need translation, a local release window or a marketing push. It arrives already understood. And it is why an actor with a career built on restraint rather than franchise recognition can headline an arena in Central Asia and sell it out.

The same instrument keeps finding new territories. A Civil War drama for Prime Video. Narration for two Fury–Usyk films watched across the Gulf and beyond. A convention stage in Kazakhstan. Different rooms, one performer, and an audience that already knows the face before anyone explains who he is.

How the booking was made

Never-Before Talent opened the conversation with Kazakhstan’s tourism authorities and their partners, then took it to the organisers of Comic Con Astana and negotiated Anderson in as a headline act.

That is the whole job, described accurately. Not a submission to a casting portal — a direct line to the people who decide what a city programmes, and the standing to hold that conversation on a client’s behalf.

It matters because of who was on the other side of the table. Kazakhstan is in the middle of a deliberate push to build event tourism: 15.7 million foreign visits in 2025, a climb from 66th to 52nd in the World Economic Forum’s travel and tourism index, and a capital city that in one week of August hosted Comic Con, the Games of the Future and the International AI Olympiad at the same time. Kazakh Tourism lists Comic Con Astana on the national event calendar. This is soft power with a budget line.

An agency that can put the right face on that stage is not selling an appearance fee. It is helping a country programme its own cultural calendar — and that is a relationship, not a transaction. Never-Before is now in conversation about bringing further talent to the region across the coming year.

What Never-Before actually does

• Live & event bookingPlacing actors, athletes and creators as headline guests at conventions, festivals and arena events worldwide.
• Tourism & destinationWorking directly with tourism boards, city administrations and their commercial partners to attract international talent to a region.
• Brand partnershipsCampaign casting and endorsement deals across TV, digital, retail and sport.
• Voice & narrationTrailer, promo, documentary and multi-market brand narration.
• Exclusive representationFull agent and management services. Paul Anderson is represented exclusively by Never-Before Talent.

Never-Before Talent is a London talent agency founded and run by Nav Salimian, trading as The Social Champ Ltd. It represents Paul Anderson exclusively across film, television, live events, voice and commercial work, and books international talent for event organisers, tourism boards and brands worldwide.

Related reading: Paul Anderson as Stokely Reeves in The Gray House · Paul Anderson, the voice behind Watch the Throne and Ring of Fire