Liam and Noel Gallagher didn't hug or even speak when they reunited – the moment I knew Oasis would work again

Like most people who were around in the '90s, Steven Knight can still distinctly remember the feelings he had when he first became aware of Oasis.

"It was everywhere," the Peaky Blinders boss recalls to Radio Times in an exclusive interview. "It was a bit of an explosion onto the scene."

There was one song in particular – which remains his favourite to this day – that really captured Knight's imagination.

"Don't Look Back in Anger was the one that I heard and thought, 'Wow'," he says. "The melodies were like people were singing the songs. Now that's something different. It was like they were potentially football chants.

"But then when I, as a writer, started listening to the words, I thought 'these are really interesting.'" he continues.

"These were written by someone who isn't doing this consciously. They're not sitting down saying, 'I wanna write about this subject.' It's just happening. And the poetry of that is very powerful."

Fast forward three decades or so, and both Knight – who is now one of the most praised and prolific writers in British film and TV – and the band have been through rather a lot.

Liam and Noel Gallagher had an infamously bitter falling out stemming from a backstage incident ahead of a planned Paris gig in 2009, and for years any talk of a reunion looked like the stuff of pure fantasy.

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But then came the announcement in 2024 that they would be performing together again, leading to a groundbreaking 2025 world tour that has now become the subject of a new documentary, suitably titled Don't Look Back in Anger, which is available to stream on Disney Plus from 9 October 2026.

Knight is billed as creator, writer and producer of the film – with Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern as directors – and explains how he met with Liam and Noel separately very soon after he'd been invited to work on the project.

"I immediately got the absolute certainty that both of them were absolutely committed to doing this," he says. "They both wanted to put right what had gone wrong. They both thought it had ended in the wrong way. They both felt the story should be told in a different way.

"And I think part of the motivation was a lot of people were saying, 'This isn't gonna work. It's gonna be the same old. They're gonna fall apart.' And both of them were like, 'No, I'm gonna do this.'"

Given the high profile separation over many years – during which they had avoided all contact with one another – a lot was riding on the very first reunion between the pair when it came to the rehearsal period ahead of the tour.

This moment is captured in the film, but don't go expecting any major fireworks from that first encounter: it's a very understated affair.

The filmmaking team had put 10 fixed cameras in the rehearsal room to allow for non-invasive filming, which Knight explains had the effect of ensuring the band were acting authentically, as they would have done had there not been any cameras present.

"It's one of my favourite moments," Knight says. "What I loved about it, and love about it on screen when I see it, is here is two people who haven't been in the same room together really for 16 years. Everybody knows about the split.

"There's no high five, there's no hug, there's no tears, there's not even any words. It's English working cast blokes being what they are.

"Liam just says, 'What's that on the drum? Can you move that?' Noel goes, 'Yeah.' He says, "Okay, you ready? One, two, three. Bang.' And they just go into it.

"And it was via the work that they came together. It was via the actual business of making this work. The first time they laugh quite a long way away across the studio, they look to each other and laugh. You think, '"This is gonna go.'"

Knight acknowledges that although in retrospect it "seems inevitable" that everything was always going to go according to plan, that wasn't necessarily the case. There was every chance things could have gone wrong, and the brother's famous disagreement could have reared their heads once again.

But he pinpoints various steps across the process that proved to him they were on the right track – adding that it was "almost like there was a rhythm to it".

"The first time they laugh to each other... they're brothers, and they remember all that experience they had getting here," he says.

"And then when Liam grabs Noel's hand and he wasn't expecting it. It's this spontaneous thing. Bang. There's a moment.

"And I think another moment was when they introduced their kids to each other. Their kids had never met, and suddenly they're cousins, suddenly they're a gang 'cause they got on really well. So they're family again. andI think that was the home straight after that."

As mentioned above, Knight is credited as a 'writer' on the project. But, of course, the process of writing on a documentary is a very different set of circumstances to his usual day job, penning fictional scripts for TV dramas and films (the upcoming James Bond movie is one of many high profile projects currently on his agenda).

"You're not in control," he says. "And I certainly didn't want to start manipulating anything to make it happen. It wouldn't be possible anyway 'cause Liam and Noel are their own people. They would never pretend that this was okay."

But one thing that Knight really wanted to do with the film was to shine a spotlight not just on the Gallaghers themselves, but on their millions of fans – a fanbase that continued to grow in perhaps unexpected ways even during their lengthy hiatus.

"The point about the new generation of fans is that people have found their music," he explains. "People have not been sold it, and it hasn't been advertised to them. They've found it.

"So this generation have found the music that their parents probably introduced them to. Sometimes not, sometimes they just find it. And within the words and the melody and Liam's and Noel's delivery of the songs, they get this thing, which I think universally is escape, swagger. 'You can do it. It's gonna be okay.'"

Not only is the appeal cross-generational, but also international. Across the film, we see concerts everywhere from the UK to the US and South Korea to Argentina – and Knight says that "what happened across the world was identical".

"One of the fans in Korea said, 'When you fall down, some music picks you up, but with Oasis, they fall down with you and get back up with you,'" he recalls.

"And getting back up is what this is all about. So a whole generation recognises themselves or their situation in the music. Where parents and the younger generation hear the song that they both hold in common, and that immediately brings them together. And they're hugging and crying and it's an amazing thing to see."

There's also a key moment in the film in which the Gallaghers – in a brand new interview – talk about a specific aspect of the band's fanbase that they feel has been misconstrued: the idea that the renewed appeal for their music, wrapped up in a nostalgia for 'better times', could be linked to right-wing populism.

"It's not a right-wing thing," Liam muses. "All are welcome."

"Liam was saying, 'Nostalgia's not a bad thing'. And it's not," Knight says of this moment. "But this wasn't really nostalgia, I don't think.

"I think what was interesting is the older generation were the age of their kids when they heard it. And when they look at their kids, they see themselves right now, not 'I'm gonna pretend it's however many years ago. This is this minute. This music is just as relevant now as it was then because look at my kids. They're crying as well.'

"And so this was about something that's happening now. I mean, the 'it's not a right-wing' thing was very, very important to them. And important to me, that that element of the perception was addressed."

For Knight, it is – above all – the sense of hope to Oasis's music that he thinks is the reason for their continued appeal. And it was this which he really wanted to capture in the film.

 "Oasis songs, even though they can be quite angry, are very hopeful," he says. "They are like, 'You can get out. We're scratching in the same old holes, but we're gonna get away. We're gonna escape'

"In the '90s, that fitted. That's what people were thinking. The Cold War was over. A historian [Francis Fukuyama] said, 'History has ended.'

"That hasn't aged well, that prediction. And now we live in a time that's the opposite, which is why I think these songs are really important, and why the point I'm trying to make in the film is at a time of spite and division and anger, here are two people coming together and audiences coming together. This is a good old-fashioned corny 1960s spirit."

Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger is available on Disney+ from 9 October – sign up to Disney+ from £4.99 a month.

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