Ashley Walters’ very busy life after ‘Top Boy’: “I’m a man now, so I wanna do man things”

When NME arrives outside a nondescript apartment block in a frankly dystopian part of north-west London, overseen by the monolithic Wembley Stadium, it takes us a moment to register the identity of the man holding the door open for us. After ushering us into a lobby that looks like a particularly soulless student halls-of-residence, he grins: “You didn’t recognise me!”

Well, no – most celebrity interviews don’t take place on an evening, in said celeb’s Airbnb, and the interviewee doesn’t usually personally buzz you into the building. But Ashley Walters, the celebrated actor and rapper who’s captured the country’s zeitgeist both on screen and behind the mic across more than two decades, clearly doesn’t go in for all that showbiz stuff.

In fact, he doesn’t seem to notice the sideways glances from other residents when we squeeze into the lift to the spartan apartment that will be his home for the next few weeks. The 42-year-old was raised on an estate in Peckham but now lives in Herne Bay; he prefers the serenity of the Kent seaside town, having been wooed by the region’s delicious oysters. He’s back in London to shoot his debut feature film as a director, Animol, a coming-of-age story set in a young offenders’ institution. The independent film stars fellow British screen legend Stephen Graham and is, says Walters, “the hardest thing I’ve ever done”.

And it’s far from the only job he’s taken on since wrapping up Top Boy, the acclaimed TV drama in which he played drug kingpin Dushane for five gripping series, at the end of 2023. As well as starring in the Netflix dramas Missing You and Adolescence – the latter alongside Graham – he’s directed three episodes of A Thousand Blows, the fabulous new period drama from Peaky Blinders head honcho Stephen Knight. (Walters previously directed a short film, 2021’s Boys, and five episodes of Channel 4’s Acklee Bridge.)

The former So Solid Crew member has also penned a self-help-book-slash-memoir with the typically energetic title Always Winning and is due to release a new rap EP. It’s not often NME is dispatched to interview a celebrity about so many things at once, all told.

“And I’m still there, worried…” he says with a chuckle, perched on the sofa, happily chatting for well over an hour after a long day of shooting Animol. “I hope there’s stuff after [these projects]. It’s just amazing when things come together. It feels like it’s meant to be.”

“As much as everyone loved the show, I didn’t always love my storylines”

Walters first courted fame with So Solid Crew, whose classic ‘21 Seconds’ remains a touchstone of UK garage, in the early 2000s. Soon, though, came infamy. Violence erupted at some of the group’s shows, which led to a cancelled tour and inevitable tabloid outrage. In 2002, Walters himself was sentenced to 18 months in a young offender’s institute for carrying a loaded air pistol.

Upon his release, he embarked on the second act of his career – no mean feat, considering he was barely out of his teens. First he took the lead role in 2004’s Bullet Boy, the story of a young man who tries to rebuild his life after a stint in prison; unsurprisingly, it was written with him in mind. Having won Best Newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards for his efforts, Walters grew his reputation as an actor with the likes of the 8 Mile-style 50 Cent biopic Get Rich Or Die Tryin’.

It was Top Boy, which first aired on Channel 4 in 2011, that became his calling card. Walters starred opposite East Ham rapper Kano (AKA Kane Robinson), whose character, Sully, shared Dushane’s drive to rise to the top of the drug trade from a fictional Hackney estate. The show explored aspects of Black British life with an American level of scope and ambition; comparisons to The Wire were common. Channel 4 famously cancelled Top Boy after two seasons in 2013, before megafan Drake stepped in to executive produce the bigger budget Netflix version that aired for a further three series from 2019.

Given its popularity, the show could have run and run – which is perhaps what Netflix had in mind. Walters, however, sensed it was time to move on. “The title said Top Boy,” he explains, “and I’m a man now, so I wanna do man things. As much as everyone loved the show, I didn’t always love my storylines.”

He’d become “very safe and comfortable” in the role and he and Kano both agreed it was time to spread their wings. “The more you become the ‘top boy’, the less you do,” notes Walters. “I was doing loads of scenes just on the phone, instructing people to go to this place and that place, walking there and giving orders. I watched my peers, like Kane and the other characters, doing the more fun things and I wanted to challenge myself a bit more.”

Hence the new rap project. Walters recorded four solo albums under his So Solid moniker, Asher D, between 2002 and 2009, though his output dried up when the acting took off. He released occasional tracks over the years, but, as he admitted to NME in 2020, “there was no real structure” to his music career.

In a sign of his renewed focus, he released a 2022 EP under his own name. He tried out a variety of styles – from moody grime to an R&B-inflected slow jam – and, quite brilliantly, called the collection ‘Test The Walters’. The forthcoming sequel, ‘Test the Walters 2’, is similarly eclectic, boasting both a chin-out bruiser called ‘Take A Pic’ and the more mellow, romantic ‘Tate & Lyle’. The former features Giggs, the self-proclaimed Landlord of UK rap.

“He’s one of my biggest hype men,” says Walters. “We grew up together in Peckham from when we were 10 or 11 and it’s been great to see him in the position he’s in, but what people don’t know is that he will ring me religiously just to say: ‘You’re the best.’ Just to remind me, because sometimes he thinks, ‘You don’t big yourself up enough.’ I’ve never been that sort of person. I’m quiet a lot of the time; I’m quite humble. He’s always the one reminding people, ‘Do you know who this guy is? Do you know what he’s done for the game?’”

At 6am this morning, as it happens, Walters and the 41-year-old Giggs swapped WhatsApp messages about their longevity. The artist formerly known as Asher D plays us the voicenote he sent: “It don’t matter about the age, fam. You get me? Man’s out here, still.”

Always Winning charts the setbacks Walters faced from a young age, while offering pearls of hard-won wisdom to help clear your own path forward. He wrote the book with his brother-in-law, Chris Isaie, who pitched him the idea after Walters mentioned that they should work on an autobiography one day. They spent a year holding “six, seven-hour” interview sessions, during which the actor and rapper opened up about his life and philosophies.

It’s actually the second autobiography Walters has put his name to, though he’s characteristically upfront about 2004’s So Solid: My Dangerous Life With So Solid Crew: “I didn’t have any to do with that. I just keep it real! That deal landed on my desk when I just got released from prison. It’s not a great book, to be honest. There’s a lot of pictures.”

In the original book, Walters – or, rather, his anonymous ghostwriter – recounts being stabbed in the neck as a 15-year-old; he still bears the scar. This near-death experience, the first story in Always Winning, is just one traumatic event of “maybe 5,000” that he believes contributed to the alcohol addiction he suffered between 2005 and 2020.

“I was able to hide [my drinking] for many years”

Sobriety has been the key to his current work ethic, Walters says: “Having a clear head and being able to focus and build some relationships that I broke through that period of my life has been probably the biggest factor in how I’ve been able to achieve everything I’ve been achieving.”

The problem was that he could get away with his drinking, as he’d arrive home at 5am and head out to work again at six: “People accept your bullshit a lot of time – your attitude, your lateness – because when you deliver, you’re still good at what you do. So I was able to hide for many years like that.”

Now that he’s spinning so many plates, of course, there is nowhere to hide. Stephen Graham, who executive-produced A Thousand Blows and stars as terrifying boxer Sugar Goodson, put Walters forward to direct the show (they’ve been mates since the mid-‘00s). The only thing Walters remains tight-lipped about is Animol, beyond the sparest plot details, though he does reveal that he and Graham prayed together before filming and discussed their working-class imposter syndrome.

“We talk about it every day,” he says. “It’s me going, ‘Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m meant to be here. Sometimes I don’t feel I’m good enough to have it.’ It’s something a lot of us suffer with and it’s a double whammy for me because I’m Black. Some of the places I go into are completely white-dominated. Feeling like people don’t want you there or they’re waiting for you to fail, I use that as fuel. It hasn’t broken me yet.”

Walters admits he’s “bougie” now and struggles with the shoestring world of independent filmmaking – this, after all, is the man who moved to Herne Bay for the seafood. It’s been a long road but, with a little help from cheerleaders such as Giggs and Stephen Graham, the boy from Peckham has risen to the top of two brutal industries, even if he doesn’t act like it. The world is his oyster.

Ashley Walters releases new EP ‘Test the Walters 2’ on March 7. New book ‘Always Winning’ is out May 29

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