WITH a hit Netflix show under his belt and a Disney+ period drama on the way, actor Ashley Walters is at the top of his game.
It’s a far cry from 25 years ago, when in the early days of him joining So Solid Crew he had a gun held to his head while carrying his baby boy and was stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle.
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Then in 2002, following a row with a traffic warden, Ashley was sentenced to 18 months in prison for being in possession of a hand gun.
Now in a rare, searingly honest interview with Louis Theroux, the Top Boy star admits it was a “tough time” – and he regrets following in his convict dad’s footsteps.
Dad-of-eight Ashley, now 41, was born in Peckham, south east London and raised by mum Pamela Case, a local government officer, while his father was in and out of prison.
Eager to keep her son “meaningfully occupied”, Pamela pushed him to do well at school and he joined a weekend drama club.
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“We live in a place where if young people are not fully occupied, then what are they doing? They’re hanging around, maybe getting themselves into trouble,” she tells Louis in the BBC documentary.
But when Ashley was 16, he joined garage band So Solid Crew and re-branded himself Asher D.
“It was only when I got to maybe 16, I changed, as a kid,” Ashley recalls. “In those years is when I went out and I got in trouble, and joined So Solid.
“I wasn’t rebelling against my mum, but it was rebelling against all of those things that she’d built up for me and how safe she kept me… I didn’t grow up rich, but I had no reason to sell drugs or to be out on the street.
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“But I was walking with some real gangsters at the time, so it was easy for me to become a target.”
‘I thought I was gone’
Not long after, Ashley ended up in hospital when his mate got into a row with two much older men.
“It wasn’t even my fight to fight, but I was carrying a knife,” he says. “These are two big men and we’re kids, we’re babies, so they would’ve literally taken the knife out of my hand, and started throwing us about.
“But in the end they just broke a bottle and stabbed me in my neck.”
Ashley admits he didn’t realise he’d been stabbed until his mate told him he was bleeding – then “everything faded to black”.
“I thought I was gone,” he says. “That’s the first and only time in my life I thought I was gonna die, because it started to get black really slowly.
“But then I woke up, and mum was there, crying.”
Admitting he narrowly escaped death, he adds: “It would be a bit disrespectful if I didn’t make the most of my life.”
“I’ll never forget that day,” Pamela says. “It still sends shivers down my spine now thinking about it.”
Gun drama
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So Solid’s first mainstream hit was 21 Seconds, released in 2001, which went straight to Number One.
The group, made up of over 30 members including MC Harvey and Lisa Maffia, quickly became pioneers in the UK music scene and were an early inspiration for modern grime music.
“There was a lot of voiceless people at that time,” says Ashley. “What we spoke and what we stood for was like a disenfranchised youth that just felt neglected and left out.
“We felt we were like the correspondence of our space, because we were out there on the front line, reporting what was going on around us, because no one else was talking about it.
“A lot of the time, my music was about fear. It was about fearing for my life.
“When people are outside your house, pointing guns at you, shooting at your car, whatever, then there is a threat. These things were happening.”
Ashley recalled a time when he had a gun pulled on him while he was carrying his baby son – Shayon, now 22 – after he made a “passing comment” about someone copying his lyrics on the radio.
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He tells Louis: “It’s just intimidation. They pulled up on my house. I had to learn a lot of lessons.”
‘Biggest regret’
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Following the scary incident Ashley spent £1,300 on a converted Brocock air pistol to “protect himself”.
“There’s something that comes with owning a firearm; a sense of power, entitlement,” he says. “It grew within me, so at some point it stopped being about fear and more about control.
“I think that’s what went wrong.”
In 2002 he was arrested after yelling “I’m going to shoot you” during an argument with a traffic warden.
Ashley’s partner at the time, Natalie Williams, and their then-young son and daughter, Shayon and China, now 21, witnessed him being handcuffed by armed police and taken away.
“I wasn’t actually going to shoot,” he says. “I weren’t willing to risk my liberty over shooting a traffic warden. But I mean, I made my comments, I said what I said.
“It was horrific. My biggest regret is that my kids were there.”
Ashley was sentenced to 18 months prison, and served seven.
“It was a big part of my life,” he admits. “I didn’t ever want to go back to prison.”
Dad of eight
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As well as Shayon and China, Ashley has son Panera, 18, with Natalie.
He is also dad to daughters Antonia and Ashleigh, whom he shares with another woman.
He and wife Danielle Isaie, who married in 2013, share eight-year-old Amaiya-Love and five-year-old River. Ashley is also stepfather to Danielle’s child from a previous relationship.
In December 2020, Ashley became a grandfather aged 38 to a baby girl – Neveah Jade Walters.
The Bulletproof star confesses his relationships with his older children has been tarnished, in part, due to his relationship with his own dad, who died in 2005.
He says: “I try my best [with them]. They might not have the desired relationships that they want with me. I think mainly that’s with my older kids.
“There have been moments where I haven’t been the best dad because I couldn’t be. I wasn’t around or wasn’t in the right place to be right.
“I feel like, with my dad, I held his past against him, and my kids sometimes do the same.”
Pushed by dad’s death
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Before he died, Ashley’s father was absent for periods of his life and did 17 stints in jail.
“I think his own demons he was battling with [stopped him seeing me],” he reflects. “He led quite a crazy lifestyle, a lot of different women and a lot of different kids.”
Ashley – who’s currently directing three episodes of upcoming Disney+ period drama A Thousand Blows, starring Stephen Graham – believes his dad’s death has pushed him to get to where he is now.
“I was angry. Very, very angry. That made me angry with the world,” he says. “It’s taken me to some dark places. I’ve done some really stupid things. And I’ve hurt some people close to me.
“But all of that anger and pain and the hurt that I had, and the resentment that I had against him, gave me fire.
“If I haven’t got talent in anything else, I’ve always been able to use my pain for good use.”
The final episode of Louis Theroux Interviews airs at 9pm on BBC2 tonight.
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