Ashley Walters - Top Boy

Full transcript: Ashley Walters on London Real

10:13 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Mr Ashley Walters, who is an English actor and rapper who burst on the scene in 2001 as Asher D of the UK garage and Hip-Hop group, So Solid Crew at the age of 19. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

10:33 With a number one single, it was 21 Seconds, I think. You guys sold over 100,000 copies in the first week. Yeah, yeah. We, it went crazy, and that was before iTunes. Yeah.

10:43 Yeah, that was before I, way before. Right. You then went on to movies. You started in the film Bullet Boy in 2004. You picked up a British independent film award for best newcomer, and then I think it was the next year that you got picked for Get Rich or Die Tryin’, 2005 with 50 Cent.

11:03 I don’t know if people remember, but like 2005, like 50 Cent was everywhere. Yeah, he was huge, man. It’s the biggest thing. He was the biggest thing. I think my grandma was wearing a G-Unit shirt.

11:14 Really? It was just it. I just, you know, I think people forget how big it was at the time. You know, remember I saw him at Wembley Arena, and he did a show, and he was throwing like his shoes into the crowd, and it was crazy. So I want to hear more about that later, but let me just finish off.

11:29 You’ve been on the BBC series Hustle. You’ve been in countless stage productions, lots of movies, and of course two seasons of Top Boy, which, if you’re not from the UK, is a street crime drama. It’s set right here in Hackney, a little bit further east. It’s about life on a fictional housing estate. Some call it the Wire of London, which is, you know, pretty high.

11:49 I get that comparison a lot, and that’s pretty good. That’s pretty high praise man, cuz there are some, there are some loyalists when it comes to The Wire. Oh, yeah, definitely. I’m one of them one. Yeah, me too.

11:59 You’re a production company, A82, specializes in talent in the British music and film industries. You’re also producing films now, you’re directing films. Ashley, welcome to London Real. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

12:10 You know, thanks so much for being here. It’s actually our 200th show in the studio, so it’s quite a milestone. I’m glad you’re here for that. I’m honoured, man. I’m honoured, you know.

12:18 It’s, it’s been two and a half years since we started this. It’s been kind of crazy. I didn’t know where it was going to go. This is episode 152 of London Real. We have a tech startup show called Silicon Real.

12:28 It’s all about the tech community around here, really good vibe, really cool people. So, yeah, show 200, and I think you’re our first actor in all that time. Really? Yeah. You know, and I don’t know if that’s because I haven’t reached out, you like maybe that says something about me.

12:45 You know, maybe it’s because I don’t, I never reached out to actors, or they never, like struck me, or I always thought that maybe certain actors try to keep a little distance from the media, or distance from the press. You know, I don’t think Daniel Craig has a Twitter account, or sometimes, and I want to ask you about maybe they try to keep a distance so they can inhabit roles, that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, that for me, necessarily. I’m the complete opposite to most actors.

13:07 I think, I don’t do, you know, I don’t do anything. I don’t do any interviews. I’m not in the media all the time, but when I am, I’m kind of very honest about the things I say. To be honest, I try and keep it as real as possible. You know, no pun intended, but like, you know, it’s just about, I believe that people, this is my opportunity to get myself across, you know, when I’m, when I’m having an interview and when people are asking me questions about my life, my mom, my wife, a lot of people in the background, like, you talk too much, you know?

13:38 You tell them too much things and that’s too personal, and why I say that, why I do it. But I believe that it’s the best way forward. I think that’s what’s kept me, that’s what’s given me the longevity that I’ve had. You know, so far. I think a lot of people can relate to my story, because I tell it the way it really happens, if you know what I mean.

14:01 I think people, other people, have the same sort of experiences. So did anyone ever pull you aside, like, you know, Hollywood directors or anyone, and said, you know, you can’t do this, this, and this, if you want to, if you want to be a successful actor? Of course, I mean, there’s L, you know, if you’re talking about kind of things in your social life, in your personal life, obviously, but I’m sure most people would like to follow those sort of rules in any walk of life that they’re in.

14:26 Do you know what I mean? But obviously, you know, being in the media limelight, being in the hype and being famous or a celebrity or whatever, you’re, the spotlight is always on you. You’re always judged, you know. So a lot more than others, so you just have to accept that it comes with the territory. I try my best to be the best person that I can, but sometimes I have outbursts.

14:49 You know, I have problems. I have issues with things, just like everyone else, and it’s just the way it goes. I just hope that, you know, the other times where I am being me, I am being sincere, and people see the good side of me. Hopefully they see the real me. That kind of helps them to work with me again after they see a bad side, you know what I mean?

15:09 If they, people, I don’t often get angry, but when I do, it’s probably more angry than most people do. You know what I mean? I have a really bad temper, something I’ve been trying to work on for years. But yeah, you know, so I hope, I hope, I think a lot of people stick around me because they know, you know, when I’m not angry and I am being sincere and being real and loving and caring, and, you know, that myself, that, you know, it kind of cancels out the badness.

15:37 That’s a good thought. I never, never thought about it that way. Yeah, you know, there’s there’s one main reason that I kind of asked you to be here, and I was wondering if I could tell you about it. Yeah, go. Last year I was watching season 2 of Top Boy, episode one.

15:50 For some reason I missed season 1. I don’t know where my head was. You know, I got no no excuses for that, man, especially being in London. But I was watching episode one, and you were, I think in the police station getting interrogated by the police, and I was just watching your performance, and, like, I had to stop after a couple minutes, and I hit pause, and I was just like, I was just like, you know, this performance. They don’t teach an acting school, you know.

16:13 There’s some nuance here. There’s a lot going on, and I just thought that this wasn’t the guy that they grabbed from a casting call and said, can you play, you know, an East End gangster, because there was so much more going on in that performance, and it was almost like this guy has paid the cost to be the boss. I don’t know if that makes sense. To rip off a James Brown line, and you know, you’ve done a lot of things. You performed for over 70,000 people when you were at So Solid.

16:36 You had hit singles. You know, you’ve done a lot of things too. You spent some time in jail. You went on Hollywood movies, and I was wondering, do you consciously bring that stuff to the performance, or is there a part of you that you can’t necessarily separate it from your performance? I can’t.

16:51 This is the thing. I have this discussion a lot, because I’m kind of, I’m very dismissive of, like, watching my work after revisiting it, you know, down the line or whatever, overdoing reading lines or whatever, just stuff that tries. I try my best not to get too I’m as far from a method actor as you know you can get. I think I’m very unprepared. I’m very slack, you know, you’re very critical of yourself too.

17:23 Maybe, yeah, maybe I am, but I do it as a way to I just don’t want to change anything. That’s what I’ve always done as far as I’m concerned when I’ve been acting I suppose what’s happening is it is keeping it fresh. It keeps me on my toes, so probably a lot of what you’re seeing when you’re watching me is me finding it as I’m going along, sort of thing, rather than having rehearsed and locked down something, you know what I mean, which keeps, I think, even with the smallest nuances and, you know, the smallest things, authentic.

17:58 Right? I believe, cuz you can overdo that. Right? I mean, there’s so much chaos, I’m guessing, going on when it all comes down. I’m guessing you probably shot all those scenes in a day or maybe two?

18:07 Yeah. Oh, just over two days. Yeah. So you’re doing every single, interrogation or interview scene in the same day, all different times of, in throughout the script, so you’re in different places as a character on your journey. It’s difficult.

18:22 It’s like a, you know, and it’s very technical as well. A lot of people don’t realize, like, behind the scenes, making sure you hit marks. You do certain things, cuz once you’ve done one that the director thinks, I like that one, and you then then it starts to become recycled stuff that you’re doing, in order for them to be able to cut it together, right? So you have, talking about continuity now, and you put your arm up at that point when you said that, and whatever, and all these things take away from you trying to just be that person.

18:54 You realize you’re acting sometimes, and that’s the worst thing for a good actor, I think, to know that they’re acting. You’d love to have that freedom to just do what you’re doing. But yeah, I mean, like, yeah, I really don’t. I have this thing that I don’t want to know what it is that people like about me. I really don’t want to find out.

19:12 I’m not interested in it. I just do the work. I put my head down, I do the work, and you know, I put my head up after and hope that it’s created a little wave, and just continue to do that. You know, it’s funny, cuz you said method acting, and I remember, the Brits don’t really have a tradition to method acting. It was really an American thing, wasn’t it, back in the day?

19:33 I like Stanislavski or something like that. I remember, there’s a famous line where Laurence Olivier was acting with Dustin Hoffman in that movie Marathon Man, shot in the 70s or something, and I think Dustin Hoffman had, like, run around Central Park all night long to get tired enough to be this, you know, guy to act in a scene, and I think Laurence, like, turned to him, and he was like, Dustin, you should try acting, you know. And so they were completely against that whole idea of method.

19:58 Is that something you’ve never been interested in? I have been interested in it. I’ve dabbled in it as well. I didn’t necessarily think that it kind of changed my performance, to be honest. Okay.

20:11 I think sometimes it’s like, and it’s going to be a weird thing for you for me to say, but so I think it’s like art. It’s like pieces of works of art, you know, like paintings or whatever. Some of it, as I see, is completely s***, it’s crap, but you make people think it’s good. You see what I’m saying? Okay, is this the emperor has no clothes?

20:38 Yeah, it’s that sort of thing, like I think, if you know, you know, with Daniel Day-Lewis, I think he could pull those performances out of the bag if he didn’t spend all day in character, and you know, stayed in a wheelchair when he was My Left Foot, and whatever, through lunch, and have people feed you, and that. I don’t think that’s, I think he still could have done it without. I think he’s that good. I think, you know, but I think he’s always done it, so that’s his method.

21:03 Okay, do you know what I mean? That’s his thing. So why change something if it’s not broken, right? As far as I’m concerned. My first film I did that kind of pushed me, I don’t know, into the Limelight was Bullet Boy, and I’d just come out of prison before I shot that movie, and the story was about a boy who just come out of prison.

21:26 Right, right. You just spent 12 months, or, and I just, I’ve been sentenced to 18 months, and I did serve seven. Okay. And the writer had written it for you when you were in he had written it for me while I was in prison, but you thought your whole career and life were over, basically? I thought it was done.

21:40 Yeah, I guess, like any 20, 19, 20-year-old would think. Yeah, I was thinking, like, you know, yeah, I thought it was over. I was looking at the dates when, when 21 Seconds hit the charts. Were you actually in jail at the time? No, no, no.

21:52 I was out. I think that you might have the wrong dates for my incarceration. I got arrested in 2001, so I think I went, I got arrested maybe 6 months after 21 Seconds was released, or something like that. Okay. And I was on bail for 9 months before I actually went down.

22:14 Okay. So I went down in 2002. I came out in 2003 and shot Bullet Boy. I think I came out late 2002, early 2003. I think I shot Bullet Boy, and it came out in 2004.

22:30 Okay. And in Bullet Boy there’s a scene where you’re walking out of the prison, out of prison, and it’s exactly the same prison that I was in. What’s that like? It was crazy. It was crazy.

22:39 I mean, you know, that’s when, like, what I was saying before, when certain method things come into play, but they were forced upon me, sort of thing, like, you know. They, the director saw, kind of, they did this thing, like they opened the holding cell and was like, go and have a look. And I was like, I remember being in there before, when I come out, being released, and whatever, and they sort of slowly shut the door, so I’m, I’m locked in there now, but I’m reading graffiti on the walls and trying to find a place where I wrote my name before I left.

23:10 And whatever. They did this before you shot the scene. Yeah, and then the door was closed, and now they were all bringing in lighting equipment. Soul’s gone, the director having meetings with people, and whatever, people just walking back and forth, but no one’s opening the door for me to come back out. So I ended up staying in there for a good, like, 40, 45 minutes.

23:27 I mean, I could have caused a fuss and kicked off or whatever, but I realized what was going on. I realized what was pushed on me, yeah. I think so. I think I realized what was being pushed on me, and I thought, you know, let me just try and embrace it. Although it did bring, I thought a lot about being in there and my memories from it, which I suppose, you know, in some way could have helped the scene or whatever, but I just feel I could have done it.

23:50 Okay. I could have done it without sitting in there for 45 minutes. Jim Sheridan did the same thing to me on Get Rich or Die Tryin’. He’s a huge fan of that style of acting, and it was like, had me in a wheelchair for, like, I don’t know, for months, man, like, out in Canada at home. You know, obviously I could have I, there were times I did walk.

24:11 I didn’t live my whole life in it, but it was like, take the wheelchair home. On set, he didn’t want to see me out of the wheelchair, filming, or not, telling me stories about Daniel Day-Lewis and like, you know, basically what we all need to be living up to. Okay, subtle hints there. Yeah, yeah, subtle hints, man. I mean, it went deeper with him.

24:29 He pretty much nearly sat me to get me to do a scene, right? Like, one day, yeah, we were doing a scene where I get shot in my back in the nightclub, and I’m on the floor, and they all come back to me, and they’re like, you know, trying to pick me up and I’ve got to say, all right, I’m all right, I’m all right, I’m all right, I’m all right, in a Jamaican sort of accent, and he’s like, cut, you’re not saying it right, you’re not doing it right. So I’m like, well, all right, well, let’s try again.

24:54 We did that three, four, five times, kept on saying cut, no, Ashley, no, you’re not doing it, and there’s like 50 people on set. Oh, man, it’s, it’s worse than that. There’s extras, everybody’s waiting. Yeah, 50, everyone. So I’m like, oh my God, this is like my second day filming or something.

25:10 It’s my first kind of American big American movie, or whatever. So I was like f***. And yeah, and then he eventually came over and was like, get up off the ground, I’ll show you how to do it. He got down on the ground himself, and he’s doing all this, and I’ve gone, I’m starting to get frustrated now, and whatever. So I’ve got, like, you if I’m paralyzed from the waist down, there’s no way you’re moving that much, like you’re moving too much or whatever.

25:34 I’m just trying to, I’m paralyzed or whatever, and he’s like, no, no, I want you to do it like this, or whatever. Did it again. He’s like, no, cop, do you know? Everyone go to lunch. Ashley, you stay here.

25:44 He’s taking me over to the side of the room and going, like, I know you’re good. Like I’ve seen a few things that you’ve done, or whatever. But right now everything you’ve shot is going to end up on the cutting room floor, because it’s just not working for me, right? And this is a crucial scene. This is a crucial scene, and he’s like, you have to, you know.

26:03 You’re basically, what was happening is I was, I was a bit daunted by the whole experience. I think I was like a rabbit in the headlights. At any point, you know, you got Jimmy Iovine standing there, talking to 50, and then they’re talking about M&M’s coming in, and Lloyd Banks, this and this person and that, and I’m just like, I’m a kid from Peckham. Like, it’s your second day on, yeah, it’s my second day on the shoot, and it’s just amazing to me, so I think I was in awe too much.

26:28 Okay. Was he right in retrospect? The director. He was right in retrospect, but I think he did something. He, I was, he basically said he’s going to send me home if this is not working out, okay?

26:41 And sent me to lunch, so I had an hour’s lunch to ponder what this guy had just said to me. Right? Did you, you talked about your temper. Did you get angry at all, or not? I f***ing got angry.

26:50 I got angry with him. This is why it got so heated, cuz after the seventh time he’s saying cut and I’m thinking, I’m only, I’m saying all right, I don’t understand what you want me to do. You know, that sort of frustration, like, come on, you’re just being picky now. Like, but obviously there’s something he weren’t seeing, and he’s down for this whole method thing, and noticed, probably, that I’m not really you know, giving it all, that I’m a bit loose with it and slack and whatever.

27:15 And yeah, so he sent me back to my trailer. We came back after lunch, and in that hour’s time I ate lunch. I think I got angry. I cried. I called my mom.

27:27 I got insecure. I did. I went through all these different emotions. Five stages, yeah, like what’s going to happen to me? Yeah, yeah, all that crap.

27:36 I was going through, didn’t speak to anyone over lunch, and came back, and we, there was the first thing we did. He’s like, do it again. Now, whatever. I got down, I did it, and I did it, and you did it? Yeah.

27:45 And it was what he wanted. And was it different than what you were doing? You think I didn’t think so? Okay. But there you go.

27:51 Is this what you go back to, what you’re saying, sometimes art is just art because people say it is? Right? Yeah, well, that, sometimes I think there are a lot of people that need to, they have a process themselves, right? I’ve watched it as well, cuz I’ve been, I was that guy on that day, but I’ve been on other sets, like Top Boy or whatever, where I’m number one in the cool sheet. I’m the lead actor, and then it trickles down, and the director will pick on others.

28:17 Do you think they do that as a point in order to get everybody else to raise their game? Maybe, maybe they’re just, and maybe they’re just insecure themselves, and they’d like to say something to me because they didn’t think I did what I was doing right, and it’s affecting the other person’s performance, but it’s easier to go to them, you know what I mean? Like, do this or whatever. I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of that that goes on, so I don’t, I take everything with a pinch of salt.

28:44 I took a part-time film course at Met Film out in the Ealing, and, like, one of the things they teach you, budding directors, is you never tell your actors that. Now, you never, you never confront them like that. You never tell them to act this way, because that’s the hardest thing for anyone to digest. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that’s when it got between me and Jim. That’s when it got political, and the tables turned, and I realized, you know, this is, this is an attack here.

29:13 This is no longer someone trying to get the best performance out of me, but that’s, or that’s what I felt at the time, but I think that’s what he was genuinely trying to do. I mean, consequently, other actors, American actors, that were in it, Tory Kittles came up to me one day and was like, yeah, he did, he did the same thing to me man. Over, over, when I was saying ones and fives, ones and fives. It was talking about $1 notes and $5 notes in, when they’re doing the robbery in the beginning, and he was like, they went, it went back and forth for like an hour, you saying, like, C, no, say ones and fives.

29:46 I am saying ones and fives, this and that. So it kind of eased me a bit, and I thought, maybe this is his, a bit of Jim’s process, rather than like anything to do with me, because as an actor you get very, you’re very insecure, right? You’re always waiting for people to tell you it’s good or it’s bad, or, but you need to hear something. The moment you don’t hear anything, or you don’t feel anything, you get quite scared, right? Cuz you’re ultimately performing for the director, and if he likes it or not, like you’re just waiting for him for feedback.

30:15 Yeah, yeah. We’re like, yeah, we’re like little puppies sometimes, you know, just wanting someone to pick us up. It’s a weird one. You do get into that whole, you need your ego needs to be stroked slightly, right? Yeah, and that’s what a good director does.

30:31 I think so. I think so I think that’s what they would do. I think the best directors, I think, are, have people skills, you know, and there’s a lot of directors that come strictly or predominantly from, you know, an editing background, which is a beautiful thing, I think, cuz you always, you know, you 95% of the time, you’re always going to have what you need in the when you’re cutting, but I think they lack a bit of the how to deal with actors. Would you rather work with a former actor being the director?

31:02 Yeah, I think, yeah, I definitely would. I think the best directors I’ve worked with have come from that background, or just a really good with people. Okay. Really nice people. Okay.

31:14 You need to feel comfortable. If you’re, you know, that sort of boss is not the sort of boss that would be CEO or head of Apple or whatever. I think those sort of people, Richard Branson, whatever, they’ve got to be ruthless. Donald Trump, whatever, they had to be ruthless to get to where they were. But I think, as a director, as someone that’s kind of taking the [expletive] through, so to speak.

31:35 They need, everyone needs to like you, right? What was that experience like as a whole, just being with 50, your first American movie, like, what did you take away from that? Like, I don’t want to do that again. How was the, how was the vibe? I mean, it was.

31:49 50 was riding a crazy wave. It was, it was, it was just crazy. It was just like, you could sense the fact that you know this was a huge thing. I mean, in when it comes to budgets, I don’t know, it was 70 or 80 million. I don’t think that’s really huge when it comes to these days, anyway, when it comes to like blockbuster American blockbuster movies, but it was huge for me, cuz there were no special effects and no big stunts, and what was the location was it was a set where a set way, York, York.

32:21 We filmed in Toronto. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, but it was just a beautiful experience. I think the main thing I got from it, obviously, I enjoyed making the movie. I enjoyed the outside bits of it. We were, they put us up in some apartment block in Yorkville, Toronto, which is like the Knightsbridge of Toronto, and it’s just like, you know, it’s the, the apartments were amazing man.

32:47 They gave me this apartment, there, JLo and Ben Affleck staying, and the floor above, and you know, loads of different actors and stuff like that, and they were throwing money at me every week, and have my own car, and like, I was there for like three or four months, so it became home to me. Do you know what I mean? So I was enjoying it, enjoying the kind of limelight that surrounded it, and people knew that we were there, eventually, and what I was filming, and whatever, and the girls and this and that.

33:16 It was like it was crazy, man. You know, I went out a few times with 50. I was just enjoying it. Okay. So he was, he was cool.

33:22 You could hang out with, he was cool. Yeah, we could. We could hang out, man. We hang, we hung out. He was a really nice guy.

33:28 I think at times I got kind of overwhelmed by I suppose his wealth and fame, cuz, you know, like, there’d be, he’d have cars delivered to set on a regular basis, like buying new cars, you know? New Chevy, this, and new, this, and new imp paror and that, and whatever. You know, it’s like it was overwhelming, and I, one day, I kind of, I thought to myself, I’m going to buy myself a watch. I’d always wanted a Jacob’s watch. I’ve been watching all these rappers wearing them in videos they were wearing back, yeah.

34:02 So it was like, right, I’m going to get myself one. So I kind of went down to Jacob’s, what I thought was Jacob’s, and then it’s not Jacob’s. It’s like a pre store where they call up Jacob’s and say we’ve got someone that wants to buy. They check out if you’re serious or not, okay? And then you get a cab comes for you and takes you down to the actual store.

34:20 So I went there, I eventually got there, and I bought a watch for like eight grand or something like that. Was like, what, 14 thousand? Yeah, yeah. Okay. One of the low-end models.

34:31 Yeah, yeah, one of the very low-end models. But for me, it was, I was like, I was over the moon. I put that on straight away. I was like, yeah. Got back to set, and I have my watch on, and 50 walks past me.

34:44 You see it, got done a double take. Come, he’s like, man, what’s that? I was like, yeah, I bought it from Jacob’s. Like, do you like? He’s like, man, that’s s*** man.

34:55 He kind of and he’s like, you know what? One of the production assistants came to see if we were ready to go and set, and he was like, no, we’re not ready. I’m taking Ash back to Jacob’s, we’re going to change that watch. What, not enough ice? What was, what did I, I don’t know.

35:09 There, I mean, it was a really basic one. I think it had, like, you know, just the one where the stones going around the rim of the watch but none inside it, it wasn’t flooded, and he was like, no, we’re going back. So he’s kind of put me in the car, put me in his car with his security. We jumped in the back. They put on the presidential lights on the car.

35:30 Wooo, we’re driving through traffic, cutting through. This is like, it’s like a movie to me. Is that legal? I don’t know, man. I was just figuring this is crazy.

35:39 I’m sitting in the back of the car with 50 Cent like. And he, we got outside this, the store, he took an iced-out diamond chain out the back of the car, at the back of the passenger seat, an iced-out watch and a ring, and I was, I was looking, I was just looking at him, and he was like, yes, my rapper kit. Right? Right. So he’s like, when we go in there, just follow my lead.

36:03 So we’ve gone in, and he’s just kicked off, and then on this guy, how dare you give my little cousin from London this watch? I sent him in there to buy a watch for his birthday, and you give him this crap, this and that, or whatever, and they were like, we didn’t know, he never said he was your cousin. And 50 looked at me and goes, why didn’t you say he was my cousin? And I’ve got, I don’t know, like, oh man, it was crazy. And then he was like, Ash, pick whatever watch you want.

36:30 I’d obviously seen loads in there that I would love to have, that were like 60 grand, 70 grand, whatever, but obviously I could only afford that one, so I picked. I went over to one of the ones that I’ve been looking at. It was like 62,000 or something like that. And he was like, yeah, he bought it for me. Really?

36:48 Yeah, just bought me a watch. I was like, well, you know, do you still have it? I don’t. No, I sold it. I sold it.

36:56 I sold it. Time got hard. That was the first thing to go. And as well, it was like, over here it’s hard to walk around with stuff on your wrist like that, man, cuz you will get, you’ll get jacked. Yeah, yeah, okay.

37:09 Yeah, well, and that’s not a case in the states or L. I think it is a case in the States, but I think in the states I don’t make enough money to have security following me everywhere, nor do you want it, right? Nor do I want it. Exactly. But, you know, so all that stuff is just like, you know, I’m a free man.

37:27 I walk around. I take the tube, I take the bus. Yeah, I live a normal as much as I can. Obviously people stop you and say stuff, and it’s annoying sometimes, but you know, I got kids. I go to the park with my kids, fun fair, whatever.

37:40 I don’t ever want to, have them make them have to feel like, you know, they need to be protected all the time, and, you know, uncomfortable in their own skin and in the world. So I’ve just always kept it that way, and obviously there may come a time where it has to be done, or you’re in certain situations. Some gigs I go to, I have security, but only for the night, not 24 hours, 7 days a week. Do you know what I mean? Right?

38:05 So, so you’ll just go out, no matter. You’ll never let that stop you from going on the tube or going out walking. Do you go incognito or anything, or some glasses on? I mean, sometimes people think that I’m doing it that way, but I just put my hat on, my sunglasses on, like I just what I felt like doing. But yeah, I’m happy to do it.

38:24 I’ve got footage sometimes. I go on a tube and I’ll stand, purposely stand up, you know, even when there’s seats by the, you know, they got a glass window where the trains connect the carriages, and I’ll stand there, put my iPhone on, and flip it so it’s looking at me, but I can also then see the people behind me, right? And I’ll film it sometimes, and they’re like, you know, what they’re doing, sneaking pictures, yeah, doing all sorts of stuff, and you just think it’s funny.

38:51 It’s funny, man. That’s good to know. You go out and walk on the streets and stuff like that, so do you ever stay in touch with, you know, any of the guys, the hip-hop guys from that movie, Lloyd Banks or 50? I mean, that’s a long time ago. That’s 9 years ago.

39:03 Yeah, 9 years ago now, and I did for the first year, I must admit, or first two years actually, cuz I did another film with 50 after that, he flew over to shoot something, an English production, called Dead Man Running. Okay, yeah, remember? Hear me? Him, Danny D, Tamer Hassan, a few other people, just a few English faces, Rio Ferdinand, and then Ashley Cole funded the film. They put the money together and they flew him out, so he was doing something with Mickey Rourke at the time, I think.

39:32 Yeah, Mickey was kind of making a comeback, so he was flying back and forth. So yeah, I mean, you know, in from Get Rich or Die Tryin’, that when we shot that film, we did kind of stay in touch, and when he was over he’d give me a call every now and again. I was ringing him about having some meetings about music and kind of helping me with music. We’ve actually got two tracks together, really, that no one’s ever, ever, ever heard, and I’ve never been able to get to sign them off, from years and years and years ago.

39:59 Yeah, so I’ve never been able to get him to sign off for them so I could put them out, and he probably never would now. But, yeah, they missed. I had an album coming out, and it was like and you couldn’t get in touch with him. Yeah, so, yeah, at that point it became hard, and it was this whole thing about Chris Lighty as well, man, rest in peace. He was the head of a management company called Violator, who took care of 50, American management company, and he passed away a few years back.

40:28 But he was, you know, God bless his soul, but when he was alive he was a very difficult man. He wouldn’t let a lot of people get in contact with 50. So you’d be like, you know, we spent like seven months together in New York and Toronto and this and that, you’d be like, I don’t care, you know, I mean, so I could see him being harder to get a hold of than like the president, if he’s got the people around him that just don’t get the calls back and stuff like that.

40:51 So, let’s talk music a bit. I was wondering if you’d take me back to 1998, Supreme FM Brixton, Patrick G. Wow. Yeah, how did that all start? For me, I mean, for us, it was like it was a way of listening.

41:12 I think, like, you, the whole Pirate Radio scene was just a way of listening to music that, you know, we was organic, that we all created ourselves, and that the radio just wouldn’t play at that point. You know, I think now there’s less of a demand for Pirate Radio, cuz commercial radio are having to play more of the underground stuff that we want them to play, but the irony is that as soon as it’s played on their stations, it becomes commercial and it’s no longer what we want to hear anymore. So there’s still a demand for it, but then what was going on at Supreme FM?

41:44 What were they doing? It was just, what you mean? I mean, like, what, how did you start, like, going there? How did you start, even, in with music, and what were you doing? Me and my cousin used to sit down most Fridays, and just go through.

41:55 My cousin introduced me to house and garage, what it was then, and he was like, he was very new to it himself. He was like, he stumbled across it and was like, have you heard this music? And we used to listen to it together most Fridays. We used to sit down and go through all the different dials for Pirate Radio stations to listen to house and garage and write lyrics to it, sometimes, cuz we heard other MCs, so we’d write a lot of party lyrics and whatever.

42:17 Then I was already heavily into hip-hop and the American scene by then, Biggie, Jay-Z, whatever. Do you know what I mean? So I was already like Camp Lo. I was already into, into, hip-hop or heavily, so I knew about writing. But I was just writing sort of hip-hop lyrics over house and garage, really.

42:36 Okay, was it a tendency to write, and perform like Americans a bit? Oh, yeah, definitely. That’s what it was all about. I mean, initially, I started off with an American accent when I was writing. Isn’t that crazy?

42:48 Yeah, most people do. I think Mike Skinner from The Streets, he’s got a really good book where he talks about the whole Streets movement and stuff, and he said, you know, back then a lot of people were doing that, right, whether they knew it or not. Yeah, some people didn’t actually realize. Like, even now, R&B, it’s only in the last four or five years, I’d say that we started to get our own voice as singers over here, R&B singers, or singers in general.

43:12 Like, for, since you know, you’ve got Adele. People, like, they don’t sing with an American accent. Lily Allen, people like that push the game forward because they came out very Cockney, and very, you know, do you know what I mean? And would be like, so London, it’s unbelievable, so we’re getting a surge of that now, but mostly R&B singers from the UK. Tyle Cruz, who else Angel.

43:35 Like a lot of artists, you can take it back to the Rolling Stones and stuff. You wouldn’t know they’re British. Right, exactly, exactly. So it was a common thing, but you know, I started off like that, but obviously developed, because it was a very UK sound, so it didn’t really work with the American accent. It weren’t the same, so we had to, we developed.

43:54 You developed your flow. The pace of it was different. The BPM. Yeah, it was like 140, like 21 Seconds, 140. American hip-hop was like 110, so it’s a lot different when it comes to pace, right?

44:07 So yeah, we just developed, but it went from there. So I started doing that, and then I stumbled across So Solid on the radio. So initially I was a fan of So Solid. I started listening to them every Friday, 8 to 10, or something, they did, and they were performing live in the station over beats, or they had recorded stuff. No, no, they were performing live in the station over beats, so they have a DJ cutting beats together, and they just go back and forth, free microphones, you know, Romeo, Megaman, and someone else, or whatever, freestyling or stuff, they freestyling stuff, they’d written stuff that was familiar with people, you know, they perform in clubs or whatever.

44:42 So for me they just became, like, that was it. I thought, wow, we’ve got our own thing now. Like, this is our own rap, this is our own hip-hop scene, because before that we didn’t have anything that represented us. The drug dealers, the guys on the estates, the murderers, the D, whatever you want to call them. Yeah, we had no one.

45:05 We weren’t represented out there in music. It was boy bands, you know, Seal, there, all sorts of crap that, like, you look back on and you just really did. I listened to that crap, you know what I mean? But you did, right? But I did.

45:20 Okay. So yes, I mean, and I, so I’d listened to So Solid, and then once they did a live call competition, so you could call in live into the studio and wrap down the phone, and whoever won would get a chance to come in the studio and perform in the studio live. Okay. So I called up and I won. Seriously?

45:40 Yeah. Everybody wanted to be part of this crew. Oh, yeah, yeah, everyone. So long story short, I met Patrick G. I very quickly realized that he was very, very, he had a very, very big issue with drugs.

45:54 Okay. This is the DJ who owned Supreme. He owned Supreme, right? Okay. You know, at the time my name was Asha, right, and I kind of went down there.

46:05 I gave him a tape I made myself of me spitting or rapping over beats, and he went into a bedroom, came back out. I was like, yeah, all right, cool. You got a set this time, this time, on Monday or whatever. This will be your DJ. Put me with a DJ, and so obviously I was over the moon.

46:23 I got my own set and whatever, but obviously I was like, you know, I think So Solid would come on like three hours after me. I’d wait after I’d finished my set in the studio in this flat in Brixton and just wait for them to turn up, and sit in the corner and listen to them all night while they did their set, just in awe. Would you introduce yourself? And just, yeah, yeah, they knew who I was. They knew who I was.

46:45 You know, I was at that point, I was the actor, the actor boy, cuz I was already in Grange Hill, yeah, yeah, on TV doing things or whatever, so everyone kind of knew my face already. And you’ve been on stage since you were six? People don’t know that. Yeah, you were actor first. Yeah, I started off, like, in Western theater, right?

47:01 Like, when you were really young, really really young. I think my first stage performance, I was, I think between the age of seven and N, I think, or something like that. Wow. And that was, Prince Edward f as Children of Eden, and then I went on to, like, Palladium. I did Oliver, Jonathan Price, Sam Mendes directed that.

47:24 And then I went on to, what’s, did I do, Carmen Jones at the Old Vic. I kind of, yeah, I did that for a while, man. A lot of stage stuff. So they knew, they knew you as the actor. They knew me as the actor, which is good, better than nothing, I guess.

47:39 Was better than nothing. Yeah, definitely. I mean, at least they knew me. They knew me enough, they were, they were interested in me enough to let me stay in the room, cuz a lot of other people wouldn’t get to stay in the room or whatever. That was So Solid time.

47:49 It’s only So Solid members, but I kind of got a little, you know, they bought me in. Okay, and hundreds of people wanted to come down there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the most sought after thing. I mean, when this was happening, it was just like, it was unbelievable.

48:04 It overwhelmed everyone, the government, the police, everyone, obviously, as you know, like how the story turned out. So it was like the most amazing experience. For how did the story turn out? Well, pretty much, you know, we became, at the time, we rose to fame, or shot to fame, I say. Gun crime did as well in the UK.

48:24 I mean, I remember it being like, you heard stories about Brooklyn and you know, New York, and you know, the West Coast, and whatever, and how it went down over there, but we didn’t really have it like that here. There weren’t, there wasn’t that many guns here. Oh, no, there wasn’t that many guns, or whatever, and all of a sudden London just became a war zone. London, Birmingham, like all the major cities just became a war zone because of the music. That’s what the government and the police reckon, and would like to say.

48:54 What do you say? I’d say hell no. I mean, okay, doesn’t make sense. Yeah, but, but then again, no, no, it’s a crazy world. I mean, yeah, you know, there will be a few people that will be influenced by a computer game or music or a book or what someone else told them to do or say or whatever.

49:11 Do you know what I mean? It’s life. I don’t personally think. I think if, you know, if I say in a song, kill people, kill people, whatever, and then the kid goes and kills people, I think that they were wrong in the first place. I think there’s something wrong with them in the beginning for them to, you know, for that to give them the impetus to go and shoot someone.

49:32 But you know, like we were saying before, in the beginning, when you’re in the Limelight or whatever, you know, you are in the spotlight, you’re expected to act a certain way, you’re expected, kids listen to your music, especially, you’re expected to be a role model. So we were easy target, because obviously we were going through our own things in our life. The stuff that we were talking about wasn’t just about, you know, making things up or imagination.

49:56 We were literally talking about naming names, talking about people we knew, how they died, how we got shot, who we shot at, right? Do you know what I mean? We were talking about our everyday lives. Me personally, my life wasn’t that bad, so I wouldn’t be talking about all that stuff, but a lot of members of my, my crew, that’s the life they were living. You know, they weren’t destined to be actors or rappers or whatever.

50:21 This opportunity came and they just grabbed on to it, but before then they were, you know, they were hustlers, were doing their thing. And so it was like, yeah, I think it was just a perfect opportunity for a government that was in despair, and didn’t understand, or did understand and didn’t want to admit that they understood, that they, it was about how they’re going to control this thing, And furthermore, whose fault is it, who do we blame? And it just so happened that a few people would get got shot at one of our gigs, right?

50:53 You know, just all these things happened that combined together just said you got something to do with this, you know what I mean? And we can’t take the blame for this, and we’re not going to. So it’s, your parents don’t let your kids listen to this stuff, they’re brainwashing your children, whatever, when we all know, you know, they, we’re impoverished people. The inner city areas need more money. The F communities need more support, and whatever.

51:20 Which is the reasons why they turn to things like drugs and guns. And we all know that they’re readily available in these areas, because they’re letting them be, do you know what I mean? It’s like, you know, so it’s all goes hand in hand. I don’t want to get deep into the whole thing, but I’ve never understood why we can go into places like Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever, shoot out the place, kill Bin Laden, do this, do that, or whatever, but we can’t stop gun crime in Peckham or Bingham or whatever.

51:49 That just boggles me. That whole thing, it’s just so difficult to grasp over here. But you know, so yeah, we just became a scapegoat, and you guys kind of came synonymous with gun crime, with violence and London. You guys probably, probably, you probably benefited and were hurt from that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

52:06 It’s a gift and a curse, definitely. And we didn’t help ourselves. I mean, after that point I went to prison. I got caught with a gun, right, and then five other members got caught with a gun, and then one went for attempted murder, and one’s doing life for murder. Now, like, so, like, obviously we didn’t help ourselves, but I think the moral of the story is we were, we were those kids that were getting caught up in what I was talking about, you know, that we were those kids that came from that impoverished environment, and we were even though we had an opportunity to do much better, we didn’t take it.

52:37 We didn’t capitalize on it because we didn’t know how you know what I mean? We didn’t have the right help around us. Anyone that was around us that probably could have pulled us through was just interested in making money for, and capitalizing that in the moment, right? Do you think you would have been carrying a gun if you hadn’t been part of So Solid? Did it in a weird way, the art, start intersecting with your life?

52:57 Or, oh yeah, of course, of course. I was, just for me, it was, I grew up as an only child. I had brothers and whatever, but I never lived with them, and I got bullied, mugged, all sorts of stuff when I was young. Like, I always wanted to be part of a gang. My dad wasn’t around, for me, he was imprisoned most of my life.

53:14 So when I got to be a part of So Solid, it wasn’t necessarily about music. It was about having a family. It’s about having a group of like-minded people that I would feel so protected in that crew, no one could touch me. I was now a member of a gang. You know, finally I was do you know what I mean?

53:30 It was an acceptance for me, so I felt very strong, but I didn’t necessarily have the same upbringing as the rest of the guys. I think my mom was very dedicated to my education, and you know, I got to experience a lot of different things than they did, hence why I was already acting from when I was a young, young kid. So yeah, I mean, it was like I watched all these people’s stories and watched what they went through and whatever, and eventually became, came, embroiling it myself.

53:57 Do you know what I mean? It’s hard not to. And I felt the fear, and there was a huge surge in the amount of people that wanted to hurt me because of the success that I had, and at that point I was still living on a council estate in Brixton. You know, I was getting shot at on a weekly basis, really, cuz you were in So Solid. Yeah, was guilty by association.

54:17 I mean, a lot of the other members had shot other people before and done other things to this guy from that territory, and whatever, so I get caught slipping by myself, you know what I mean? By someone who wants my friend or something. It’s like it lights out, is it, as far as they’re concerned? So a lot of those things happen to me, man. I was, I was put in a lot of difficult situations, and if I’m honest, I feared for my life.

54:39 So I had just thought, I’m getting a gun, but obviously being with So Solid and whatever entwined all of those little different parts helped me to make that decision. It’s what I knew. I’d seen guns before. I understood that you didn’t go to the police and say I’m being threatened as a young black man, you know what I mean? In those areas you dealt with your problem yourself, or you and your friends did.

55:02 That was as simple as that. So that’s the first thing I did, like. In hindsight, I can look back and say I know it’s stupid. It was the most stupid thing for me to do. More importantly, I, you know, I think if I hadn’t got caught with the gun, yeah, what would have happened?

55:19 I’d be dead now, or I’d be in jail myself, probably, cuz you were probably going to continue to get more out of control. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I was, by the time I got caught, I was out of control. Okay. I was going everywhere with my gun at that point.

55:33 Okay. And violence was escalating, and yeah, violence was escalating. My paranoia had gone through the roof, so I was just so scared. You know, someone might have come up to me and gone hello, and I might have shot him. Do you, I mean, that’s how, kind of, that’s how I felt at the time.

55:51 Not sleeping, manning my door, like I’m in the army, glass of brandy in front of the door with a chair. You know, my girlfriend telling me come to sleep, and whatever, but I was like, no, we had death threats last night, and someone threw paint on my car, and this, you know, just thinking it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. So this is the glamorous life of a musician, if understand right? Yeah, if you want to call it that. I mean, so yeah.

56:14 I mean, I don’t, I don’t regret those days. You know, I know I was scared through them, and I got through them, but I don’t want to go back. But in retrospect, you wouldn’t change anything about that? You would have been like, I shouldn’t have been caring in that. I wish I hadn’t got stopped, or that that 18 months was way out of line.

56:30 Do you think any of those things, I wouldn’t be as cheeky as to say I wouldn’t, I wish I didn’t get stopped, even though sometimes I did think that, like, why did I get caught? But, but yeah, no. I mean, I, I don’t, I would like to. I would encourage everyone else not to make that same decision, but I can honestly say I probably do the same thing again when it comes to protecting my family. I really felt that I needed to protect my family.

56:56 I had a son by then, and my girlfriend, and whatever, and I just felt under threat, and I think most people in that situation, most men, would feel that way as well, that they want to protect themselves. I knew that for a fact, that the authorities wouldn’t do anything for me unless they’re going to stand outside my door for 24 hours a day, or whatever. What can they do? And they’re probably going to look at me like I’m an idiot anyway. You’re this guy, and so solid, really int, you’re just a big s***, cuz you’re calling us to come and do, you know what I mean?

57:25 And then go into other game members. That’s what I did, and I snitched, and it just becomes another thing. I just thought, handle it myself. Have things changed now? Are things safer, 10 year well, you know, 15 years later, do you know what the worst thing about it is?

57:37 I think this is another reason why I think people should not make that same decision. Is that it isn’t any different for me now than it was then, to be honest. There’s the same amount of level of alert, there’s the same level of awareness about where I am, who I go with, who I’m with, where I go, whatever. But I have a sort of a preparation. I have prepared myself for what may be, you see what I’m saying?

58:07 So I don’t think I’m scared anymore. Okay. You know, I don’t know whether that comes with maturity or whatever, but I’m just not willing to be. I was a recluse. Then I became a recluse.

58:22 I drank myself to stupidity. I did all sorts of things cuz out of fear, depression, not wanting to go out, this and that, or whatever, because of the stuff that was going on, and I lost myself as a person. If I get shot next week, I’ve lived a good life. I want to know that I’ve been, you know, I’ve been out there. I’ve taken my opportunities.

58:43 I’ve enjoyed everything. I’ve, you know, I’ve gone on holidays with my wife. I’ve been clubbing. I’ve, I’ve experienced things. I’m not going to let other people’s jealousy, hatred, or whatever you want to call it, insecurities even, affect my lifestyle.

58:59 When did you deal with that? Was it in jail, or was it many years later that you’re able to make that transition? Many years later. Probably, I think I’m still making the transition now. Is it just growing up?

59:09 Yeah, I think so. I think so. Getting married was a huge milestone for me, cuz that was another thing that I never, ever, ever, ever in my life thought I was going to do. People don’t get married where I come from. Like, you know, my mom got married 10 years ago, and that was an eye opener for me.

59:28 I just, like, really, so yeah, getting married to my wife was kind of, I don’t know, I think it’s, it’s definitely pushed me to up my game a bit more when it comes to just being a human and and living. Do you know what I mean? Cuz you’re finally accepting that it’s not just about you, that there’s someone else just as important. Well, exactly. I mean, there’s someone else.

59:53 Just, there’s other people that are just as important, but it wasn’t having children that made you make that realization, it was actually getting married. It was getting married, it made me being ready for marriage, maybe, and you make a conscious choice to be married? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was my idea, you know. I just felt I met the girl of my dreams. Yeah, I know, Sophie, and I just, you know, this is this She’s the one.

1:00:16 Yeah, Sophie. Cliche, like, but I genuinely got those feelings I never had before. You thought you were never going to be the guy to get married. I’m going to be solo the whole time. A lot of guys feel yeah, I mean, not necessarily solo, just like, what do you need a marriage for, sort of thing?

1:00:31 Who needs it? What’s it about? Cont, cont, government, with church. It doesn’t mean anything, you know, get a few tax breaks, maybe, or whatever, but like, what is it all about? What changed your mind?

1:00:42 What made you embrace it? She did. Okay. She did, all right, and you were like, this is going to happen, this is the one. Boom.

1:00:48 And then that made you start accepting yourself a bit more. Yeah, yeah. I’m, I, I like I said, I think I’ve, I’ve implied throughout, I’m an insecure person and I’ve, I make a lot of decisions. You know, I’m quite definite in the decisions I make, but at the same time, I do, you know, I analyze things a lot. I think about things too much.

1:01:14 I do think I have made the right decision a lot, or whatever, rather than just doing something and letting it go, and whatever, and I also F, I always F, am I good enough for anyone? One, right? You know, can I be that person that can I be faithful? Can I be loyal? Can I be all those things that, like, a husband is meant to be?

1:01:35 Judging by my own track record, you know, you look at your CV and you think, on paper, technically, this is not, I’m not meant to be getting married. Was the, was the So Solid fame, was it too fast in retrospect? Too fast. Anyone handle that when they’re that young? That I don’t know.

1:01:54 I maybe not, but maybe, maybe, or maybe there is a person that can. Like, it doesn’t look like Justin Bieber, can, you know, Michael Jackson didn’t, when you see someone like Justin Bieber kind of going off the deep end in slow motion, do you think, like, I feel for your kid, or there’s not? He’s doing everything he can. What do you, what do you think? I do, I think I feel for him.

1:02:14 Do, cuz it’s, that’s the worst time of your life to leave, right? To live that time of your life, that age, everyone wants to give you everything, everybody wants to be your friend. Oh my God, all the girls want you, all the guys want to hang out with you. What do you do? You’ve got to be really, really, really overfocused, or just dead inside to get, you have to be, man.

1:02:36 It’s amazing. It’s amazing. So, but obviously, like, we’ve been saying, you, he’s Justin Bieber. He has a lot of girls’ hearts in his hand around the world. Young, young girls.

1:02:48 You’ve got a bit of a better example, as far as anyone else is concerned. Like, you know, you want to sell to these kids, you’ve got to be squeaky clean, and if you are not, don’t get caught. Yeah, he probably doesn’t even care anymore. So I I don’t think so. I mean, I think he’s at the stage now where he’s trying to make that transition into being an adult artist, more R&B sounding sort of stuff, and whatever, and he’s got so much money.

1:03:14 I think you know, I think he’s done enough, probably, right now to be continued on that one. What was, what was jail like? Good and terrible at the same time, man. Hard, hard time for me. I felt I felt like I didn’t belong there, even though I always felt I was going to prison.

1:03:40 Yeah, I think he’s, it’s a what do they call it, a rite, a right, a passage. Okay. For a lot of young, in a city, children. Okay. You see most of your friends, most of your olders, as they were called, going to prison, coming back, getting love from everyone else because of it, moving up in the ranks because of it.

1:04:03 I suppose in the social ranks, you know what I mean? Is that wrong, or is that right? Or it’s very wrong, I think, but it’s very real, isn’t it? But it’s very real. Yeah, I mean, you compare that story to a kid that was, for example, born in Knightsbridge or Chelsea or Kensington.

1:04:20 It’s not, they’re going to be thinking about going to uni, probably, or taking over daddy’s business, or, you know, doing something like that, whereas we’re kind of aiming towards prison, then all these other crap things. I think it’s like even a subconscious thing where you’re like, part of you is drawing yourself toward it. Oh, yeah, of course, of course, of course. Yeah, you tempt, you temp F daily, man. So you’re in there and you’re thinking, I shouldn’t be here, but part of you is thinking, I was bound to happen, bound to happen.

1:04:50 Is it, is it completely wasted time? Are you thinking to yourself, I’ll never get these days back? Or is it like, that I’ll never waste time? Okay, ever, ever, ever, ever. What were you doing?

1:05:00 I read, I trained, not that you could tell now, but I trained, lifting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, I went in there, like, and I came out a beast, and I was so proud of it, that achievement. I took my maths GCSE again. I failed maths GCSE, and I think I got a C when I was in there, so I didn’t do that much better, but it was a pass.

1:05:26 Okay. I did NVQ and food hygiene of all things. Okay, but my job was, I was a working prison, so I worked in the kitchens in the jail, so cut meals for the other inmates, basically, and that’s why I spent my time doing. And then, like, I even put on a performance in there as well. I put on a concert, managed to get the governors to let me get a group of inmates together that wanted to perform, and was doing music and rapping and whatever, and we would have rehearsed like twice a week, like four weeks in the run up to this thing, and then they gave me the gym, and like the whole, all different wings came out and just watched or whatever, and I did that, I did that in an environment where I knew most people didn’t like me as well.

1:06:13 Okay. Was it dangerous in there? It was, I never had any actual danger. I came close to it. So I never got stabbed once.

1:06:21 Some guy made a knife for me. We had an argument over Paul playing the pool on the pool table, and then next day, you know, he gone in his cell in the night and made a knife. He’s saying to his cellmate that he’s going to stab me in the morning. Luckily enough, the cellmate told the governors, the prison staff, and they raided his cell, and found it or whatever, and he got taken off the wing. And I had another sticky situation where, you know, I was about to get beaten up in the showers.

1:06:52 A guard had left me there on purpose in the wrong place, cuz they knew that people were trying to get hold of me through their intelligence, reading letters and listening to phone calls, and that. So obviously one of these prison staff was working with another inmate, and kind of left me in there. About five of them came in to beat me up, but one warden from my wing found out about it and came and saved me. So it was close. There was a few times where I thought, you know, this is quite sticky.

1:07:22 But it was all about, I enjoyed changing the perceptions, people’s perceptions of me, and I think a lot of people thought I thought I was a gangster, and you know what, they seen on TV and in the press, and that, so they act, they were actually you know, real hardcore gangsters, and they’re thinking, this guy, I think he is, like, whatever, so they would test you a bit, don’t they? And when I was like, well, I’m cool, man, I’m no threat to you, bro, like I’m, I was just making music. I know this.

1:07:52 I know that was a bit silly, me saying that in that lyric, and this and that, and whatever, and then they’re like, oh okay, that was okay, you’re nothing, man, you’re cool. You know what I mean? So but then at the whole time you’re thinking your music career is over, your acting career is over. I mean, that was sad. The hardest thing was not seeing my kids, to be honest, and family.

1:08:11 That was the hardest thing for me. I left at a difficult time. I just signed a solo deal with Sony before I went to jail, so that was the hardest thing, man. And, you know, while I was in prison, I was just thinking, I’ve lost that opportunity. I dreamt of having that solo deal.

1:08:29 The album with the crew and everything was wicked, but everyone else had been slowly getting solo deals, and in my mind I was like, mine’s coming, mine’s coming, and I got the biggest deal out of everyone. You know, it was the most anticipated thing, and it just killed it for me. You know, that killed the whole album. The notoriety does not work in the UK. It’s like it’s not what it’s about.

1:08:50 So okay. It flopped. You know, it was a huge flop, and I just thought my career is over. I came out. I lost my house, sorry.

1:08:58 I came out, I lost my house, lost my car, you know, like, everything. It just seemed I had no money in the bank. It was just like, I’ve been, I’ve been raped and pillaged, and you know, like people taking money from me, management. I was going through court cases and whatever. It was just desperate times.

1:09:18 Were you angry, or were you humbled by the whole thing? I went into, I went, I do what I usually do. Go into myself, don’t go out, you know, don’t talk to anyone, whatever, stop answering my phone, just depression, man. Just like, is that, is that depression? Is how it is, sounds like what I used to do.

1:09:36 So it’s my way of, because I really do believe that if I don’t, I’ll kill someone, I’ll do something stupid. Okay. Yeah, I’ll get, my anger, is my temper, is that bad? I don’t seem to have a like a middle gear. It’s either very slow or very fast, but there’s no in between.

1:09:58 It’s still, still now. Yeah, at times, at times. I go through the numbers, like with my wife and stuff like that, like I have to have as much patience as I can. It’s amazing in life that you know there’s some people, you can just, my mom, like there’s a few people around me, my kids, or whatever, I can keep my calm. I lose my temper every now and again, but not to the point that I don’t know what I’m doing.

1:10:21 But in the outside world, with the outside world, I kind of you know, I get a Red Mist and I become someone else. And the scariest thing is I don’t like I don’t fear the consequences. Okay, you know, you understand, like, I don’t, I don’t care, and that’s been my downfall really, cuz, like, since going into prison, you know, I’ve, I have been a squeaky clean guy, but I’ve had a few moments along the way where I could have went. I could have went back to prison, to be honest, because of my, maybe it’s your subconscious, kind of knows that, and so it makes you just shut down when you even know that’s a possibility.

1:11:00 Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, I think the best thing for me to do is walk away, or, you know, stay at home. Done. Yeah, they call it anger management. I know John McEnroe, the tennis player, he was big into his anger management.

1:11:11 I think there’s something there with the anger management, but that’s very American. You know, you came out did Bullet Boy, and I think you made a conscious decision that you didn’t want to be the gangster guy. You didn’t want to get typecast as, you know, the dealer and the guy in the know, you know, doing the violence and stuff, so you stayed away from that for a while, but then obviously Top Boy, you’re kind of jumping back into it, and I was just wondering why you decided to do that.

1:11:34 Was it enough time, and then was it the script that made you want to do, you know, that project, and did you know it was going to be big? Yeah, well, it was. You never know it’s going to be big. You never know, right? But I had a, I had a sneaky suspicion what it was with Top Boy.

1:11:51 The appeal was, let me do it, and all the appeal was I got put a lot of scripts like that landing on my desk. Television and movies, television and movies. Yeah, and after Bullet Boy and a few other things, I made a conscious decision with my agent. I was like, no, we’ve got to stop doing this, cuz I’m just, this is what I’m going to be doing. Are you getting bored with it as well?

1:12:12 Yeah, it was getting quite boring. I wanted to act, man. I wanted to, you know, I wanted them to throw roles at me. I wanted them to say, I play, be gay in this. Maybe I might have said no, but I wanted to be offered that stuff.

1:12:24 Wanted to get, like, the West End, you’d be able to, exactly. I hadn’t started doing that sort of playing that sort of role all the time. I’d played loads of different roles on stage and whatever, I’m done different actors. I wanted to continue, so yeah, we made a conscious decision not to do it, and we kind of started going after other things. But Top Boy came in, and when I read it I just thought, wow, like I’ve not seen it done like this.

1:12:50 Obviously, at that time as well, we’d just been, I’d just been watching The Wire, okay, right, right, right, right. So I’d just been, people just put me on to it. He had been out for a while, but you probably started watching it. I had, personally, I was late. I hate, I hate to do the rush thing, like you know, when everyone else is, the W, the W, the way I kind of go, ah, whatever.

1:13:08 I know it’s everyone’s chatting crap, you know, everyone’s talking about it, like 50 Shades of Gray. It’s just like, stay, I’m not reading it, then if everyone else is reading it. But then one night, this is actually when I’m, no way, before that, when I was I was staying at my mom’s, and my stepdad had a box set, so I just threw it on and didn’t leave for like three days. Dangerous, yeah, dangerous. I just sat there for like three days now, thinking, what, we’ve got something like this, and then Top Boy came, and I was like, this is, this is what God’s just answered my prayers.

1:13:43 Why did you like The Wire? I liked it because it was raw. I liked it because it kind of exposed a lot of truths on different sides of the fence, you know, so to speak, you know, like what’s happening on the streets, how the police are dealing with it, how they’re dealing with it, the social workers, these person, that person, the crackheads, the you know, mean schol, the schools, yeah, like it’s how it affects a community. And it was real, and you had some really raw moments in there as well, where you just think, wow, is that f***ing on TV, sort of thing.

1:14:18 And it was almost non-conclusive, like the episode would end, and you’d be like, F*** you, you didn’t give me a nice package ending. Like you just let me sit there and think about that for a while. Yeah, it lets you yeah, just let it simmer, you know what I mean? Until you, I don’t think it’s your own perception, but yeah, also, as well, is just about the whole, what I liked was that they were organized. This was organized crime.

1:14:41 I think black people get, not that crime is a good thing to be doing for anyone, right, any race, wherever you come from, but I think black people get the roar under the stick when it comes to the fact that people don’t believe that they can be organized in their crime. You see what I’m saying? I’ve known for many years about organized crime in the UK, in London. I’ve maybe got friends and people that are involved in, so I understand that we’re not just, like, we don’t just go out and go bang and shoot people, and you know, deal drugs on the side of the street like idiots, and you know what I mean, do stupid things like, we came, this was a Black Mafia, right?

1:15:16 Do you know what I mean? It was stylish, it was classy. Did you see American Gangster with Denzel Washington, cuz that was like, oh my gosh, there’s black gangsters in the world, and everyone was like, oh, what a big surprise. Yeah, it’s like, what did you think, which seems kind of silly in retrospect? It does.

1:15:31 It just feels like, come on, man, you didn’t think one black man in the world had was clued up enough to cut out the middleman and fly to Taiwan or wherever himself and buy drugs, or I don’t know, but there’s a lot of that that’s going on, so I just love the fact that it exposed that sort of, that this was an organization. Like, there was a hierarchy, there was certain things that you had to abide by, and rules and laws, and, is, we, we have that over here on a smaller scale, mind, but we have that over here in the UK, and that’s what Top Boy showed to me, you know, and the the best thing about it was that your main, your main guy in the thing, in the show, you know, is the worst character ever, but you love him. How?

1:16:16 Meaning, I mean, the stuff he’s doing, Dushane, yeah, he’s a manipulative person. He knows how to manipulate the people around him. I think the best drug dealers do become that person in the end, because they don’t, what their whole life is spent not having to be around something that is generating them so much money. Is minimizing the risk from day one. You know, they start off on the street, but the aim is to be nowhere near it, but have other people doing what they’re doing.

1:16:45 So that was Dushane’s kind of thing, but in order to do that, you have to break eggs, do you know what I mean? You have to, people have to die, and have to do this, and whatever, and initially, in series one, his whole thing is, we can have a world, we can have a drug game where people don’t have to shoot each other all the time. He’s an idealist. Yeah, like, this doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to shop people’s hands off.

1:17:10 You don’t have to do this, but his partner is like, you’re dumb. That’s the only way. It’s so about making people scared of you, bro. Like, you have to, and they’re fighting that balance, but he’s so, he’s so against it, but when the chips are, is happy to give the order, right? Make it happen, or whatever.

1:17:30 So you saw that story arc when you read the script and you liked it? Yeah, I loved it. I loved it, I loved it, and I think, yeah, I went away. You know, it’s one of the things, my only projects that I’ve actually really watched, really like, and taken in and thought about, and maybe watched a few times, some times, some of the episodes, and I like the character. Like, I want him to succeed.

1:17:55 I know it’s weird, and as people we shouldn’t, but I think that’s what was another part of the appeal about the whole thing. I think people watched it, and it was like, you know, we want, I want this guy to come out of it, or, you know, to succeed in some sort of way, to get himself out. He was, Dushane’s idea is not being, not getting greedy, not doing this forever, getting this money, and putting it into something that can, EV, make him legitimate, and, you know, get himself out of that situation, and, I like that whole thing, even though it’s futile, of course.

1:18:35 It’s like a great Shakespearean tragedy, right? Oh yeah, yeah, it is, man. I mean, at the end of the day, we all know there’s, you know, you’re ending up in jail, back at square one with nothing, or you’re dead, right? You know, you’re playing a guy 5 years younger than you. You said that when you, you started going on the estates, like a lot of the slang that you remember, no one was saying that anymore.

1:18:56 I read an article in Time Out magazine. You said that. Well, how hard was it a transition to get back in that headspace? Not that difficult to be honest. I think obviously, like, you lose a certain connection when you’re away from somewhere for a long period of time, you do.

1:19:15 It’s inevitable that you’re going to lose some sort of understanding of it, or some sort of connection with it. And it just meant going back out there, really. I think that’s the beauty of Top Boy, was about that. We, me and Kano were surrounded by people plucked from obscurity, man, just people that were just dragged off the estate, the actors. The actors, they were just like, they’ve never acted before, they don’t look like actors.

1:19:40 That’s the crazy thing about no one looks like an actor in that show. They look completely out of place, they look miscast, cuz we’re so not used to it, you know? Yeah, yeah, and that’s, I mean, that was the amazing thing. So I mean, to be honest, in the beginning I was like, really? Is that going to work?

1:19:52 Are you sure about this? Again, it’s back to your art comment. Maybe it’s art because they say it’s art, and then you believe it. Well, maybe, maybe, but it does work, but I think with there is some, there’s something to be had when you got, you know, just real people that have not been messed up by, you know, acting, acting like you, like you. Yeah, which is why I do as best as I can to kind of stay away from that whole process and whatever.

1:20:20 I just try. I want to be raw. I want it to, as much as I can, feel like it’s the first film I’ve ever done. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m going to do it, and that keep gives that raw of performance. But yeah, these guys just gave their all, you know.

1:20:35 Second season, you can see that they’re starting to act. Yeah, now it changes, like, you know, and that’s like capturing that moment is the hardest thing in the world. But I think Top Boy season one definitely, cuz it all, and one thing I don’t think a lot of TV shows have ever been able to achieve is the love of the people that we were representing, right? So I’ve got, you know, those real Hustlers and whatever on a regular basis going, yo, that’s the best thing ever, bro, because it was so real.

1:21:06 Is it that simple? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they, they, they were like, like how I watched a, and went really on TV, right? They were like, some of them even gone like, you know, you’re dry snitching, like you certain things you’re saying in there, like you’re telling the police how we’re doing things, bro, you can’t be saying that, which is apparently what happened with The Wire as well. Apparently people are watching The Wire and doing that in Baltimore and watching the tricks and trying them on each other, you know, the police and, and, just what I’m saying.

1:21:35 So they’re like, is that close to home? But I’ve respected that, because you got the gangsters loving it, you know? You got the white middle-class public loving it. You got, you know, you got everyone, like, was just there was something in there for everybody, that’s a good drama at the end of the day, and the Americans are watching it too, right? I mean, you really get a slice of London you never seen ever, you know, as a city, because apparently, I mean, I’ve got a friend, have you heard of Shingai, from The Noisettes?

1:22:08 She’s in a band called The Noisettes. She’s just done a I think she just signed a deal out in a station. She’s living out in LA, and she said she saw I said, just come back from LA, I saw a poster of view out there. Wow, a Top Boy poster. I was like, really?

1:22:25 She’s like, yeah, she saw it on HBO or something, I don’t know, or something, a channel out there, so they must be showing it. I think it got the season one got a lot of love on N through Netflix. Okay. I think that was the only way they could get it out there. I don’t know whether they’ve done a deal as yet for like BBC America or something for season 2.

1:22:43 I doubt they would with BBC, but might. What, what, what did you think when Kano was involved? Obviously, you know, music guy crossing over to acting, you know, like you you guys are, you know, the top two billions on that car. What, what did you think at first? It’s his first acting gig.

1:22:58 I, to be honest, I had no fear about that, because I’ve known Kano well before we shot that. Not too, we weren’t too pal, like we weren’t too P or anything, but we’d see each other on a regular basis through work and stuff, and he’s always struck me as a person that takes care with his art. He’s a focused person, so anything he’s going to do, he’ll do it to the L of his ability and give it his full time. He’s a perfectionist, and he’s patient, cuz he’s been offered a lot of TV work before Top Boy, and he passed, and he passed, he was waiting for the right thing.

1:23:37 He’s a very smart, methodical guy when it comes to his career, okay, and not rushing. He wants longevity. He wants to be here for a while, so he might not do another thing on TV now, okay, for a while, until the right thing comes up. It takes a lot of patience, doesn’t it? Yeah, it does, it does, especially when you want to feed yourself, and you make money and do whatever you can get caught up in that, but be on TV, yeah, exactly.

1:23:57 But he never does that, so when I mean, he got his own personal, he got an acting coach before we did it, and I thought that was really brave of him, you know, to say I do need some help. And obviously, like I said, he wants to make it the best it can be, so I chose to do it with him, so the production company paid for us both to just, we just had acting classes for a few weeks, okay, before I learned a lot of stuff I didn’t really know. Oh yeah, it was cool at first.

1:24:28 It was a bit like teaching me how to suck eggs, or sort of thing, but then I realized you know you can’t have that attitude and I learned stuff. I learned things. I learned things. I think Kano’s, he’s run off with the method thing. That’s his method thing, that teacher was very into the method thing.

1:24:49 It was kind of like, you know, just feel everything, do everything, be everything, or whatever, and he’s took that and ran with it, okay, and came on set, and we’re doing fight sequences, and he’s punching people for real, and they’re like, bro, if you can’t P me for real, he’s like no bro, shut up man, take it. You said you were pleasantly surprised, because I think a lot of people would expect him to come on and be, you know, Kano the music personality. But being that guy’s an actor, but he really embraced the, you got to be really vulnerable as an actor, don’t you?

1:25:19 Okay, yeah, you got to be willing to do anything, which is the opposite of what you’re supposed to do in a music business, a certain extent, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. Look what Jay-Z’s going through now, just from not hitting Solange back. I see him having a conversation about why didn’t he hit back, and this and that, and whatever, and it’s just like, forget about it, man. But yeah, like Kano, you just got to be, you just got to be willing to go with it, go places.

1:25:45 We had a we read together. We had to do a chemistry read, so they’d already been cast director and a producer bought me in, and then bought in three different people. Kano was one of them, to see which one we work together with me best, and Kano came in, and this guy, he just like, it was a scene where me and him are having an argument about something, and he’s thrown down, threw the script down straight away, so I’m thinking, all right, this guy’s off the book.

1:26:12 All right, cool. So we started going back and forth with these lines, and that, and then he started flipping it up a bit, so I’m trying to chase him now, like this is becoming a bit improvy, and he’s grabbed me, got me up against the wall, don’t f*** you down here, and I’m like f***, like that’s, this is just a reading, this is just a reading, but I’m saying, you know, for an act for for a musician who’s never acted before, whatever, to be that vulnerable, follow their instincts like that, you know? He never knows I could have turned around and went, no, y’see, what you doing?

1:26:44 Yeah, whatever, I don’t want to work with someone like this, or whatever. He just took a chance, and just felt it and went with it, and we all looked at each other like, yeah, that’s him, yeah, that’s the guy, yeah, that’s amazing. There’s four episodes of season one, there’s four episodes of season two. You know, in America, you know, for Mad Men, Breaking Bad, you get 10, you get 12 and for Britain, it’s hard to get the funding for that, and you’ve talked about it before, as far as it’s you know, the film industry, the television industry over here is just so much smaller.

1:27:14 Is that frustrating for you, is that need to change? Does it mean we’re going to need private financing? Does it mean Netflix is going to have to step in, but you know, it kills me. You leave four episodes of Top Boy, you’re like, you’re just getting warmed up. I mean, it’s not even enough.

1:27:27 It doesn’t even touch the sides, and everyone, I think, I think it’s going to be inevitable that over here we’re going to have to do something about that. I think, I think it’s more mainly down to the writing, though. I don’t think that we, we believe in ourselves, right? Is that we’ve got enough in us to make something? That’s what I think.

1:27:44 I think that’s mainly down. I think people struggle over four episodes of something or six. I think people struggle to find right ideas. You mean as writers in Britain? Writers in Britain, and it’s not, there’s no disrespect to British writers, cuz I think they’re amazing, like a lot of them are amazing, but it’s just, I think it’s just traditionally, or the way, you know, the industry looks at it, is that they think it has to be NCIS in order for it to be ongoing.

1:28:15 It could, after, you know, four, five stylish sort of episodes, or something, it will no longer be that. It will become EastEnders. Do you know what I mean? I think that’s everyone’s thought process. I think that’s the fear.

1:28:31 Is it versus kind of an art versus commercial divide still? I think so, yeah. But I think very French attitude, isn’t it? But we’ve, but we’ve seen this possible. Right, obviously with The Wire, with, you know, other things like that, like that have that you can watch.

1:28:45 I could watch more of The Wire, right? Like, so much more, like Homeland. You know, there’s been loads of different things that kind of just kept, Breaking Bad was another one like that for me. Stayed stylish, stayed cool, stayed fresh, stayed fresh the whole way through. Just about writing, right?

1:29:04 Having the right writers, and obviously a combination of the right actors. So I think eventually it’s going to have to change with the rising tablets and the way people are watching TV now. It has to change. I’d like to see some, you know, real backing, private funding coming in, you know, where people, like Netflix, cuts a check. Like, I don’t know if you watch House of Cards, but Netflix cut the whole check for the first season, boom, and then they went and shot it, and you know, that’s been pretty amazing.

1:29:29 I’d like to see, I think, yeah, that sort of stuff is good, but I think it’s going to happen, because our viewers are going to start demanding it. Well, I, I hardly watch my TV now. I go and watch box sets on my iPad, you know what I mean? From all over the world. I can watch anything I want to watch.

1:29:45 And now that that is the new platform, TV are going to have to follow suit. You know, pretty soon BBC, even though they get the TV license and whatever, pretty soon they’re going to be they keep on going on, like, you know, they’re going to have to change up the game, and same with all the other channels as well. You know, they’re going to have to move, at the times, man. Business model’s changing. I canceled my Virgin like six months ago, and I don’t use it now.

1:30:08 I’ve got Apple TV. I’ve got Netflix, and I’ve got whatever box sets or something I download. So is there going to be more Top Boy, 3, 4, 5? You’re probably always getting asked. As far as we know, no.

1:30:19 Okay. It’s ended at season two. Okay, even though you know, we were 70% sure that there was going to be a season 3. It kind of, it ended with implying that there was going to be a season 3, season two, right? So you know, I don’t know whether this is like one of those things they do when they go, no, no, no, no, it’s not coming, and then they go, ah, boy or there’s like things going on behind the scenes or whatever.

1:30:47 But I hope so, man. It’s one of the, I’ve loved doing it. If I’m in all honesty, it’s been the biggest, it’s the biggest thing I’ve been a part of from the UK. You know, it’s been my most successful franchise sort of thing, right? And you’re enjoying it.

1:31:03 You don’t get tired of talking about Top Boy? No, no, not at all. I love it. I love it. What about Hollywood?

1:31:09 Would you ever move to LA? You know, you seem like a Londoner through and through. I just, trying to picture you hanging out in LA with Smith. I don’t know, but I mean, like, that’s where the movie business is. Well, that’s changing, actually, it’s fragmenting.

1:31:21 But have you thought about moving out there? Would you ever move out there? What do you think of LA and Hollywood? I think LA is cool. I’ve been out there many times, not for long periods of time.

1:31:34 I think there’s part of me that gets a bit scared by it. It overwhelms me, and I tend to sometimes run away from things like that. So when people ask me, I’m like, well, if they call me out, I’ll go. I don’t know who, but, you know, right, what scared of the opportunity? Too many possibilities.

1:31:58 No, it’s, it’s kind of, you know, I’d love to make it in Hollywood, man. It’s an actor’s dream for that to happen. Anyone tells you anything different, they’re being an idiot. Okay. But I don’t think I’m ready yet.

1:32:14 Okay, you’re 31, I’m in age, probably. I’m ready. How many dog years? There’s probably not a lot of time left, really, to do it, but I always live close to the edge, close to my deadline. I’ve always had this plan, about 35, it will kick off for me the way I want it to, and hopefully at that time I’ve seen it.

1:32:36 You know, there’s a bee Fair. I’ve watched kind of how it works, the pattern there, a lot of black actors that have gone over to Hollywood and disappeared. Okay. British, yeah, British, yeah. There’s a lot of them that’s done really well.

1:32:49 Okay, and then there’s a lot of them that do medium well, right? There’s a lot of them that do well for a very short period of time and then come back home, yeah, with their tail between their legs. It doesn’t always work out. Of all these, you know, I’m not naive to think that it’s going to happen for me, and it’s a given. So I do want to have something solid behind me here, and I don’t think it’s solid enough yet.

1:33:12 I want to produce in the UK. I want to build up the UK scene a bit more, you know. I want to direct some films and make a name for myself in that sense. I think over here and do some more good work, good acting work, yeah. You know, Idris Elba brings to mind, right?

1:33:30 A friend of yours, right? Yeah, good friend of mine, and he was well he was in The Wire, right? He was Stringer Bell, for God’s sakes. Yeah, I really like Stringer Bell. And you know, people didn’t even know he was British at the time.

1:33:41 There’s like what, three people in that cast, right? Dominic West, Idris, and then there was the other guy, the black guy, right? Yeah, he was, people, some people still don’t believe me when I try to tell them, especially Americans, that Dominic West is British. Though, you’re wrong, or Idris, but like you see Idris, you know, he was at The Wire, you know, starting off what, 10 years ago, and you know, now he’s Mandela, you know. I mean, he’s been the guy that’s kind of made that Hollywood leap.

1:34:05 Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, he his journey is like my dream, do you know what I mean? It is, and he’s respected, he’s so credible over here. We love him. Like, yeah, he’s, he’s the most down-to-Earth, humble guy you can meet, and we just respect him and respect his journey and what he’s doing. All right, cool.

1:34:27 Every now and again he’ll do a, you know, a big Blockbuster thing that we think, ah, whatever, he’s doing that, but go and get your money, man, go and make your paychecks and whatever, but he does some really cutting-edge stuff, and he’s bought the game forward. I grew up kind of watching him, and I saw him struggle. I think as well, like a lot of black actors doing the UK after The Wire, or before The Wire, from before The Wire. This guy’s been acting for years, man, like, for years, so and it’s just not happened in that way, but it’s just, you know, how old is he?

1:34:59 40s, early 40s, whatever. 46, mid-40s. I’ve got a few years left. You got time, you had time, yeah, yeah. Like it can happen, so I’m content, but I do, it is in my mind.

1:35:13 America is there. My agent is like, you know, pilot, pilot season, pilot season. What we think we’re going to do it this year, whatever, but she’s not like, get over there. She’s just kind of, when ready, when you’re ready. I’m not an agent, but I think it’s right to take your time and like you said, you know, things get out of date real quick in Hollywood.

1:35:30 You know, so you want to come in and not just be the flavour of the year, and then, like, lose that, and you make the wrong move. Yeah, cuz you know, I, it seems like Hollywood can be brutally unforgiving. You know, yeah, I mean, it looks like it that way. It looks that way, man, but then this is the year of famous English black actors with you know, Chiwetel Ejiofor, you know, in 12 Years a Slave, and I saw him and Aell at the Dbar warehouse about 8 years ago here in London, and man, I was, you know, I was well impressed, well impressed.

1:35:58 I was just like, and that’s, you know, the Dawn Bar. It’s really tight place in there, and you’re right next to him, and yeah, I mean, that you know, that’s been a great year for him too. Yeah, I think, yeah, Chiwetel as well, man. Chiwetel is, he’s another, like, amazing. He’s, he’s a classically trained stage actor, actually.

1:36:14 Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing. I mean, I think this is what we bring to the States as well, and I’m not that guy. You know, you’ve got some experience there, but you’re not that guy. Yeah, I’m not really, do I mean Shakespeare? Though, Romeo and Juliet, you know, for that.

1:36:27 Thank you. But I don’t think so, to be honest. I mean, that’s not my opinion, but I think I’ve got a long way to go with Shakespeare. I have a huge fear of Shakespeare, so I just, it just, I don’t get it. Okay, I haven’t totally got it yet.

1:36:41 Okay. I’ve been going up for things, you know, at the Globe, I nearly did King Lear, okay, playing Edmund at the Globe. I did about 10 castings for it, okay, they kept on calling me back every day because they wanted me to get it so much, cuz it would have been a major thing to kind of have me there doing that, and I just couldn’t get there, okay, couldn’t do it. Do you think it’s something that you might need to be a bit older to get? Do you think it, Shakespeare takes a while to, like, get into your brain?

1:37:09 I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think. I just think I’m scared of it. Okay.

1:37:13 I think once you’re scared of something, you put up a barrier, don’t you? Is it cuz also it’s been it’s been over, it’s been done so many times, you probably have it in your mind, of so many ways to do it. Well, that’s another thing. I mean, yeah, kind of, when I did that Romeo and Juliet piece for, I think it was for the BBC, wasn’t it? I was given a bit of freedom, okay, to do it my own way, you know, not as, what do they call it, RP, not as you know, well spoken and whatever.

1:37:43 I was the classic way everyone assumes you do shakes, cuz you bring so much baggage to the table with Shakespeare, cuz since you’re four years old you’ve been listening to it done a certain way. Right? Yeah, yeah. And as far as concern, if it doesn’t sound like that, you know, sometimes you just don’t, your foot doesn’t feel right to you, or it just doesn’t sound right. You know, I’ve done films where I’ve been speaking like that, you know, I’m playing my characters the way they speak, and whatever, and it’s like doing a different, different language.

1:38:11 Like, I spend so much time focusing on how I sound, or whatever, that you, I blatantly forget about acting. Okay, right? And it just, you know, so it’s, it’s so So doing Shakespeare is, like, a difficult thing for me. We have a different, difficult relationship, but I would love to be able to achieve that, and I’m in a, of people like Chiwetel who can go from doing that to doing something like Top Boy, to doing something like, you know, African, and this and that, or whatever, and it’s just, and making you believe them every time is an amazing thing.

1:38:45 Right? What do you think of Steve McQueen, and what did you think of 12 Years a Slave? I haven’t seen it. Okay. Have you seen any of Steve McQueen’s stuff?

1:38:52 No. Okay, I’m I’m a big fan, cuz he did Hunger with Michael Fassbender about, you know, hunger strike, and then he did Shame, the sex addiction one, and then, yeah, 12 Years a Slave. So yeah, I mean, I’ve heard about it bubbling up and whatever. If I’m honest with you, yeah, I’ve, I’ve seen him one time at the, is that the BAFTAs? Yeah, I think, and I, that’s when I realized he was black.

1:39:18 Okay, cuz of the name. Yeah, cuz of the Irish name. Yeah, I was like, you’re Steve McQueen. Cuz I haven’t really watched the films, or I’ve seen bits and bobs and pieces here and there, but I haven’t really focused on it. And well, if you watch Hunger, I mean, there, you know, there’s nothing black about Hunger.

1:39:36 There would be from just a black, nothing. There’ll be nothing, probably, in them that you would make, you know, that he was a black man or whatever. But I was just surprised he was. I just automatically, immediately assumed that he was a white man. He was a white director, so when I met him I thought, wow.

1:39:54 But it’s the same again, man. I have a slight, like, you know, when it comes to networking and stuff like that, you know, I always think about that, cuz he was with Tru at the time, and I don’t know what film, they, I think they’ve done a few films together before this. They’ve done a few things, I think, have they? Maybe, yeah, I think so, or maybe one project before, when they just done. But like, I always kick myself thinking, you just don’t, I don’t talk to people.

1:40:22 You don’t, you’re not the networker. No. More importantly, I probably come across as a bit mean. Hopefully they’ll watch this, and they real, not true, because you tend to not interact, which people just think, oh, he’s just being a dick, arrogant, he’s being a dick. Yeah, okay.

1:40:36 But really and truly, I’m like, you know, you guys are pretty right, sort of thing. A lot of performers are really introverted, right? Yeah, and a lot of successful people have issues that make them successful. You know, there’s a reason that Steve Jobs is doing the crazy s*** that he does and to get the company to where it is, cuz they got inner demons inside them that make them go out. They’re probably inner insecurities that make them do all these big things.

1:41:01 You know, people forget that. Yeah, I think so. I think so. But like I’ve been saying, you know, you’re expected to be someone. You’re expected.

1:41:10 There’s this whole, you know, there’s this actor’s way sort of thing. You’re meant to behave, you’re meant to do things, you’re meant to talk about, say how you talk about things, and whatever, and you go around meet loads of different actors, and that’s how all are most of them, 100%. Every now and again you meet some, like when I met Tom Hardy, me and him were just like, click straight away, okay, because he’s not that guy. I believe you. Yeah, yeah.

1:41:36 He’s just like, I’ll talk if I want, if I don’t want to talk, like I don’t care what people think about me. This, that’s his whole demeanor, his whole attitude. And as much as I do care about what people think about me, I’m kind of like, I’m not going to conform to what everyone expects you to, you know, to do. But at the same time, you do actually, you can miss out on just making genuine relationships with people, but I just believe this thing is so fickle sometimes, that, you know, when people ask you what you’re doing and what’s going on, is more about, I hope you’re not working as much as me, sort of thing.

1:42:16 I’ve got that thing in my mind, and it, like, yeah, you know, that whole, it’s just an actor’s thing, is it? And it just, every conversation you have with actors is, it’s just all anecdotes. Okay. When you sit down with a group of actors in a room, and you’ve got, you’re on a new film, and you just make other, you’re having a drink at B all, be anecdotes. I, I know that guy.

1:42:39 I don’t know Clark. Yeah, what did he say about you? You know, now there was this day that we did this, and whatever, and everything just becomes about stories of their experiences and their lives, and whatever. It’s boring. Okay.

1:42:51 Yeah, that seems like that would get a little old after a while, so that seems very Hollywood. You know, you said recently that you know, you sometimes you’re not always feeling every single role you do, but sometimes you think that maybe you’re here for a bigger reason, which is maybe just to inspire people by seeing you to do other things, and I heard you say that, and I just, maybe, really think, you know, about a lot of things that people do, even maybe what I’m doing. Sometimes is it maybe it isn’t about your immediate success, but maybe it is about inspiring other people, and I was just wondering what you meant by that, just meaning that, you know, as much as I love what I’m doing, and it’s, it can be quite lucrative at times, and whatever, and I’m getting some sort of fulfilment out of it.

1:43:36 Maybe, like, you know, the bigger picture is that it’s about incremental steps towards something else. I’m only pushing the door. You know, someone else has already pushed it open a bit before me. I’ve come and barge it a bit more, as much as I can, maybe a bit further than the last person, then, but when I’m gone, someone else is going to push that even further, and you know, in that case it’s not about what’s going to happen for me while I’m here. It’s about the others that are coming.

1:44:07 Someone who, I always believe that, you know, then everything I do some little kid probably wasn’t meant to be watching Top Boy. Some 8-year-old kid, or whatever, sat down watching Top Boy, maybe in the morning, before he goes to school, and his mom don’t know what, eating his cocoa Pops is going to be the next big actor in it one day, but he would never have known it if he didn’t see my black face on the TV, or someone just like, if I didn’t see Idris or Adrian Lester or Chiwetel or whoever else came before me. So in that respect, you know, you get to, I become quite comfortable with the fact that whatever happens now, I’ve done enough.

1:44:48 I know that, like, I’ve set some sort of trend. I’ve inspired some people. I’ve, yeah, I’ve changed someone’s journey. So it’s a good thing, and I believe that, you know, just like the other greats or whatever, I hope I would be remembered, after, not have to make a statue of me or anything, you know what I mean? But just like when it comes to the process of how, cuz there was a day when black people weren’t on TV at all, you know what I mean?

1:45:27 Or it would be like one or something, and now it’s like common place, and I’d like to think that I had some involvement in that, and that it’s quite historical. Does it need to go further? I, it needs to go a lot further. I think, I think there’s no, I mean, let’s take race out of it. There’s no, there’s no limit for where any of this can go.

1:45:52 The way technology changes, the how more intelligent people will become, and whatever, over the years, and you know, there’s no limit to it. I don’t think so. It’s just, yeah, I’ve just, I’m happy to have been a part of something, and maybe if I wasn’t, all the cards never fell the way they did, it just wouldn’t be the way it is. They say film immortalizes people, you know, and it does. You know, they can’t ever take Top Boy away from you.

1:46:22 It’s going to be here, here, even after the nuclear war there’ll be a digital copy somewhere. You know, that’s pretty trippy to think about. Sometimes it is, man. It is, and it’s good. It’s just good to know that, like, you know, hopefully in a thousand years’ time, just imagine there’ll be someone, you know, watching it, or whatever, they would do to it.

1:46:40 Then they might put it inside their brain by then and be able to just see it. I don’t know, but I’m saying, yeah, it’s that. It’s just good to know that I did something good. I did, I did what I was probably meant to be here to do. It’s weird to think about that.

1:46:55 Digital footprint. I think about it sometimes when I do these talks. It’s like, you know, we we took a slice in time today, on this Thursday, at this point, you know, in three months from now you’re going to be a different person. I’m going to be a different person, but there’ll always be this one entry where anyone can always access and be like, oh okay, and that was Ashley that day, and now we can see it, and then like, that’ll always be there. Something a little crazy about that.

1:47:17 It is, it is weird. It wasn’t that, wasn’t the case 50 years ago, you know, you’d have to be a movie star. Yeah, yeah, and now we’re all kind of in a weird way immortalized in a certain way, you know. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the everyday person on their Twitter, on their Instagram on their Snapchat, whatever you want to call it, their iPhones, and that, you know, everyone’s kind of putting a piece of out there every time you upload something to YouTube or whatever.

1:47:43 That can always be found. I know, forever, that’s all crazy thing, you know? I ask everybody on the show, when we finish up at the end, a few questions. I’m going to hit you with them. If you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old Ashley Walters and give that young man a bit of advice.

1:47:57 What would you tell him to do or not to do? I would tell him I wouldn’t tell him to change anything, to be honest. I’d tell him to embrace his journey that he’s about to encounter. Don’t be scared, cuz it’s all, it’s all going to add up to something good. Would you listen to the guy giving you that advice?

1:48:24 Would you listen to the 31-year-old? I don’t know. Probably not. That would probably put me off. But yeah, you know, I hope that I would.

1:48:36 I hope that I would, because to be if I’m honest with you now, I’m happy how things have gone. I wouldn’t want to change anything, because that potentially I might not be sitting here talking to you now if I did. Right, right. On that same note, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received? Ooh.

1:48:53 Best advice, probably would be, and I know it’s a slightly cliche, but everything happens for a reason. My mom told me that a lot, and this kind of ties into the first thing you asked me about, just embracing what happens around you or trying hard to find the positive inside the negative that it may seem like at the time. I’ve, you know, it’s mainly been when I’ve lost work that I really, really, really wanted to get, and I’ve not got it, it’s gone to someone else, and my mom would go, well, everything happens for a reason it doesn’t matter, and then two weeks later, Top Boy, you get Top Boy, right?

1:49:33 And you’re like, ah, okay, that makes sense. You know, you would have had to turn down, if you, the other, of course. Yeah. It’s parts, you know, I lost, I, I got off of Transformers, the first one, Tyrese’s part, and I’ve, I remember being in what is it, Spielberg’s office or somewhere in LA with my manager, and the woman was like, well, we really love you to do this part if you were up for it, and whatever, and I just signed the deal for Life and lyrics in the UK.

1:50:06 I was like, I can’t do it. I don’t regret it, though. No, I look at it now obviously it would have been a huge film to be a part of, and whatever, but it’s not really pushing my acting skills. It’s not really going to something that’s really going to get me noticed and push my career forward, and whatever. I’ve done some brilliant work in the space of time that I would have been having to film that, as well, that has got me so much critical acclaim and giving me my longevity.

1:50:33 So yeah, well said. Last bit of that is to the 20-year-old that’s listening to us from somewhere around the world, could be Australia, China, America, whatever, who wants to I don’t know, someday be a musician, someday be an actor, someday be like you. What advice do you give them? I’d say first and foremost, make the foundation great, that, you know, it will, it will give you some pace in what you’re doing, and give you some real solid supports. When I say foundation, I mean your home, your mind, yourself.

1:51:06 Get that all into, get, if you’ve got, if there’s things you need to change, you know, change them before you go on that journey so you can give your whole heart to that. Second of all, I’d say, you’ve got to live for, like, the 10%. When I say that, I mean 90% of this game is you can’t do it, mate. Now you’re going to fail. Nope, we don’t want you, right?

1:51:34 Sorry, doors closed. And then you get the 10%, whereas you win. That’s what you’ve got to live for. See if you can’t get through that 90% to get to that 10. Don’t even bother, try, people probably don’t even believe that you get rejected for roles, you know, so ones you see is the ones I get.

1:51:54 Really? As simple as that. And that’s probably, like, two out of 10, do you know what I mean? So yeah, you really have to be prepared for rejection and understand that that doesn’t mean that you’re no good, and that you should stop. It means that you should keep on trying and keep on refining and honing your craft.

1:52:13 You’ve got to take the pain to stay in the game. Yeah, that’s it. I think there was another quote from you where you said, if you see someone who’s successful, it’s because they’ve been, they’ve been just trying, trying at it longer than you have, right? They, yeah, I think that’s what I say to people all the time. The only difference between me and you is that I’ll never give up at doing this thing.

1:52:32 Simple as. There’s no disrespect to anyone. It’s just like people ask you all the time, like, how do you get so much? I don’t give up. That’s it.

1:52:40 That’s it. I just don’t give up. Like, I may give up, like, I’m going to stop trying for that cuz it’s not working. But I mean, I’m, that is a strategy, that’s like, I’m, that’s, you have to be good in business yet, you know, to know when to say enough is enough. If you keep on losing money, you can’t keep flogging a dead horse.

1:52:59 You’ve got to go young. I’m shutting that business down. I save myself a lot of time and energy, and whatever that I can put into focusing on this other projects, you know what I mean? And whatever. So saying no to something or walking away from something is not necessarily giving up.

1:53:13 Giving up is feeling that you cannot achieve your goal, that your, the end game is just pointless, that it doesn’t exist, you know what I mean? I’ve always believed that I am going to be the big, as big as I can be. Do you know what I mean? In this, in this world in this game, in my life, do you know what I mean? I’m going to fulfill it to its full potential, and if the minute I stop believing that, this, I’ve lost.

1:53:37 I’ve lost, you know what I mean? I’m on my way back down. So never, powerful words. If people want to get in touch with you, you know, 8082, and find out what you’re working on, producing-wise, directing-wise? What’s the best way?

1:53:49 Follow you on Twitter, follow me on Twitter, ashleyw82, ashleyw 82 on Instagram. Also, you’re active on Twitter, right? You like Twitter. Yeah, yeah, I like TW, I like Twitter. I haven’t really been in the last four months, but I’m not going to lie, it’s become quite corporate, but I’m coming back people.

1:54:06 So yeah, add me and follow me. Most stuff you’ll find out through that. My website, ashleywaters.co.uk or a82.co.uk. Okay. Yeah, and you’re doing some directing coming up.

1:54:16 Do you like directing? It’s tough, man. I did. I’ve done it. I did my first sh and was difficult and tough, and I didn’t really like the experience, to be honest, that much.

1:54:27 I’m hoping it gets better. Okay. It’s just a lot of things, you, I guess everything comes to you, right? I mean, everything’s on you at the end of the day. Yeah, it’s just having that responsibility.

1:54:37 Yeah, you know, every department wanting to know what do you think. Yeah, and everyone on the set has their own agenda, right? The actor wants this, and the DOP wants this, and this one’s this, and you’re like, I’m trying to make a film, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you’ve got to try and bring those things together and make them work.

1:54:52 It’s a difficult job, it’s a difficult thing to juggle, but I think I work on a basis a lot of the time that no pain, no gain. So I love to have a challenge for a shoot, to be difficult, but at the end of it if I get that good piece of work that I wanted, I’ll be over the moon. I forget about all the hard times. I’m ready to do it again. Excellent.

1:55:11 Our 200th episode, Ashley, thanks so much. You know, I didn’t know what to expect. My first actor on the show, and you know, you were, you were super honest, man. So hope you had fun, man. Thanks for coming on.

1:55:24 Thanks for representing Britain in all its in all its greatness. As we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. I wish you well in yours. Thank you, thanks so much, man. Same to you.

1:55:33 Thank you very much. All right, take care. Cheers. What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination. This week on London Real we have spoken word artist Sully Breaks.

1:55:57 We always have this idea in our mind that we’re going to get to where we want to be, and then we can sit back and be like, I’ve made it, now let me enjoy life, but the enjoyment comes from the journey. How would you feel if I told you that crazy people would one day rule the world? I relate to the tech industry cuz it’s all rebellious, you know what I mean? And the fact you get people to fund these rebellious ideas is winning, you know what I mean? If education is the key, then School is the look.

1:56:23 What is this tour Around the World in 80 Days? As an artist, your work is based on your experience. Imagine if you had lots more experiences, if you met a lot more people, and I mean, my goal, the lot, to release in the next year is this, an album, a portrayal of my work and something that is representative of everyone. We will not let exam results decide our fai to journey into inspiration, innovation and information. I suppose, on Sunday, London Real presents Sully Breaks, spoken word.

1:56:56 You’re going to grow older, you’re going to grow wiser, and you’re going to look back at these things in a different light.