Former Top Boy star Ashley Walters has recently restricted his youngest son River’s screen time – and believes his hit Netflix show has helped parents have difficult conversations with their kids
Adolescence star Ashley Walters says being part of the harrowing Netflix show which gripped the world has had a positive impact on how he parents his own brood. The 42-year-old father of eight – who welcomed his first child at 20, has opened up on staying connected to his youngest son, River, 5 – and how the show led him to cutting down on his screen time.
“[As parents] we’re really about pushing the things that they love. He’s an animator, so he has a lot of animation software on his iPad and spends his time doing that. But sometimes, he’s not animating when we think he is.
“We’ve been very conscious about that and drawing back on his screen time. Half the week, he can’t even touch his device. And then actually, it’s about me stepping in as a dad and saying, ‘Let’s go fishing, let’s do more stuff,’ so he doesn’t want to be on there as much as he is.”
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Global hit Adolescence explored the impact of a shocking act of violence on a family and community – focusing on the Miller family’s 13-year-old son, Jamie, who is arrested for the murder of a schoolmate – and Top Boy star Ashley claims it’s also helped parents broach difficult conversations about navigating the online world.
“No one wants to be the ogre parent that comes in and goes, ‘All right, that’s it, everything off.” I don’t want them to feel like they’re not the same as their friends”, says Ashley, who first shot to fame as a member of UK garage group So Solid Crew,
“You get caught up in all of that stuff as a parent, but I feel like around the world this show has allowed parents, to go, ‘Fu*k that shit. Adolescence says this could happen. Now we’re going to start having this conversation.’ I think that’s a good thing,” he added to Men’s Health UK.
Ashley is a proud dad to sons Shayon, 22, and Panera, 19, and daughter China, 21, whom he shares with ex-partner Natalie Williams, he has daughters Antonia and Ashleigh with another woman, as well as Amaiya-Love, 9, and River, 5, with his wife Danielle Isaie, whom he married in 2013. Ashley is also the stepfather to his wife’s child from a previous relationship.
The Peckham-born star, who recently released Sunday Times best-selling memoir Always Winning, which delves into his turbulent past, also confessed that he’d ‘love’ to be involved in a prospective second series but added, “I strongly believe that it will be completely different characters with a completely different story. I think that the constant will be the one-take process.”
The actor and musician, looking incredibly buff in the new shoot, also spoke bravely about why his previous alcohol addiction, which he battled up to 2020, became a crutch for his social inhibitions.
“I’d be in a group of people looking at everyone and wondering how they could communicate so wonderfully, and I don’t have the ability to do that. I was always looking at everyone else like, what manual for life did you get that I didn’t?
“People may not like me saying it, but for a minute, alcohol was the cure to the biggest problem that I felt I had. But the thing is, alcohol or drugs’ main aim is to isolate you. Its main aim is to take everything away from you, so it has you by yourself and then at that point, it tries to kill you.”
Now he says proudly he will often force himself into situations to test his skills in striking up conversations. “I’ve met some amazing people that I know for a fact I wouldn’t have [met when drinking]. I would have been shi*ting myself.
“I sat down with Michael B Jordan a couple of weeks ago and we had an amazing conversation for an hour…To be able to sit down, laugh and joke naturally with someone I look up to, even though I’m a bit older, feels good. It’s a marker of how far I’ve come.”
The full interview with Ashley Walters can be read in the July/August issue of Men’s Health UK, on sale from 24th June
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