Top Boy star Ashley Walters said concerned parents made him question whether the show glamourised violence.
The crime drama, which first aired on Channel 4 in 2011 before being picked up by Netflix in 2019, showcased a distinct vision of the city, focusing on drug dealers and gang violence on a fictional estate in Hackney.
Top Boy, led by Walters and Kane “Kano” Robinson, introduced several characters throughout its five seasons, many of whom were rival drug pushers who inflicted violence on others – so much so that Walters got scolded by parents of teens who watched the show.
“There’s a thing I have about Top Boy because I was confronted by so many parents who were like, ’This is so bad for our children.’ It did make me question myself – was I glamourising violence throughout this period?” he said at Hay Festival on Monday (25 May).
“But I’ve come to terms with the people who may have felt it was glamourising violence. I always knew at the core of it that what we did was, we went into this trying to make sure that we represent the people we’re talking about in the right way. That was our main job and our main objective. We fought for that even if the network didn’t want us to do certain things, but that’s real.
Walters said the team behind the show wanted to get “a truthful portrayal” of drug dealers, adding: “We tried to make it as authentic as possible. I feel like it had a great impact and raised great awareness.”
The Adolescence actor also said Top Boy facilitated British actors’ routes to the US.
“America’s only understanding of what the UK was before Top Boy was Downton Abbey,” he said. “They didn’t believe we had a ghetto, they didn’t believe we had bad stuff happen here, it was all Hugh Grant, it was cups of tea, it was all of that stuff which is part of our culture, right? But there’s another side to it as well that was just so underrepresented.
“Since that, you see a lot of UK musicians – Dave, Central Cee – have had better success in the States because there’s a reference point for them to understand our culture and what has been. So that’s what I think the main success has been.”
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In 2023, Walters admitted that “it would have been ideal” for Top Boy, created by Irish novelist Ronan Bennett, to have been written by a Black writer.
When asked if the show – which featured a majority Black cast – could be accused of “cultural voyeurism”, Walters told The Times: “Let me be frank. It would have been ideal for Black people’s stories to have been told by a Black person. So I did scrutinise Ronan. But understanding the people he consulted for the script was key.”
