Ashley Walters on his prison-drama directorial debut Animol: “I wanted it to look like how it really is”

Ashley Walters has earned a reputation for bringing humanity and nuance to characters on both sides of the criminal justice system. His breakthrough role came in the visceral coming-of-age drama Bullet Boy (2004), which helped bring attention to the social pressures, limited opportunities and cycles of violence that push young men towards crime. These themes also ran through Top Boy (2011 to 2023) and the Emmy Award-winning Adolescence (2025), both of which starred Walters and examined how such pressures continue to shape the lives of young people today. Walters’ feature debut as a director, Animol, arrives at a time when these themes remain as urgent as ever.

Walters brings to Animol an intimate understanding of the prison system, informed by the 18 months he served after being sent to a young offenders’ institute when he was 19. The film centres on 15-year-old Troy (Tut Nyuot), navigating the same unforgiving environment that Walters did as a young man. Walters has little interest in softening the realities of prison for audiences, immersing them in raw soundscapes of clanging cell doors and the thud of knuckles. In the director’s chair, Walters coaxes his young cast to find the emotional depth that has become a hallmark of his own on-screen work.

Whelan Barzey: Films centred on crime have sometimes been criticised for reinforcing negative stereotypes about Black communities. Was that something you were conscious of when casting Animol and building its prison environment?

Ashley Walters: It was really important that it looked like how it really is. Prison is really diverse, with people from all walks of life. In fact, when I served time in [HM Prison] Onley, in Warwickshire, it was predominantly white.

I think the real test was having diversity behind the camera. If I’m going to be at the helm of this, I need to make changes where I see they’re needed. As an actor, I’d often walk onto set and see Black leads and only one Black crew member. You need to have some representation in the crew as well, but sometimes people just don’t get that. Sometimes this isn’t a meritocracy-based system. I wanted people to be there on merit, but I also wanted to make sure that I was scouring the UK for diverse talent who could really get the job done.

Prison films can be inherently violent. How did you make sure violence served the story in Animol instead of becoming the story itself?

I see violence as a language. I believe that in the prison environment, it’s the language of fear and that’s the case for every fight in the film. It just doesn’t appear in an obvious way. The violence comes from fear of change, fear of losing someone you love and the fear of outsiders entering into your space.

If everyone had the vocabulary to articulate how they felt, and felt they could do so without being judged, we’d have a completely different society.  

In a 2010 interview, you said: “I’m not saying I can make someone put down a gun and turn their life around, but I think I have a better chance than Gordon Brown.” Do you think you can still connect with young people today?

I think so, but things are always changing. It’s all about connection. Before we started shooting Animol, I went into a young offenders’ institution and started telling them about when I went to prison. They nearly ran me out of the place! They were like: “Who the hell is this old man?”

But a lot of the lead actors in Animol grew up watching me. They had a respect for my story and trusted me as a director to guide them through the film. I have a whole community of young actors and creatives around me, in the form of family and my drama school. Staying teachable allows me to maintain a presence with the youth.

How did you approach portraying queer identity, particularly as it falls outside your own lived experience?

The best word for my approach would be ‘cautious’. Having the likes of Joy [Gharoro-Akpojotor] and Tom [Hawkins] on my team, who are both queer, made me feel really safe in that space and gave me confidence that we could do something special.

I grew up in quite a homophobic environment and know that sexuality is still a very taboo subject in a lot of communities, so I thought it might be a point of controversy or turn some people off the film. 

What I didn’t plan for is that it’s 2026. Most people don’t give a shit anymore. I watched people’s reactions in youth screenings in London and they were all just with it. I’m glad my fears were wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still so much work to be done, but it was beautiful to see how far we’ve come.

Having come from a musical background with So Solid Crew, did you feel there was an expectation that music would play a much more prominent role in your directorial debut? With Animol, you’ve taken a much more restrained approach. Were you deliberately pushing back against that expectation?

No, actually, the first version of the film had music in almost every scene, but something wasn’t hitting. We screened it for the execs and one of them said, “take the music away and watch it again.” 

The next time my editor, my wife and I watched it, we were all tearing up. It was like a completely different film. We realised at that point that we weren’t trusting our performances. We were trying to push people to feel a certain way, and we didn’t need to. The performances could stand alone.

From your first acting credit in The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (1999) through Bullet Boy, Top Boy, Adolescence to Animol, crime seems to be a recurring theme of your projects. What is it about crime that continues to scratch the storytelling itch for you?

I’ve never looked at it in that way, but you make a good point. I guess what I want to be close to is stories of Black men being good people and having a good heart, changing the narrative that exists out there that it’s all aggression and hyper-masculinity. 

Seeing Black men in brotherhood, in fatherhood, in tactile situations. Think about a group of friends. When we meet up, we hug, we call each other brother, we use the word ‘love’ as a greeting, but we’re not portrayed like that on screen, especially in this country. That’s never been part of the narrative for young Black men. 

I’m always interested in those stories. Sometimes they exist within the world of crime, but that’s not necessarily what draws me to them. I’m not specifically looking for crime. I’m looking for the heart.

Animol, backed by the BFI Filmmaking Fund with National Lottery funding, is in cinemas from 30 October.