Asha Banks was playing young Éponine in the West End's Les Misérables at seven or eight, years before anyone thought of her as a singer in her own right.
That early stage career kept expanding — the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Boy in the Dress, Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a run of film and TV work most recently including the BBC's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder.
How Real Was It?, her 2025 Island Records debut EP, is a breakup record that runs parallel to the acting career rather than replacing it — original songwriting from someone who spent her childhood performing other people's words on a West End stage.