The Stars of Industry on How It Became the Must-Watch Show of the Summer
It was perhaps inevitable that the cast of Industry would find themselves on a yacht. The show, which follows a group of Gen Z bankers working in the City, London’s Wall Street, focuses as much on its characters taking designer drugs in Berlin clubs or having sex in the office as it does on them making high-stakes trades. Which is to say they party hard—and, this season, they do it on a vessel off the coast of Mallorca. That this pivotal scene was actually shot in the Mediterranean and not some oversize bathtub on the show’s usual soundstage in the damp and cloudy city of Cardiff, Wales, is one of many signs that Industry is getting a glow-up. “Mallorca was a nice change of scenery,” jokes star Marisa Abela over a video call.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]In the opening scene of the third season, which premieres on HBO on Aug. 11, Abela’s character Yasmin leans over the railing of the Lady Yasmin, named after her by her publishing-magnate father. She takes drags of a cigarette between glugs of champagne. When she turns around, her face is streaked with tears. A gawker snaps a picture, which will wind up in the tabloids, reminiscent of paparazzi shots of Princess Diana or Amy Winehouse, the latter of whom Abela played in a biopic this year. One might be tempted to say, “Poor little rich girl,” if we hadn’t spent two seasons watching her relationship with her father deteriorate.
Yasmin’s American friend Harper (Myha’la), adorned with tattoos and designer sunglasses, tells her curtly, but not without compassion, “You have to stop crying.” It’s a brief moment, but one the show will return to in repeated flashbacks. Because unlike past seasons, this one focuses on a mystery. Yasmin’s father, who it turns out is a crook, has disappeared. His last known location: this yacht.
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HBO is finally giving the show the coveted Sunday-night slot previously occupied by Succession and Game of Thrones, and has cast the latter series’ star Kit Harington as a series regular, its most high-profile addition. The show’s relatively low cost compared with prestige dramas full of expensive A-listers and CGI dragons had been a selling point for the network. Showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, who previously worked in finance, were green and inexpensive, as was much of the young cast.
The cable network is in desperate need of an Emmy-worthy series that will attract eyeballs after Succession wrapped last year, especially with Euphoria and The White Lotus not returning until 2025. Industry borrows elements from all those shows: Like Succession, it delights in skewering the ultra-wealthy; like Euphoria, it’s filled with sex and drugs and, despite having both in abundance, its Gen Z characters have the bleakest of outlooks; and, like White Lotus, this season plays out like a whodunit.
Despite a dedicated online fandom and critical acclaim, Industry has never enjoyed the robust viewership of these other HBO darlings. But that can be attributed, at least in part, to HBO’s declining to spotlight it as a prestige offering. It has a reputation as a show catering to Gen Z even though the writing and performances are equal to those of other prestige-branded series. Can the network position it now, with 16 episodes to catch up on, to appeal to older viewers in search of their Sunday-night watch?
“When I first read the script for Season 1, I said, ‘This is what would happen if Euphoria and Succession had a baby.’ I just want everyone to know I said it first,” says Myha’la on the same call. “It’s sex and drugs in a world of money. I’m not mad at that comparison at all.”
If Succession’s Logan Roy was an old man at the peak of his powers, the younger and more diverse group of bankers on Industry are Roy aspirants. It’s chilling to watch them in the infancy of that ruthless life cycle. For now, they espouse the ideals of youth, even if they don’t always practice them. That tension is central to the third season, in which Harington’s Sir Henry Muck—an old-money dolt with a hilariously accurate name who is a perpetual disappointment to his family—enlists the bank to help launch a green-energy company. The series takes aim at the hypocrisy of corporations that pay lip service to going green but will jump into bed with oil if enough money is on the line.
It’s also taking a darker turn. As Industry expands its scope outside the trading floor and into the halls of power—involving government officials, media moguls, and members of Britain’s landed gentry—the stakes are about more than just money. We begin to see how these aspiring power players might do irreparable damage to the world. “The concerns of Season 1 were, ‘What does everyone think of me?’” says Abela of Yasmin and her cohort. “They’ve grown out of that fear, but now they have adult problems. The problems are existential.”
Industry has matured as a show as it has narrowed its focus within its sprawling ensemble cast. In the first season, Industry followed bankers from different backgrounds. There was Gus (David Jonsson), the well-connected Black gay Oxford grad; white middle-class Robert (Harry Lawtey), who trades on good looks but can’t master dressing like his generationally wealthy co-workers; Yasmin, the Lebanese British multilingual heiress who aside from her charm is hopeless at her job; and Harper, the Black American outsider with no connections but unbridled determination and flexible morals. The show explores the entrenched class system in England and racial dynamics at a national bank by giving these people the same goal and watching as they employ various despicable means to snag the prize.
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In Seasons 2 and 3, the show focuses on Yasmin and Harper, the ultimate frenemies. Harper’s particular American brand of ambition runs up against Yasmin’s crutches of privilege and wealth. Yasmin’s insecurities at work are exacerbated by Harper’s savant-like talents. They will undermine each other at the office and then split a bottle of wine the same night at the flat they share.
“The things they adore about each other are also the things they resent,” says Myha’la. “Harper thinks Yasmin comes from money and uses her feminine wiles to her advantage. Those are things that Harper doesn’t have or can’t use. Yasmin [thinks] Harper is brainy. She’s tricky. Harper maneuvers in ways that Yasmin can’t.” Abela jumps in: “They fundamentally speak different languages. They’re both quite selfish people who are never going to put the other one first.”
This selfishness is what makes them so interesting. Both experience the gamut of bad behavior at work: sexism, racism, harassment. A lesser show would position them as victims. But the two women leverage those same bad experiences to get ahead—or else inflict that behavior on the women who come after them. The series is more interested in how toxicity can embed itself in an institution than telling a tale of overcoming hardship.
That also makes for increasingly complex characters as the series wears on. “For Yasmin, there are moments when the vulnerable young girl shines through. But she’s got a lot more armor on now, and that’s a side effect of being in an industry where if you’re not fierce, nobody is going to take you seriously,” Abela says. “She also refuses to learn to be a better person.”
From the jump, both Myha’la and Abela helped shape their characters. Harper was initially written as anxious. Myha’la says the showrunners were “adamant about bringing as much of myself as I could.” That included being up front about their limitations: “They were like, ‘We’re not Black American women. We can’t write your experience,’” she recalls. “If I am Harper, I’m walking into a space where I’m trying to impress people. I’m not going to let them know I’m not confident in my abilities. That to me is like Being a Black American 101.”
Harper suppressing her emotions also allowed Myha’la, who since Industry debuted has also starred in the films Bodies Bodies Bodies and Leave the World Behind, to demonstrate her acting chops. “Coming off as super confident also gave me someplace to go,” she says. “Deciding when the cracks show was really important.”
Yasmin, meanwhile, was given a love interest in Season 1: Robert, the banker born to working-class parents. The heiress was initially written to be timid at work and turned on by taking orders from Robert in the bedroom, but this didn’t track to Abela. “If she looks like a deer in headlights on the trading floor, someone will hold her hand,” she says. “But the place where she really can exhibit power is sexually. It would be too bitter of a pill to swallow to let a fumbling guy take the lead in the bedroom.”
Yasmin’s multiseason arc of teasing Robert with not only sex but also wealth and status has become one of the show’s touchstones. The relationship has allowed the writers to explore whether romances can really cross class boundaries in a country where the divide between old and new money is especially stark. That question becomes central to the third season, when Harington’s spoiled Henry expresses interest in Yasmin.
This season, both Harper and Yasmin deal with some serious daddy issues, literally and metaphorically. Yasmin despises her father for having affairs but relies on him financially. His disappearance—and the revelation of his theft—has left her penniless and a target of the relentless paparazzi. Henry’s family owns one of those tabloids, and a strategic alliance could shield Yasmin from scrutiny.
Harper, meanwhile, has targeted for revenge a father figure, her former mentor Eric (the great Ken Leung). Eric groomed Harper to be his replacement. But after mutual backstabbing, she found herself at risk of needing to return to New York, where a buried secret threatens to upend her new life in London. Now that she’s back on her feet in a new position, she is obsessed with taking him down. “Betrayal is serious business,” says Myha’la.
There are echoes in both storylines of Succession’s Shiv Roy, a highly competent woman who, despite espousing liberal ideals, wants nothing more than to please her money-worshipping father. Like Shiv, these women make compromises on their quest for power. But Shiv’s security was never in doubt, even if she didn’t become CEO of her father’s company. Harper has no safety net. Her only security is cold hard cash. And, for the first time in her life, Yasmin is beginning to feel vulnerable without her father. That gives this season a new sense of dramatic tension.
Those who might wring their hands over the show’s salacious aspects can find depth in this desperate scramble to survive in the world of finance. And, this season, for those who glaze over upon hearing a glossary of finance terms, there’s the whodunit. If the show finally captures the audience it deserves, it’ll have permission to expand its scope in Season 4. The end of Season 3 teases the potential to harpoon Silicon Valley startups, a Murdoch-like media empire, and America’s brutish billionaires. “Where Season 3 ends,” says Abela, “it was definitely not on Season 1 Yasmin’s vision board.”