I often wonder this time of year how any Emmy voters manage to find time to watch enough television to fill out their ballots — because as someone whose entire job is to watch these shows, I am constantly struggling. I come clean about a lot of it on this week’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, where I’m joined by The Ringer’s Joanna Robinson to ask her secrets for watching so many TV shows and making great podcasts about them.
Okay, yes, we also talk about the shows themselves, particularly the Emmy contenders that premiered last year and are still major parts of the conversation, including Apple’s Pluribus, FX’s The Lowdown, HBO’s Task and Netflix’s The Beast in Me. One of the shows that Joanna and I didn’t get into in too much detail, but for a while seemed like the only thing anyone wanted to talk about, was HBO’s Industry, which seems to only be drawing in more fans the longer it runs.
I’m no Industry expert, but my colleague Christopher Rosen is, which is why I’m handing over this week’s interview to him; read on for more from Chris on his conversation with Industry stars Myha’la and Marisa Abela, and why the push-pull relationship between their characters — Harper and Yasmin — is only going to get more fascinating as Industry approaches its fifth and final season.
Women On Top
During their time on Industry, Myha’la and Abela have appeared together in all manner of difficult material as Harper and Yasmin — including a failed threesome in season one and a physical altercation in season three. But neither the actors, the characters, nor the audience experienced something like Myha’la and Abela’s final scene in the fourth season of HBO’s cynical drama about the financial sector and those nihilistic enough to succeed within it — a moment that leaves Harper and Yasmin, the show’s core characters, further apart than ever.
“It’s a culmination of four seasons’ worth of a relationship at this point,” Abela, 29, says of the scene. “Essentially, it’s a breakup scene. So you’re playing the potential loss of all of the positive things about the relationship that you would be losing — rather than playing the sadness of this exact moment.”
Harper and Yasmin spent most of season four siloed in their own storylines. Harper and her team of independent traders were trying to short the shady fintech startup Tender, while Yasmin and her husband, Henry Muck (Kit Harington), became embroiled in Tender’s fugazi schemes. But in the final episodes, they reconnect — with Harper’s short paying out millions, and Yasmin using her publishing connections and aristocratic relationships to become a power player of political influence. In some ways, neither character has ever had more professional success. But the cost is severe. Harper’s key relationships have broken — including the one with her mentor, Eric Tao (Ken Leung), who was exposed for potentially committing statutory rape with a young escort. Yasmin, now friendly with far-right ideologues, has seemingly sold her soul — all while providing men like Eric with young women and no questions asked. In their last scene together, Harper begs Yasmin to come with her back to the proverbial light; Yasmin declines.
“It was so heartbreaking for the audience,” Myha’la, 30, says. “But the god’s honest truth about this is that Marisa and I have been Yasmin and Harper for eight years now. We know each other, we know these characters and we have the entire four seasons of history to draw from. I honestly sort of live with one foot in Harper’s shoes all the time.”
Created by former investment bankers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, Industry premiered with light fanfare in the fall of 2020 (fun fact: the pilot was directed by Lena Dunham). But in the six years since, the show has grown from its initial stature as a cult favorite. Season four’s cross-platform viewership was up 40 percent, and HBO has given Industry a full Emmy push this spring; if it receives any Emmy recognition — whether for Down and Kay as writers and directors or Myha’la and Abela as drama lead and supporting actress, respectively — it will be the first for the show.
“Part of the success of this show is the fact that we do continue to surprise our audience, surprise ourselves,” Myha’la says. “The characters are also surprising themselves all the time — Yasmin is not the same Yasmin from season one, neither is Harper.”
HBO renewed Industry for its fifth and final season earlier this year, meaning Harper and Yasmin will likely have at least one more go at their relationship before the series concludes. However, both Abela, who lives in London, and Brooklynite Myha’la say they don’t bother trying to guess where Down and Kay will take their characters between seasons — no surprise, considering it’s hard to imagine even Abela would have clocked Yasmin’s dark turn into Ghislaine Maxwell territory.
“Honestly, with the progression of Yasmin’s character in season four, I felt there’s a release in a way,” Abela says. “The goal isn’t trying to get the audience on her side anymore. There’s a part of me that wants people to like love and understand Yasmin, but if they believe the plight, then I’ve done my job.”
