The story of Myha’la and Marisa Abela’s friendship begins with two simple pleasures: expensive shoes and Lena Dunham. The actors met in 2019 on a read-through for season one of HBO’s Industry, the fast-paced drama that follows the chaotic lives of a group of young financiers in London, who started their careers at the fictional investment bank Pierpoint & Co. On the day of the read-through, Abela had just received her first proper paycheck and, as you often do in your early 20s, she spent it on something frivolous and flashy. “I turned up in these disgusting Louis Vuitton trainers. Everyone was like, ‘What the fuck?’” remembers Abela, before the actor known mononymously as Myha’la adds: “I had the Balenciaga sneakers!”
After that, the designer-footed pair met properly when Dunham—the creator of millennial coming-of-age dramedy Girls and recent Netflix hit Too Much, who directed the first episode of Industry—hosted the cast for a day of games and team bonding. It didn’t take long for them to become inseparable. “I told Marisa that she had to be my friend,” Myha’la says. “I was like, ‘You have to be friends with me.’” Abela loved the directness: “I wanted that so badly, so then when she gave me permission, I was like, Oh, thank God, I’m in.”
It’s easy to see why so many people are obsessed with Industry, which returns for its fourth season this month. The show stars beautiful, Machiavellian women who double-cross each other in order to survive in the machismo-fueled banking world. But its appeal is much deeper and wider than that. Industry is ostensibly a show about money—who has it, who wants it, who needs it. And yet this is simply a way into exploring themes of class, power, womanhood, masculinity, and sex. Lots of sex.
When Industry first debuted in 2020 it resembled a more grown-up, corporate version of the British teen drama Skins: a group of hot 20-somethings doing drugs, sleeping with people they shouldn’t, and acting out every HR director’s worst nightmares. Ahead of its fourth season, its chronology is best summed up by the boiling-frog myth. As a viewer, I can say: Industry makes this parable feel real. The show turns the heat up—until suddenly, you’re sweating. “Oh,” Abela teases me. “Just you wait.”
When I meet Myha’la and Abela, it’s a cold Sunday in North London, where they’ve just finished their Glamour cover shoot. Dressed in comfy clothes, they recount the story of their first meeting like a loved-up couple, each chiming in with little details. As they laugh together on the cozy gray couch, they also remind me of two teenage besties at a sleepover, preparing to get high on sugar and talk about playground crushes who have no idea they exist. And clearly, this is much more than a working relationship: Last summer Myha’la was a bridesmaid at Abela’s wedding to actor and writer Jamie Bogyo—a memory that makes their eyes light up when I mention it. (On January 5, Myha’la revealed on Instagram that she and her fiancé, actor Armando Rivera, had secretly married a year earlier.)
The obvious closeness between Myha’la and Abela both resembles and totally contrasts with their characters in Industry. “Contrary to our characters, we love each other deeply,” Myha’la says before correcting herself. “Well, I guess they love each other deeply too. But it’s wholesome and nice with us,” she insists. “It’s not fucked up.” Myha’la plays Harper Stern, a ruthlessly ambitious college dropout who first arrives at Pierpoint with a compulsion to prove herself. And Abela plays Yasmin Kara-Hanani, a privileged and troubled so-called nepo baby who seems unsure what she wants from life but knows how to leverage her beauty and status. Harper and Yasmin bond as they navigate a trading floor ruled by toxic men, but their relationship is highly competitive and becomes entangled with insecurity, jealousy and even a little sexual tension. “I’m not sure that Harper has ever loved anybody,” Myha’la says. “Except Yasmin.”
On the surface, Industry could be read as a show about mommy and daddy issues. Or, as Abela puts it, “lonely kids.” When we’re reintroduced to Harper in season four, we see her literally shredding a birthday card from her estranged mother. And the main thing that Yasmin has in common with her husband—the hapless aristocrat Henry Muck, played by Kit Harington—is their terrible fathers.
You don’t need to be a therapist to work out that this might be why Industry is considered one of the kinkiest shows on TV. Sex becomes its own language between these characters, one that is used to subvert and underline power dynamics. We’ve seen Yasmin being routinely harassed and underestimated by men, but she also finds her power in dominant sexual roles. (Her signature move is making men degrade themselves, or ejaculate, in front of a mirror.) And between Henry asking for a golden shower and Rob Spearing (Harry Lawtey) sleeping with women who are old enough to be his dead mother, I’m surprised it took until season four for a strap-on to appear. And in classic Industry style, this moment ends up being symbolic. “I cried when I saw that scene,” Abela says. “I thought it was so beautiful.”
In the upcoming season, it’s Harper who spends more time in the nude—and in some, shall we say, interesting situations. Is there anything Myha’la has said no to? “No, but I’m sure that’s coming. But it was really strange, the first time I had an intimacy scene after I got engaged, I didn’t want to kiss the person.” At that moment, kissing somehow felt more intimate. “I was absolutely getting my cheeks clapped, but I was like, ‘No kissing!’”
Industry is primarily written by two men: Mickey Down and Konrad Kay. But it mainly explores the male-dominated finance world through its female leads. Abela agrees that Yasmin and Harper represent distinct strategies for navigating the patriarchy: “We definitely reflect two different types of women, in terms of how to be around powerful men.” Harper is “trying her hardest to stay on top” by beating the men at their own game. And Yasmin? “She’s Lady Macbeth-ing it up, trying to be a puppeteer” from the inside.
This is what Down and Kay saw firsthand when they worked on the trading floor after graduating from university. “Women tended to bifurcate into people who are trying to replicate the men, or trying to become objects of desire for the men,” Kay told The Guardian in 2024. “Both of those were pathways to success in a rigid male hierarchy.”
At face value, Yasmin represents a lot of traits that we’re meant to dislike: she’s manipulative, she treats people like they’re beneath her, and she’s gone through life having practically everything handed to her. But Abela manages to instill a sense of precarity in the character and, somehow, Yasmin often feels like an underdog. “I think what certain members of the audience see in her is a capability,” Abela says. “Whether that’s a professional capability or the scope within her to be emotional and powerful in different ways. And she’s not given the scope to do that by a lot of the people around her. So I think that gives the audience a hunger for Yasmin to have more; that gives her an underdog energy, even though she’s very privileged.”
Myha’la agrees. “What’s so exciting about these characters is how they’ve been humanized. I personally don’t love a trust fund privileged-ass white girl, but as a viewer, I’m so sympathetic towards Yasmin,” she says. “And Harper too. She’s not just a shark or a girlboss. She’s also a person with pain and struggle.”
This season, one of the central questions that Harper is starting to ask herself is whether or not she’s a psychopath. What’s it like playing a character like that? “That’s one of the things I love about her, that she is actually now asking herself that question,” Myha’la says. “I feel like regular people ask themselves all the time, Am I a bad person?”
In 2024, Industry’s third season was its breakthrough moment. Watching the show, it seemed Down and Kay really homed in on what they were trying to say. And as a result, the show became more daring, elevated, and cinematic, with Kit Harington joining the cast. In the US, season three was placed in HBO’s coveted Sunday-night slot, traditionally occupied by discourse-shaping shows such as Succession and Game of Thrones.
As a story of two “survivor” women, the show has also developed a vocal queer fandom who generate a constant stream of memes, thirst posts, and Charli XCX fan-cam videos. Abela is thrilled when I tell her that, as one such queer fan with a propensity for diva worship, I would personally follow Yasmin into battle. “Your fans are mostly the gays, I feel like?” Myha’la says, and Abela agrees: “I have a lot of gay men—and you have a lot of gay women.”
If the approval of the most important tastemakers (gay people) wasn’t enough, The New Yorker had crowned Industry as the best TV show of 2024, with the show dominating critics’ year-end lists, from Vanity Fair to Vulture and The Guardian. In May, Abela also won the 2025 leading actress TV BAFTA for her work on season three. Still, despite all this (deserved) praise and Abela’s (deserved) BAFTA win, the show didn’t receive many award nominations elsewhere—including zero at the 2025 Emmys. What gives?
“Thank you!” they say, almost in unison, when I point out the snub. “The truth is that the audience isn’t huge, in terms of the shows that do get that recognition,” Abela says. “What I’m so proud of is that Industry punches so high above its weight for the number of people that watch it. You look at the stats on something like The White Lotus or Succession compared to us, but then we’re on all the same lists.” Myha’la points out that some of the most beloved shows of all time, like HBO’s The Wire, didn’t win many awards, and also that the cast being mostly based in the UK probably doesn’t help with awards-season politics. “We don’t have much of a presence in Hollywood,” she says. “I think there’s a bit of a disconnect between the industry at large and Industry.” As someone who has watched the show’s momentum grow, I think it will end up exemplifying the eternal Samantha Jones quote: “First come the gays, then the girls—then the industry.”
Myha’la and Abela’s upbringings could hardly have been more different from London’s cut-throat finance world. Myha’la grew up in San Jose, California, as Myha’la Jael Herrold-Morgan. In 2023 she dropped the name Herrold professionally, saying that her first name feels more representative of her. She’s very close with her mother, Susan, who worked in a beauty salon and whose eclectic closet first piqued her interest in fashion. (Myha’la attended the 2025 Met Gala in an homage to Black Dandyism that was custom-designed by Luar’s Raul Lopez.) As a self-identified theater kid, she started performing in community plays at age six. And in 2017, the year before she graduated from drama school, she landed a role in a touring production of The Book of Mormon. Will we hear her singing soon? “Of course, one day,” she says. “I mean, my dream is to make my Broadway debut.”
In contrast, Abela grew up in Rottingdean, a village near Brighton on England’s south coast. Her father, a comedian and director, is of Maltese and Arab descent. And her mother, who is still a working actor, is from a Jewish background with Polish ancestry. They split up when she was four. It’s a background that, on paper, might predispose her to nepo-baby allegations, but it’s more nuanced than that. “I grew up with no money from a single-parent family, and I got a scholarship to a very, very prestigious private school—an all-girls boarding school,” she explains. “I remember girls would come over to my house and just laugh at how small it was.”
How did she assimilate into a world where chauffeur-driven Bentleys (yes, really) would arrive at school to take her friends to Harrods for a shopping spree? Well, she didn’t. “I went the other way,” she remembers. “I leaned way more into a working-class vibe, [probably more] than I actually was—my mother was a trained actress, but we just had no money. I wasn’t like, I’m going to be posh, so instead I was a gobby little shit!” She went on to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, landing the role of Yasmin before she graduated.
It’s a background that made Abela perfect for Industry — a show that, for the British characters in particular, is really about where they stand in the pecking order of the UK’s archaic social class system. Through a hailstorm of microaggressions and class signifiers, we learn that it’s not just about being rich, but having the right kind of (old) money and being the right sort of (posh) person. The characters are all tormented by their varying proximity to the ruling class—even someone like Yasmin, whose father was a member of Oxford University’s notorious Bullingdon Club.
At the start of season three, we saw Yasmin on a downward spiral. Her wealthy publishing magnate father had mysteriously disappeared amid an embezzlement and sexual harassment scandal, and the paparazzi had begun stalking her every move. Floundering, she found herself in love triangle with Rob—a banker from a northernw orking-class background, who arrived at Pierpoint & Co. naively thinking it would be a meritocracy—and Henry, the living embodiment of privilege. In the end, when she agreed to marry Henry, she was reunited with her one true love: status.
In season four, Yasmin (or Lady Muck, as she is now formally known) is finding her feet in Henry’s world, where everyone has a function. “Yasmin grew up with money, but she did not grow up in the aristocracy,” Abela says. “She’s playing the good wife—and she would fucking love it if Henry would just let her play that role a little bit better.” As she learns to wield the power of her new last name, she even engages in what I’d call rural drag, dressing in dowdy knits and country clothes. In fact, Yasmin’s trajectory can be best summed up by two costumes: Last season, as she hid from the paparazzi hiding outside her home, we saw her dressed as Princess Diana—a dethroned royal who was also hounded by the press. And this time? She’s Marie Antoinette. Go figure.
As an American, Myha’la has taken a crash course in Britain’s fixation with class. In some ways, Harper represents the fantasy of the American dream: that, with hard work, you can be whoever you want to be and drastically reinvent yourself. But she’s coming up against the reality of British society, which is basically “Know your place and stay there.” Myha’la agrees, though Harper wouldn’t see it that way. “She’d be like, Fuck that, bro. You say I can’t do it? Watch me.” Still, Myha’la thinks that classism can be a “veil” that is used to disguise other prejudices. “I personally think that the project of whiteness is working very hard to say, ‘No, it’s all about class!’ to avoid saying that it has anything to do with race,” she explains. “Class and race are intrinsically linked; they just are.”
This was explored in “White Mischief,” a heart-pumping episode from last season that followed chauvinistic city trader Rishi Ramdani (played by Sagar Radia). The crux of the episode was Rishi realizing that, no matter how many tweed jackets he wore or how much money he made, the white people in the rural village he had moved to were never going to accept him—a fact they communicated in a very British, barely spoken way. “Obviously,” Myha’la says, “there’s poor white people and rich people of color, but you can’t say it’s all about class.”
In season four, Harper’s identity as a Black woman is explored in more depth. She realizes her business partner, an older white man, sees her as a token—a label she’d worked her whole life to avoid. And at one point, out of sheer exhaustion, she says: “I can’t be a punching bag for another man’s fear.” This line stuck out to me. I wonder if that’s what it can sometimes feel like to be a successful Black woman in the entertainment industry. “I’m pretty lucky that, so far, I haven’t felt it in a way that’s made me feel like I can’t do my job,” she says. “That’s not to say I haven’t felt it, but I think I’m going to feel it more when I reach the next level, when I try to get my own projects made. When I dip my toes into the land of the producer or whatever, that’s when I’m going to feel it more.”
On the show, Harper often resists identity-based framings. In season three, there was a moment when a well-meaning white man—an “ally”—argued that climate change would be resolved if women were in charge. Harper bit back: “I prefer the kind of feminism where women can be cunts.” It’s a line that can double as Industry’s mission statement. We’re under no illusion that the men—who routinely belittle, betray, and harass their female peers—are the worst, but when the women hold the power? They’re capable of being just as bad, because as Myha’la puts it: “Greed, money, and lust are not gendered things.”
Take Yasmin. In the past, she’s described her own father as a groomer and a manipulator. But this season we see her using similar (and quite sinister) gaslighting tactics. Now that she has amassed real status, her domineering sexual antics land differently. In that sense, Industry does a good job of exploring how kinky sex and nonmonogamous relationships can be exciting and freeing, but they’re also spaces where lines can be blurred and crossed. “I’ll be curious to see what the discourse is on that,” says Myha’la, reflecting on Yasmin’s behavior. “Sexual assault is a line that feels pretty red, but coercion is harder to sniff out and point out.”
Speaking of abuses of power, Abela’s biggest role outside of Industry was the lead in Back to Black, the 2024 Amy Winehouse biopic directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Abela’s performance was praised as “extraordinary,” but the film received mixed reviews, with some even decrying it as a “grotesque” insult to Winehouse’s memory. Was that tough to read? “It’s really hard,” she says. “The best-case scenario is you read a script, and you’re like, Every single thing about this is perfect, and it’s going to be amazing, and everyone’s going to love it. But in my experience, most of the time you’re like, This is really great about it, but these things I wish were slightly different. If I believe that enough things about the project are right for me, then I will always do it because I am, for want of a better word, an artist. I’m not going to limit myself to perfection, because what is perfect?”
The experience has underlined that, as an actor, there’s only so much you can control. “Your work will be bad if you’re going into it thinking, This has to be the best. I go into a day with a scene thinking, This has to be honest. And if I reach that goal, then I’ve won.”
Now that Industry is a hit, I wonder if there’s any pressure to fly the nest onto “bigger” projects? Abela, who went from filming Back to Black straight into season three of Industry, says that it’s not one or the other, because schedules are often flexible. “But what it does mean is people are seeing you in the same role over and over again.” As she entrenches herself deeper into the audience’s psyche as Yasmin, she has to “trust that they’ll have the imagination” to see her as other people too.
And what about Myha’la? Are there agents in her ear pushing her to do an action movie? “Girl, job security!” she says, after telling me that as an actor, “you can never completely relax, because it’s always possible you can never work again.” This is a timely reminder that, behind the glitz and fame, actors are normal freelance workers who don’t always know when the next job is coming—and blow their first paycheck on ugly sneakers.
The slow-burn popularity of Industry has made both Myha’la and Abela gradually more recognizable. What’s their policy on fans stopping them for a selfie? “It depends if I look good or not. That’s my policy,” Abela laughs. And with social media, she tries to avoid the comments section. “I feel like it’s the same instinct as having a boyfriend who you know is cheating on you, and looking through his messages. I’m looking for the thing that’s going to hurt me.” Almost immediately, like a protective reflex, Myha’la reassures her: “She doesn’t get any negative comments. She’s perfect.”
Out of the two of them, Myha’la seems to be particularly good at filtering out the background noise online, and also at switching Harper off after a day of shooting. She puts this down to trying to do as much “normal” stuff — cooking, watching TV, hanging out with her fiancé—while she’s filming. “I go home after putting on a strap-on and pretend-fucking a dude and I’m like, ‘Babe, I had such a great, hard day!’”
At this point, when the actors break out in giggles yet again on the sofa, I realize that maybe the real love story of Industry is the sisterhood between them. “We’ve always wanted what’s best for each other and had a really, really great working relationship,” Abela says. “That obviously then bleeds into our life. I’m very grateful for the relationship that we have.”
And they’re bound together by a shared sense of ambition—to the point where, when I ask what the future holds, they instinctively answer for each other. “I see you being able to make your own shit and starring in it,” Abela says, turning to Myha’la. “You have such great taste, so I would love to watch something that comes from your brain and that you create.” And for Abela? “We’re trying to win a joint Emmy, then make a series of films together,” Myha’la half-jokes, before getting serious. “I’m just afraid that when the show ends, we’re never going to see each other, because you really are the person that Yasmin wishes she was all of the time. You really do rule the world. So whatever you want to do, the world will be your oyster.”
Industry will air on HBO Max on January 11.
Photographer: Joyce NG @joyceszeng
Stylist: Jessica Gerardi @jessica_gerardi
Set design: Harry Stayt @harry_stayt
Hair: Issac Poleon @issacvpoleon
Makeup: Joey Choy @joeyjoeychoy
Nails: Michelle Class @michelleclassnails
DP: Nathaniel Rodriguez @filmedbynathaniel
Producer: ZRD Production @zrdproduction
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