Industry’s Myha’la Herrold gets back to the grind
AS STARTER WEEKS GO , Myha’la Herrold’s first on Industry was a doozy.
The plane, the first she’d ever taken out of the US, took her not to London, where the smash-hit drama (think Skins meets Succession) is set, but to Cardiff, where it’s filmed. There, she was plonked in a car and whisked off to meet season one co-director, Lena Dunham, at a cottage in the Welsh countryside for an away day with the cast.
‘She had us over for tea, crumpets and Domino’s pizza,’ says Myha’la. They ‘played some games, talked about life’, then Lena pulled out her phone and sent a snap of the gang to Brad Pitt – as you do – just to break the ice. ‘It was kind of crazy.’
Industry, written by former bankers Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, returns for a second series this month; other projects meant Lena hasn’t directed on this season – but we’ll see much more of Harper Stern, Myha’la’s plucky, powder-keg New Yorker who tricked her way into the Square Mile’s elite at fictional bank Pierpoint & Co, screwing over friends one minute, screwing them the next.
Sex, drugs and rolled-up £50s are Industry’s bread and butter. ‘Drugs are a huge part of it.’ For the cocaine-fuelled scenes, the props department provided powdered lactate. ‘It’s just uncomfortable. That stuff is really dry,’ Myha’la says, screwing up her face.
Bankers don’t have the best reputation, but does she think better of them, having played one? ‘I don’t think that anybody is a villain. All of them are doing what they’re doing because of the same basic needs I or anyone has: we want success, we want love,’ she says. ‘Would I be friends with them? Probably not. But I have a newfound respect and appreciation for what they do.’
Season two opens by addressing the impact of Covid on the City. Like Industry’s workaholics, Myha’la – who lives in New York with her boyfriend – would rather be in the office, any office, than working from home. ‘One of the greatest joys was getting to go to work again, and getting to be with my friends, who were way over there [in London] and I’m way over here,’ she says. ‘Honestly, I felt lucky to be back to work.’
Myha’la also makes her big screen debut this month in whodunnit comedy-horror
Bodies Bodies Bodies, with Pete Davidson. ‘What I have now is, instead of veiled confidence, actual confidence,’ she says. ‘I know what I’m bringing to the table and I know that that’s going to be good. I know how to be an actor. So now the confidence is real and it’s backed up by experience.’
‘Industry’ returns to BBC One and iplayer on 27 September
As the hit drama about the cut-throat world of banking returns, its breakout star says she can’t wait to get down to business