‘Industry’s Marisa Abela Knows How It All Ends for Yasmin

Marisa Abela in 'Industry.' Courtesy HBO Logo text

After four seasons, Industry is finally getting a proper Emmys campaign. It’s a development that the show’s dedicated — occasionally bordering on rabid — fanbase has been calling for since the British financial drama first hit the scene in 2020 (just look up Industry Emmy when on any social media platform). But participating in FYC season has also given the show’s actors new insight into how the audience relates to the material and what they’re most interested in. For Marisa Abela, who plays the simultaneously shrewd and vulnerable Yasmin Hanani, the question that everybody wants to ask her is: how did we get here?

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By here, folks are referring to Yasmin’s turn in the season four finale; after a tumultuous and overdue split from her husband (played by Kit Harington) and a departure from the fraudulent fintech company Tender, she becomes, essentially, a madame. Abela, during a recent interview at The Hollywood Reporter’s office, explains that there was never any evil plan for her character. “Mickey [Downs] and Conrad [Kay] really do write season to season, and I think if you were to ask them back in season one, they would have said there’s no way we would have gotten to a place like this,” she says. Instead, the show’s creators (they also direct several episodes each season) are inspired by the decisions their actors make in scenes — and by Industry‘s casting writ large.

“Had Kit not played Henry, everything would have looked different. If Adam Levy, who played my dad, played it in a different way, it would have been different,” she says. “They take these shiny things and run with them, and it’s a genuinely creative process in that sense.”

It’s quite known by now that Industry actors get the season’s scripts one by one; how much do you ask about the direction of the season and your character?

With season four, I knew where Yasmin was going to end up by the end, but I didn’t necessarily know how we were going to get there. That helped me explore important moments a little deeper, because I could tell they were going to impact the end. The end of the season happens because of these small moments, rather than her having her sights set on some kind of Machiavellian goal. So in episode four, when Hayley says something like, I felt quite uncomfortable, I knew to lean into that because it was laying the groundwork. Or in episode seven, when I tell Harper, I grew up at someone else’s mercy, I knew I had to connect that emotionally because that’s the explanation for everything. Yasmin has been at the mercy of men so many times in her life, whether it’s sexually or financially; she’s always been a pawn in their game.

Did you ever believe that Yasmin and Henry could have had a successful marriage?

In the real world, if it wasn’t Industry, then maybe yes — if he was sober and working at a good company. There’s a world in which they could have stayed together. Would it have been an easy, faithful, traditional relationship? No. But did I, as Marisa, ever think it was going to work on the show? No.

Myha’la and Marisa Abela in ‘Industry.’

How have you processed the success of the show through different seasons, from getting more popular last year to now campaigning for Emmys?

I’m really glad that it got big when it did. Season three is really great television, and there’s a reason people came to it then, other than just having HBO royalty Kit Harington joining the camp. We know our audience so well, and Mickey and Conrad are writing things that you can feel ahead of time what the response is going to be. I know part of what the audience loves about Yasmin is her temper, so it’s fun when I get one of those explosive scenes.

A lot of popular or beloved shows start getting backlash, or fan criticism — take The Pitt in its second season. But I haven’t seen that happening to Industry…

I think it was counterculture at the beginning. And it still has that edge. We’d been doing it for years before people started paying it really serious attention. There was zero vanity at the beginning; we weren’t thinking about what people were going to think of us when we were taking all of our clothes or when I was putting my knickers in Robert’s bag. It was just fun.

What will you be thinking about, in terms of Yasmin, as you enter preproduction for the final season?

There are really two versions of this season for me, and one is much darker than the other. So I’ve spent most of my time thinking about whether I want to be part of telling certain versions of the story, and what the alternative to the darkest version could look like.

As the viewer, we’re sort of torn between wanting her to come to her senses and pull back from this dark business she’s entered, but also recognizing that we do not come to this show for happy endings or pleasant moments. Do you feel torn between wanting what’s best for the story and what’s best for the character?

I feel protective over Yasmin. I understand that she’s fictional of course, so in a way the thing I feel most protective over is that she gets a really interesting storyline. And I know that she’s going to. And I have to admit, I do know where it goes next season, so this is a hard line to toe. We know that wherever Yasmin ends up at the end of season five will be her final resting place, and of course I would want it to be on the mountaintop somewhere. But I also know the show and I don’t know whether that’s possible. I think about Don Draper and how much better it was that he didn’t actually end on top; there was a coda that made it a little spicier.

Was this part of your thought process in deciding to do a season five? Was there a world where you would have opted out if you didn’t like the storyline?

Honestly, we don’t have to keep coming back. We were going to do three seasons. But knowing it’s the last one, I wouldn’t have wanted to not be a part of ending the show. But I definitely did want to know what the creative was, and what they were thinking. So we had a conversation before we all agreed to do a season five, and I was like, okay, cool. And to be honest, I kind of knew what they were going to say, and I don’t want to say I was pleasantly surprised. It was more like pleasantly, “Yep.”

Which scene from season four was the most fun to shoot?

Maybe at the bar with Myha’la, just because I love her so much. And knowing our audience, I know it’s going to be meaningful to see them kiss in the club. But I also love those big argument scenes with Kit. We shoot them so close up, and we have to carry the momentum of the scene because we can’t rely on the editor to cut it in an exciting way. It’s just exactly as we’re doing it. It’s also helpful to have our own relationship as actors now. In the divorce scene, it was written that Yasmin slaps Henry, and we both knew they wouldn’t get physical. They don’t hit each other. We decided it meant more to see Yasmin go to hit him, and he winces in a way that’s really heartbreaking and tough to watch. I also have to say those scenes are exhausting for Fede [Cesca], our camera operator, because it’s all handheld and many minutes long. By the time they call cut, he’s dripping sweat.