In the final moments of Industry Season 4, Marisa Abela‘s Yasmin Kara-Hanani takes a heel turn of sorts.
After Tender goes under and Henry (Kit Harington) has little left to offer, Yasmin sets her sights on a new path to power — and a dark one at that. When her once-close friend Harper (Myha’la) finds her in Paris, Yasmin is now organizing illicit interactions with underage girls and young women for ultra wealthy de facto neo-Nazis and conservative politicians.
It’s a chilling, if unfortunately logical, direction for this publishing heiress who has clung desperately to any proximity she can find to wealth and influence above all else, Abela says.
In fact, the unapologetic madam sitting across from Harper in that Paris salon is not as far off as she might appear from the new grad on the Pierpoint trading floor in Season 1, who at times seemed scared of her own shadow.
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“I think she operates from a place of fear. There’s a kind of fight-or-flight energy in her that she’s incredibly good at hiding, and she’s gotten better at hiding it,” Abela tells Deadline. “That essence of the girl who feels worthless and fears she’ll be found out by everyone still exists in Yasmin in Season 4. Her way of operating has changed, to be proximal to power, so she doesn’t need to feel quite as afraid, but the fear is still there.”
Abela traced that through line across four seasons in the interview below, where she also unpacks some of her inspirations for Yasmin — including one of her favorite television franchises: The Real Housewives — and ponders where she’s headed in the fifth and final season of Industry.
DEADLINE: I was reading an interview you did recently where you said you’re a big Real Housewives fan. I’m currently making my way through Salt Lake City — I’ve never watched them before. It’s my first true Housewives experience.
MARISA ABELA: It’s iconic. You’re diving in at the best. I think Salt Lake City is really, really great. The great thing is you can watch it from the beginning and it’s not, like, 15 seasons.
DEADLINE: I just finished Season 5. I just got through the Puerto Vallarta stuff, which is truly wild. I promise there’s a through line here. It made me think — do you ever channel that type of energy into Yasmin? In some ways she’s pretty similar to some of these women, with a lot of wealth and desire to be aligned to power.
ABELA: Yeah, definitely. Mickey loves Housewives as well. He sometimes says to me, ‘which Housewives are you watching right now?’ Because if I’m watching a specific one, it can influence me too much. Once I was watching Real Housewives of New Jersey and he was like, ‘You’ve got to stop,’ because I had my fingers in everyone’s face. I think one of the reasons I love Housewives is because it allows women to exist in this kind of insane place. They run the gamut of every human emotion. They are exploitative and funny and intelligent and cruel — all of the things — and yet we still want to watch them, root for them. In that sense, Yasmin is kind of like a Housewife. She seems to have no shame. And the show is also quite high drama. We’re not afraid of going to places that feel extreme. The writing tries to undercut things, but plot-wise it can go into soap territory. Some of the stuff on the boat in Season 3, I remember being like, ‘We’ve got to be really careful this doesn’t just seem insane.’ So I guess it’s just about rooting the character in reality and in genuine motivations.
DEADLINE: I felt that way, too, about the scene at Henry’s birthday party in Season 4. That is such a surreal scene. You could have really gone off the deep end there if you weren’t careful.
ABELA: Totally. And especially in those costumes — more camp. There’s a scene in Episode 2 where Yasmin tells Henry to come downstairs and they have a huge argument. She says something like, ‘You fantasize about killing yourself, but it won’t be heroic. It will be small and pathetic.’ We’re really going at each other. And there’s a fear, when you read those kinds of huge scenes with huge emotional dexterity and depth, that it could swing too dramatic. You have to trust in the writing. It’s incredibly intelligent. And also trust in your own ability to really mean what you’re saying, so it feels understandable, rootable, and the audience isn’t like, ‘What are we doing here?’
DEADLINE: That’s one of my favorite scenes of yours in the whole season. It’s hard to watch, but it’s just a great scene. I wonder, with Kit or with any of these scene partners you’ve had to go to really dark places with and say really horrible things to, how do you work with that other actor to find a way to get there and to really get vulnerable?
ABELA: I think it’s different with everyone. With Kit, I have a kind of built-in relationship now, because we’ve been doing it together for so long. We just understand each other’s language so well. It feels easy and natural. We demand the best from one another. And we don’t get to work together that often on the show, so when we do have those scenes, they’re really meaningful to us as actors, and we come prepared. I think preparation is the most important thing. The best way to show respect to your colleague is being as off book as you possibly can be and as familiar with not only the lines, but the intentions and the reason you’ve gotten to this moment. Henry and Yasmin’s relationship is so interestingly thought out that we’re both incredibly excited to play those moments. We would map out their relationship in the season together. How many times do we get to see them happy before it gets bad again?
There are only three moments in Episode 3 where they’re kissing and it’s seemingly good. We have to really play those for what they’re worth, so that when I do walk in and see Whitney holding his arm, it feels like a loss, rather than us coming straight from Episode 2, where the energy is quite bleak. For that specific scene in Episode 2, Mickey and Konrad wanted it done in one take. We walked through the physical landscape of it. There was a hit in it — Yasmin did hit Henry — and we decided we didn’t think that was necessary. And also, what does it say about Yasmin if she genuinely is a woman who partakes in domestic abuse? So choreographing those moments where she goes to hit him and stops — that matters. Kit also is not afraid to lose an argument. It sounds insane to say that, but a lot of male actors don’t like that [and] wouldn’t like to yield to their wife. He doesn’t hold onto that power. They put me in those insanely high heels, towering over him. It’s a conversation between all of us. When Mickey and Konrad are direct, it really helps. We’re not second-guessing how we want it to look in the end.
DEADLINE: I like what you’ve previously said about how we expect female characters to have more of a moral compass than male characters. I’m curious how you think about how Yasmin views her own behavior as these scenes are unfolding?
ABELA: I think what Yasmin is acutely aware of is how other people view her. I think that’s an incredibly feminine characteristic. I think Harper is probably the same. What Mickey and Konrad have done incredibly well in writing these female characters is that, I think it would be unrealistic if they didn’t understand how the world views them. They understand it very well. For example, Henry might not understand the way the world sees him or might try to change that narrative. There’s that saying: Men look at themselves, whereas women look at men looking at women. Yasmin has grown up looking at herself in the mirror in every possible way. Does that mean she cares deeply about who she is as a person? Not necessarily. But she cares how she’s perceived, which is then meaningful when Harper perceives her in a disdainful or judging way, or when the world sees her as cruel or weak. That matters to her. But an internal metric about who she actually is as a person? No, I don’t think that crosses her mind very often.
DEADLINE: When you were first reading for this character and starting out in Season 1, what were some of the first character traits you noticed about Yasmin that you’ve really wanted to carry through to sustain her emotional arc across the series?
ABELA: The thing I was most excited to play about Yasmin in Season 1 was her fear. I think she operates from a place of fear. There’s a kind of fight-or-flight energy in her that she’s incredibly good at hiding, and she’s gotten better at hiding it. There are certain scenes in Season 1 where Kenny kicks the bin over and makes her sit on it, and you can see how afraid she is. That essence of the girl who feels worthless and fears she’ll be found out by everyone still exists in Yasmin in Season 4. Her way of operating has changed, to be proximal to power, so she doesn’t need to feel quite as afraid, but the fear is still there.
And then the other thing is the way she’s willing to manipulate how men see her. That’s been there since Season 1, whether it was with Robert in a kind of purely sexual way, exploring her own sexuality and sensuality. That seed has grown into her being explorative of other people’s sexuality and how she’s able to exploit male desire. She says it to Harper in Season 4: ‘Men would swim through sewage if it meant they could come at the end.’ We’ve seen her learn that throughout the previous four seasons. Now she’s exploiting it in a way that means she herself doesn’t have to be exploited. That’s the journey that’s taken us four seasons to get to. We’ve sort of ended up at the darkest possible resolution, and it’s incredibly intelligent writing to get us there.
DEADLINE: It’s so fascinating how the end of Season 4 just aligned with the zeitgeist in a really interesting way — more ripped from the headlines than it ever seemed intended to be. We’re already past that news cycle; we’re not even really talking about the Epstein files anymore to the degree we were when the Season 4 finale aired. I wonder if you’ve thought about that in relation to people like Yasmin — to what degree can she potentially get away with this? How fleeting is our desire to change anything as a society?
ABELA: What was crazy was that, even when we were shooting, things weren’t as much in the public consciousness. As the show was coming out, it was the height of the Epstein situation. And I think that was, candidly, incredibly difficult, to be in some weird way commenting on something so purely evil. I’ve tried to wrestle with Yasmin’s intentions for so long, and then for it to be part of something so much bigger — it was difficult. But if anything, what’s interesting about the nature of someone like Ghislaine [Maxwell] is that she’s the person everyone is most confused as to how [she] sleeps at night, and as they should be. Within the context of everyone involved, a woman doing this just seems completely out of any natural way of being. To your first point, women are held to such to a higher moral standard, so to understand how a person has gotten to this place just does not seem in any way understandable. I think Yasmin will find her way out of it faster than anyone in that real world did, because I don’t think it’s where she wants to be. Even that last communication with Harper — she’s explaining herself in a way where it’s clear she understands that it’s wrong.
DEADLINE: Do you hope she has some sort of reckoning or change of heart in Season 5? Do you hope she gets away from the path she’s on?
ABELA: As a fan of the show and as the girl that plays Yasmin, I hope she gets away from it. I think that when Mickey and Konrad write something for themselves, they want to be able to expand on it and explore it intelligently, rather than pretend it never happened, because it’s kind of a challenge, I guess. I hope that what they would rather do is work away from it in an intelligent way, rather than towards it.
DEADLINE: I remember talking to you the other day, and you were saying that Sesaon 3 was really when you started to feel the response to the show growing. What did it mean for you to win the BAFTA in Season 3?
ABELA: I was so shocked and happy. This is a show that I’ve really given so much to. It’s been with me throughout my entire career…I’ve never been an actor without Yasmin being there in some capacity. This is going to be the final season, the next one, and Yasmin means everything to me. I owe so much of my career and everything that I have to this show and to Yasmin, too. So to be recognized for the performance is so meaningful. It’s not something that I take lightly. I’m incredibly proud of the of the creation of Yasmin and being a part of this show. So, of course, being recognized for it is great. And the truth is, not every job that you get as an actor you can you get behind in the same way that I really do, honestly, get behind Industry.
DEADLINE: Have you recently watched any of the early seasons? I’m just so curious what it’s like to think about Season 1 or Season 2 compared to where you all are now — in the show and in life.
ABELA: No. people send me clips and stuff sometimes…I can’t help but be like, ‘Oh, my God, I look so —’ I was 22, and it was my first ever job. It’s a brave show in the sense that we’re exploring quite dark things. Also, it’s quite vulnerable physically. There was a lot of intimacy and nudity in Season 1, and I think there’s a bravery about me then that I’m incredibly proud of. I think I just jumped head first into that show. I think we all did. I knew that it was special. I knew that it was an insane opportunity to get an HBO show and a lead and a really complicated, interesting character, and I just didn’t want to hold back at all. I wanted to lean right into it and give whatever audience there was going to be for this show the best time possible.
I think you can feel that from all of us, and it really hasn’t changed. I do think the show has gotten better, and I think that we have gotten more specific…people get more specific as they get older.
DEADLINE: It’s funny — if there’s one thing to be said about Yasmin, it’s that the one thing she won’t hold back on is her inhibition. As you’ve matured and gotten more specific in yourself, alongside this character, how have you viewed your own relationship to inhibition and ambition?
ABELA: Ambition is an interesting one when it comes to Industry, because I would describe myself as an ambitious person, but my ambition is to feel creatively fulfilled. The biggest difference between Yasmin and me, other than everything now, but at the beginning of the show, was that she chose a career in finance, and I, being an actor, at the end of the day, it is a creative job. For me to feel fulfilled as a person, I want to to delve into the artistic nature of this job, and she doesn’t have that. She has no creative outlet whatsoever. I think that that’s part of the reason that she is unhappy. Being ambitious in my line of work, it’s easier for that to make you happy if the ambition isn’t just the next job and the higher thing and the better thing. I think that, in that way, it’s similar in that, if you’re trying to fill a void, that’s never going to work. Playing Yasmin has taught me to have have friends that you trust and that you take their advice. I think that the best thing about Yasmin’s life was Harper.
DEADLINE: I like that Mickey and Konrad never make Yasmin’s ambition the problem. Other characters try to make it a problem, but that’s not the character’s problem. Women are not generally allowed to be that unapologetically ambitious or to desire proximity to power in that way.
ABELA: It makes complete sense for her. She’s been at other people’s mercy. She says it in Episode 7. That was such an important moment for me to play and to connect to, because when Harper says, ‘What is all of this about for you?’ And she says, ‘I guess I grew up at someone else’s mercy’ — that really was an emotional release to say, because I think that it’s true. We understand that being close to power is a safe feeling for someone like Yasmin. She’s always been at the mercy of other people, especially other men. When you speak to Mickey and Konrad, especially about Yasmin, they don’t judge her. I think you can feel that in the writing. They really understand this woman’s desire to feel safe, no matter how misguided her tactics are. That’s what’s so brilliant about it.
I went to see Devil Wears Prada 2 yesterday, nd there’s a moment where Miranda Priestly, Meryl Streep, turns down halfway in the back of the car, and she says, ‘You should write about it all, because they should know that it comes at a cost.’ It made me, like, tear up. I think we’ve been sold this line for so long that women can have it all, and you don’t have to compromise anything. Of course you do. There are compromises every single step of the way for women. I think that the more honest we are with ourselves with that, the more we can ask for less compromise. If we lie to ourselves and say, like ‘every the path is laid and it’s all perfect,’ it’s not. We’re still operating in a man’s world. If we want to be as successful as the most successful men, we have to do it by walking the same path that they did, and it wasn’t the path that was created for us. So, for that reason, I’m incredibly proud to be a part of something that does explore female ambition in a way that also judges all of the men around.
DEADLINE: Looking beyond Industry, what are you really excited about for your career? What kind of project are you really hoping somebody will put in front of you?
ABELA: I have loved doing television for six, seven, however many years, but I think that Industry is kind of as good as it gets for me at that point. I’d be very excited to do more TV when the right thing comes along, but the freedom that comes with filmmaking, I’m really excited about. I’m excited to actually have a bit more freedom. Job security is amazing, but [I’d like to] have a bit more freedom and not be tied up in something and be able to say yes to the things I’m really excited about. Mickey and Konrad are almost like working with filmmakers in the sense that they have real creative control. But I’m excited to do that in film.
DEADLINE: Do you have a specific genre you’re really hoping to explore?
ABELA: I mean, not necessarily. I think the main focus is people that are creating and making their own work with a real artistic integrity and artistic vision. Whatever that is, I’m down.