“You Don’t Get Many Jobs Like Industry, But I Didn’t Take Industry For Granted”: Kit Harington and Marisa Abela Unpack Season 4 Of HBO’s Finance Juggernaut

Fifteen years on from his star-making debut as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones, Kit Harington has landed another seismic return on his acting investments in the heady world of Industry. As Season 4 took his character Sir Henry Muck to sunken lows and the show, itself, to newfound market value, the British actor guides onscreen wife Marisa Abela through the thrill of hitting the jackpot again.

Marisa Abela thinks Kit Harington is looking especially great, of late. “I saw you on Jimmy Fallon [recently], and you looked fabulous,” she congratulates. “What’s the regime, Kit? Do you have a skincare situation?” The 39-year-old does, as a matter of fact, although it’s not a lifelong set of rituals. His wife and former Game of Thrones co-star, Rose Leslie, had a “serious word” with him a few years ago. “She was like, ‘You’re getting blackheads,’ And I was like, ‘Oh, okay, am I?’” Leslie put him onto a few products – “I’d never used face wash before. And toner, who knew?” He completes that two-stage process every night. “And occasionally, I’ll give myself a scrub.”

“This is the problem about print interviews,” he pauses. “It’s like, this is the most serious conversation we’ve ever had,” Abela replies, laughing. “That’s the title of the interview: ‘I Use a Toner.’” The headline focus of their tête-à-tête is, indeed, not Harington’s grooming philosophies – although they’re evidently worth taking note of. Rather, it’s Industry, the inebriating HBO/BBC drama that divulges the debauched intersection of investment banking with money, power, sex and drugs. Engineered by financiers-turned-screenwriters Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, it has proven a sleeping giant of the 2020s TV economy, achieving word-of-mouth cult status in its first two seasons, before enjoying a rise in stock by 2024’s Season 3, and soaring into hyper-growth in time for January’s fourth instalment. 

Unfortunately, the fictional prospects of its characters prove less linear. As Industry’s popularity has imploded, the spectacle (and production value) has followed suit – they’re no longer confined to the cramped bullpen desks of the trading floor, proceedings go intercontinental, and the wardrobes of its now moneyed former-graduates could inspire a new luxury corporate-dressing blueprint (looking at the incisive Harper Stern, in particular, embodied by real-life fashion darling, Myha’la). However, as the veneer gets glossier, the circumstances dealt to its core ensemble get ever more depraved, and, in many cases, so too does their conduct. 

Harington’s Sir Henry Muck was introduced in Season 3 as the egomaniac, aristocrat CEO of energy startup Lumi, a client of the show’s central mega-banking institution, Pierpoint & Co. Abela’s Yasmin Kara-Hanani, once simply on the bulge bracket’s graduate scheme, finds herself, at the beginning of Season 4, in matrimony with Muck, as a means of escaping her own family’s fatal financial predicament. A marriage of convenience, their entanglement has proven ill-fated from the start, but few could have predicted the dire straits they would respectively land in by the show’s most recent finale. 

So much so, it’s hard to imagine where they go from here. “As far as where you could take Henry as a character, he was put through so much this season,” Harington tells Abela. His descent, backdropped by Henry’s relapse into substance abuse, was played with nuance by Harington, who, as the pair discusses below, is himself in recovery from alcoholism. “I said to [Mickey and Konrad], ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do [with him].’ But they’re very good writers.” Abela and Harington’s future on the show is currently, publicly, unknown, however it was confirmed in March that Industry would clock out following its next outing. “I think we’re lucky that it’s finishing on five [seasons],” Harington reflects.“I’ve been in a show which went to, god, how many seasons was it? Eight? And it was amazing, but finishing with five… I don’t think you’d get tired of it.”

Harington’s breakout on that show, the gargantuan Game of Thrones – historic both in its subject matter, and audience reception – today, renders him an actor for whom introductions are surplus. Entering the role of Jon Snow as the ink was barely drying on his scroll from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, in his twenties, he assumed all jobs would be of a similar magnitude. “I took it entirely for granted, looking back.” As he convenes with Mabela over Zoom, on a school night, having just put his two kids to bed, he now realises, “You don’t get many jobs like Industry,” or indeed the R R Martin epic. “But I didn’t take Industry for granted – I knew it was a special show.”

Kit Harington: Marisa – I owe you big time [for doing this]. 

Marisa Abela: I have just had the craziest situation. I basically stole someone else’s bag from the airport. Isn’t that so awful? I got a phone call from Heathrow, being like, “We have your suitcase.” And I was like, “I’ve got all three,” and then I opened it up, and it turns out… 

KH: Not yours?

MA: Not mine. 

KH: Oh no. Did you find anything interesting?

MA: No, I haven’t looked at it. Hers is locked. But I’m gonna drop it round to her tomorrow, because I feel so guilty.  

KH: That is a ball-ache, though. So, all of your stuff… 

MA: All of my stuff is in Heathrow. I’ve got to pick it up, and on the way, I’m going to go via this woman’s house to drop her bag off.

KH: It could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

MA: She sounded like a lovely lady on the phone. 

KH: How are you, mate?

MA: I’m really good. How are you? 

KH: Yeah, I’m alright.

MA: You’re filming?

KH: I’m about to. It’s Wednesday. I fly on Saturday with the kids to New York, and I’m there until July.

MA: That’s fun, though. 

KH: Yeah, it is fun. I’m in that anxious state where Rose got a job, which just so happened to be over those dates – you just see she’s trying to hide the glee in her eyes [laughs]. So now I’m flying solo with the kids. 

MA: Do you know where the house is that you’re staying? 

KH: Yeah, we’ve found somewhere really nice in Brooklyn.

MA: Oh, nice!

 KH: We’ve been to New York a few times, and each time we’ve been in Manhattan, and this is the first time we’re going to go and live family life, and we’re not going to go out, really. So we won’t be in Manhattan, we’ll be somewhere age-appropriate.

MA: Brooklyn’s really cool, though. We had to stay there just now, when we were doing Industry press. 

KH: Was all the stuff in Brooklyn? I’m so sad I missed it.

MA: Well, the New York Stock Exchange Stuff was not, but that [Boiler Room] club night we did was.

KH: Was that wild? 

MA: It was really fun, actually.

KH: Good.

MA: What is it that you’re doing in New York? 

KH: I’m filming. I’m doing a Hulu TV, eight-part show with Lindsay Lohan.

MA: No way. That’s so fun!

KH: Quite fun. And Shailene Woodley.

MA: Oh, she’s great. That’s so cool.

KH: It’s like a domestic thriller type thing. It’s a bit like Big Little Lies. I guess it’s sort of based on a book like that, and everyone’s not what they seem. Well, I won’t give too much away.

MA: This sounds really cool and exciting.

KH: I think it might be. I’m looking forward to it. You’ve got to interview me. It’s hilarious, isn’t it?

MA: Do you know what questions I’m asking you?

KH: I haven’t got a clue. 

MA: Right, well, my first question for you, Kit, is what your first reaction was when you read Season 4 of Industry? Or when they told you what the storyline was going to be for Henry?

KH: I think I came into this, in Season 3, thinking, ‘Alright, well, you know, one season and I’ll be out. Cool character – fun, posh idiot, a bit more than that, but he swoops in, steals a girl, that type, but periphery character. And then, any good writer sees opportunities in what people are doing. So they said to me, three-quarters of the way through Season 3, ‘Would you be open to coming back with the character and doing something more?’ And I was having a really good time with all of you by then, so I said, ‘Yeah, I would.’ And I’m old enough now that when you’re enjoying something, you’ve just got to keep doing it, rather than overthinking it. So they came back to me and pitched a similar sort of broad outline, as they would have done to you. 

MA: Yeah, sure.

KH: Which was, ‘Here’s our idea for Yasmin, this new guy called Whitney is going to come in, and it’s going to have this feel, and you and Yasmin’s relationship is going to break down, you’re going to go off the rails,’ and that was pretty much it. That’s all they gave me. But I worked, in Season 3, with you enough to know that I really enjoyed our working relationship and the idea of that triangle. And this new character, who is a kind of con-man manipulator, who just rinses Henry, was interesting to me because I’ve seen, in my life, those kinds of wealthy, posh guys who are vulnerable to being conned, be conned.

MA: Yes, because they’re finally being told that they are as great as they hoped they could one day be.

KH: Yeah, because they’ve grown up with privilege, but no purpose. And they need to prove themselves.

MA: Yeah, exactly.

KH: And they’ve got money and status behind them, and there are these particularly leechy people who come in and take advantage of that, and chew them up and spit them out. It’s a very long answer to your question, but I thought all of that was interesting and sounded fun enough to go into. And also, I’d spoken to them about my personal history a bit, and I could see that they wanted to dive into some addiction stuff. And I thought, “I’ve not done that since getting sober properly,” so that was interesting.

 MA: I mean, that was something I was interested in talking to you about – was that something that you were interested in doing outside of Industry ever? How did you feel about it?

 KH: I still have this background idea to write a sort of Uncut Gems-type film about addiction and specific types of addiction, because every fucking addiction film always ends up being: someone hits rock bottom, and then they go off to an island, and then they find themself. I just find it’s always the same sort of sob story, and I think what I liked about what the Industry boys were doing was they were going, “No, we’re gonna take him on this wild ride of addiction. We’re gonna see it for all its ugliness, but all its fun and all its colour and chaos.” And my own experience of my history of alcoholism is that it was the chaos of it that brought meaning to things. I was as addicted to the recovery from the however-many-day bender it was, as I was to the bender itself. This rollercoaster of ups and downs gave such meaning to life, and without it, everything felt so mundane. And that’s what I could really relate to with the story of Henry, that he has to blow it up. Otherwise, it’s this existential thing underneath of, ‘What does anything mean?’ 

MA: And, they do show both the dark sides of addiction and toxic relationships, whether it’s money, power, alcohol, drugs, but I also think that they do a great job of showing the character who’s experiencing those issues as a full, rounded person. So my question to you is, what do you think Henry’s most redeeming qualities are? And it’s funny to ask you, because I know you love Henry, as I think we all do. I think what actually makes Industry sufferable, as opposed to the opposite, is that all of us, secretly, really love the characters that we’re playing. So what are your favourite things about Henry?

KH: Yeah, it’s interesting, because it walks that line between sufferable and insufferable

MA: Totally. 

KH: And it walks it very finely, a lot of the time. I think you’re right. The thing that keeps us able to watch these people is the actors enjoying the characters, and I think they give us enough that we’re like, “Actually, I can’t help but like this person somewhere, or understand them on a deep level.” I think I’ve spoken in the Industry press I’ve done, almost too much, about how much I like Henry, but I genuinely believe that he is not the worst person in this show. He is reprehensible in many ways in how he treats other people. I don’t think he’s a narcissist, but I think he’s a complete egotist and a bit of a fantasist, but he’s one of the few people who is trying to be good. He’s trying to do the right thing in many ways, like the stuff with him being a politician. He’s a centrist Tory.  

MA: He’s not far right, no. 

KH: He’s middle of the road, and he believes in welfare and looking after society. And he says some awful things, and he treats people in awful ways, and not least, Yasmin. But he strikes me as one of those politicians who gets caught up in scandal, and quite rightly gets brought down by it.

MA: But his intentions aren’t evil. You bring up the relationship with Yasmin, a question I get asked a lot is, “Do you think they were ever in love? Or do you think it was a marriage of convenience?” Do you think that there could have been a world in which they were good together? 

KH: I don’t think it was ever gonna work. I can’t speak for Yasmin or for you, but I think everyone has their own addictive cycles, and I think she has hers, and I think they’re in a classic codependent, toxic relationship, and it’s set from the get-go, from when they make a kind of business pact, almost at the end of Season 3.

MA: For sure.

KH: You know, it’s for all the wrong reasons, and starting from the wrong place. She’s literally fucked Robert [Spearing] outside, and then made some kind of Faustian pact with [Henry]. 

MA: Yeah [laughs].

KH: But I don’t think that changes the fact that there is love there.

MA: Yes, for sure.

KH: Without it, that doesn’t work. And I think he really does love her. I don’t know what her love necessarily looks like for him, but I think he, again, thinks he loves her as someone to save him or mother him. To be something to him rather than equal.

MA: I see that. I don’t know if you even see it in this way, or if it’s all kind of to do with the craziness of the season for Henry in general, but do you see Henry as bisexual? Or bicurious? Or is it just that when he’s down the rabbit [hole] of addiction, everything is fair game and fun?

KH: Totally. I think Henry’s answer would be, ‘Everyone’s on the spectrum.’

MA: Right. 

KH: And so am I. “And if I want to go do this thing, I’m gonna do this thing. Yeah, I sucked a guy’s dick, like what? I wanted to.” But no, I don’t think he’s gay, and I don’t think he’s even particularly bisexual. I think it’s part of his addictive cycle and process that, in that kind of state, he’ll do whatever the next most dangerous thing is, and be drawn to whoever is giving him that love in that moment. I don’t think, in the sober light of day, Henry goes for anyone of his sex. But then it begs the question, if Henry gets sober, does he marry some posh girl and live a normal life in the country where it goes beyond sexuality? That’s not him either.

MA: There’s always going to be a part of him that’s itching for something, right?

KH: Yeah, to roll the dice in a way, whatever that dice is. It’s got to be wild. 

MA: And that wild thing that we were all doing every day at work, you had, at some point, when Rose was working, your kids up with you in Cardiff. We were doing night shoots a lot of the time towards the end, and there was quite a lot being asked of you emotionally and intensity-wise, and then you’d go home and be a dad, and you’d try to find places to take them at the weekends to go to the park. How was that? Obviously, you’ve done it before, Game of Thrones springs to mind, in terms of that level of intensity and the long days and the long shoots, but this is different when your life is different.  

KH: I found it so much easier than when I was in my 20s doing Game of Thrones. I couldn’t get a balance when I was doing that show. I was unbalanced and always felt like I was about to fall off a cliff. With this, it was a really good choice Rose and I made that, she was off doing a play, and I think she said, “The kids should go with you. It’s going to be easier for me doing this play, and it’s going to be better for you,” and it really was the best choice. I was getting into some pretty personal territory on this season that could have left me quite triggered if I’d have gone home to an empty house. And, actually, I was going home to a constant reminder of why I don’t do that. There’s nothing like snapping you out of yourself like kids. I mean, the only problem I had, really, was trying to learn the complexity of the lines we are given whilst being a father, because you can’t think. You’re looking at the Industry script, going, “I can’t fucking do it.” But other than that, it stops you from overthinking. And I really liked it. And this job I’m about to go away on now, I’m really grateful that we’re all going as a family, and that I’ve got them there again to keep me rooted.

MA: And do you think that you have gotten better at dealing with success? But also, has what it means to you changed? It’s such an intense industry in terms of constantly thinking about what’s next and how to define yourself as successful. I mean, that’s how I feel anyway. I try not to just think of each job as a stepping stone to the next job, but try to be present and happy with what’s happening at the time. People have really responded amazingly to this season, and I’ve seen people really love your work in this season. How does that all look different to you and feel different to you now?

KH: I’m really lucky, I’ve had Game of Thrones and Industry, and they’ve both been highly rewarding, intense experiences that I’m really proud of. But in between those times, a lot of jobs come and go that are enjoyable and experiences that are amazing, but they’re not going to have that extra special sauce that this show does. You always hope, but they’re rare. I remember being in Game of Thrones and older actors coming along, going, “Oh, I’m loving this. These [jobs] don’t come along often.” And it was my first job, and I was like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” As far as career, I hear you on what you’re saying, not getting wrapped up in the ‘What if this job becomes that job?’ But it’s almost impossible not to. 

MA: No, of course. I so agree with you. I have a few more questions for you. I’ll go to some not-so-Industry questions. I know that when we were in Cardiff, we all loved that gym that we went to. What was it called? The Studio?

KH: The Studio. You should give it a shoutout.

MA: We’re giving The Studio in Cardiff a shoutout, because it was an amazing gym. And Kit, you’re looking amazing at the moment, I must say. 

KH: Thank you [laughs].

MA: Do you go to [the gym]? And how often? And this is a question, I think, for my husband too [actor Jamie Bogyo], how often are you trimming your beard these days?

KH: I bounce from groomer to job. It’s a bad thing, but I haven’t gone to a hairdresser’s for a long time.

MA: Oh, really? 

KH: I just let it [do its thing]. It’s a good way of pushing myself to do a photo shoot or something.

MA: Yeah, because you’re like “I need a haircut!” [laughs] 

KH: Yeah, “I’ll do that publicity, I need a fucking haircut.”  

MA: And you like a sauna and a cold plunge, or am I wrong?

KH: I do, I really do. 

MA: And you do yoga…

KH: I do yoga, and I do strength training. I’m regimented about it. Mainly because my head goes fucking weird if I don’t do it, and bad thoughts come in. It’s like clockwork. I can last two days without doing something, but on the third day, I’m not a very good dad, I’m not a very good husband, I’m not a very good actor. Everything just goes a bit [wrong]. I think it’s something to do with my ADD thing, and also, my sobriety and just my head, really. 

MA: Yeah, and it’s routine as well, and keeping yourself accountable towards something. Do you find that yoga is helpful in a mental health way as well? 

KH: More physical than anything.

MA: Oh, really? 

KH: It complements strength training. So it keeps you all kind of loose. I’m exactly the type of person who should meditate, but I find it excruciating. 

MA: Me too. 

KH: I can’t fucking stand it. And that means I should do it, but I just don’t do it. Rose meditates, and I pace around the room while it’s happening.

MA: Knocking on the window: “You done yet?”

KH: Letting rip in the corner.

MA: So what do you do in the sauna?

KH: I listen to podcasts about American politics.

MA: Oh, my god, the least relaxing thing possible.

KH: It’s the worst. I mean, here’s an admission. I did buy myself a sauna.

MA: I mean, it’s such an amazing investment. It’s so good for you.

KH: A red light one, as well.

MA: That’s great for your muscles and for skin, everything red light.

KH: And hair as well, apparently.

MA: Oh, well, look, I don’t think that’s ever going to be an issue for you, is it?

KH: Well, I’m keeping on top of it. I tell you.

MA: Are you?

KH: Yeah. Got all the fucking red light going on.

MA: [Laughs] Just head-first in the sauna. Okay. One more question. Do you have a bucket list for Henry? Have you ever had the conversation, like, “I want to go out this way,” or there’s something that you wanted to see Henry do that either has happened yet or is yet to happen?

KH: Liking the guy as I do, I want him to make the change that I made in my life. I want him to get sober.

MA: Right.

KH: I mean, he wouldn’t be very interesting [Laughs]. There’s a storyline after that. This is definitely off-series. 

MA: This is the spin-off that he pitches constantly to HBO: himself, fishing.

KH: Yeah, “Fishing with Henry Muck”. That’s actually quite a good idea.

Look, I genuinely think if he got sober, found the right person who loves him for who he is, he could be a good dad. If he got rid of some of the anger and his abusive side and all of that. But then maybe I’m holding him too close to me. Maybe he’s not like that at all. What it comes down to is, I stand by him not necessarily being a baddie. I think in Season 4, he was a fucking moron and bad in so many ways, and awful to Yasmin, but I don’t think he was evil. I don’t think he was a baddie. I kind of believe in him in that way.

Industry Seasons 1-4 are available to watch now on BBC (UK) and MAX (US)