SPOILER ALERT: This story contains plot details for “Habseligkeiten,” Season 4, Episode 3 of HBO’s “Industry,” now streaming on HBO Max.
Anyone who last saw Kiernan Shipka as little Sally Draper in “Mad Men,” or even as wand-waving adolescent Sabrina Spellman in “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” may well blink twice upon seeing her latest role as Hayley Clay in “Industry.”
In the first scenes of the Season 4 opener alone, she’s popping pills in a nightclub, getting frisky on the dance floor (with Charlie Heaton’s Jim, also a new character) and giving colorful descriptions of her vagina to her new acquaintance back at her — quite impressive — apartment. And this all before Hayley is eventually introduced as an executive assistant at shady financial startup Tender.
But it’s Episode 3 that truly kicks whatever remaining child-star status Shipka has left firmly into the annals of TV history in a scene in which she’s playfully encouraged to have sex with trouble aristocrat Henry Muck (Kit Harington) by his deviously manipulative wife Yasmin (Marisa Abela). Hayley obliges, perhaps too enthusiastically, prompting Yasmin to get involved in the action herself so as not to be outdone in the endless game of power play. Naturally, with this being “Industry,” and a season in which creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down have all but blown the doors off the show’s financial roots, this threesome takes place in a medieval Austrian castle run by a family of fascists, where paintings by an “A. Hitler” hang on the walls.
As Shipka notes, “Industry” is a show that is not only “brave and it’s rule-breaking and it’s pushing limits” — but it’s a show that manages to “get away” with it.
At first, Hayley seems to be the doting assistant, albeit one who also likes to go out and hook up and take drugs. But we see more of her identity as show moves on. How would you describe her?
When I taped for the show, it was pretty much the opening sequence, and then it was a scene from a later episode. And I was kind of going, “Who is she, who is this girl?” I could sense that she was playing some sort of game, and was also wild and living her life, and had a much grittier, more raw quality to her, given how much she explodes within the first five minutes of meeting her. But I really didn’t know what she was all about.
And then what did you later find out at her?
Once I came on, I read the first four scripts, and I talked to Mickey and Konrad about what her later arc was going to be, and got to really map out this real long game that she plays. I find Hayley to be an incredibly smart and calculated and oftentimes deceptive character. I think that she is playing a game of chess and is sort of figuring out what kind of chess piece each moment is after she lives out the moment. She’s very emotionally linked to all these people as the show goes on — I think her business is interpersonal relationships, these complicated power dynamics with other people. And that was so fun to play. She’s got a real “dive in, nothing to lose” quality to her that I really liked. As calculated and fine-tuned as I found her, I also found that she didn’t have this “Am I doing the right thing?” thing, and had a forward movement to her game that was intoxicating.
Love Film & TV?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in music, film and TV in Australia and abroad.
We have to talk about the threesome scene in Episode 3 with Yasmin and Henry. There’s a lot of power play going on in there. At first it seems like Yasmin is being manipulative over Henry, and merely using Hayley, but this seems to quickly turn. How did you see it?
It’s such an important scene for all three characters. But what I think is so interesting about that scene is that everybody’s got this wildly different emotional arc: You’re doing something together, but everyone is on kind of their own journey. The actual physical nature of the scene came last for me. It was much more about what this meant for Hayley — why she was doing it, and what she kind of knew she was getting herself into. And obviously, for Marisa and for Kit, it was equally about where their characters were and why they had found themselves in the situation, and what it meant for them. And for those three worlds to come and collide and feel all those different energies, it was a really interesting moment. And a really fun thing to do.
“Industry” has been daring throughout the last three seasons, but I think there are some lines in that scene that will still raise eyebrows. When you read the script, was there a part of you that was like “Oh, ok, this is what we’re doing then?”
The amount of stuff that I that I read and went, “Oh, I guess I’m saying that!” I’ve never been on a show where I’ve read the scene, and then in real time gone, “Oh, wait, no, no, I’m actually doing that.” But also, at the same time, I feel like we’re in such good hands. And that’s why the show, for lack of a better term, gets away with this stuff as it’s done, in such a careful, tasteful manner. But it’s brave and it’s rule-breaking and it’s pushing limits. And I think that’s why everyone’s excited about it.
I hope it wasn’t your first day on set…
No, that would be a different story! But we’d shot some stuff, so I knew everyone by then!
There’s a bit of editing from the sex scene straight into Yasmin eating oysters for breakfast that is quite wonderful.
It is! And that was in the script. So it’s really testament to Mickey and Konrad knowing exactly what kind of show they wanted to make.
Casting director Julie Harkin said she really wanted to give you a role that was something completely against what audiences have seen you in before. As someone who last saw you in “Mad Men,” this is obviously very different. Was that a consideration of yours as well going into this?
Yeah, it was really exciting. I and I’m very grateful to Julie and to Mickey and to Konrad for seeing me in this part, because she is different and she’s more grown up. I mean, I’m 26 now, but people have known me since I was 6. And I’m very aware of what kind of weight that holds. So for them to say, “Hey, I think she’s the girl for Hayley,” is very exciting for me. It’s a part I love. So I was definitely aware that I was doing something more mature. But I wasn’t really thinking, “I’ve really got to do this sort of thing next.” It’s about the people and the material. But when it can also be something that challenges someone’s perspectives of me as a performer and when it goes up against stuff I’ve done previously, that’s so exciting and so fun.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
From Variety US