Myha’la Herrold on What Harper’s Hair Reveals About Industry Season 4

0:05This is The Run Through. I'm Marley Marius, the Senior Editor at Vogue, and I'm here with fashion writer Hannah Jackson. Hi Hannah. Hi, Marley. So nice to join you here. So nice to have you here. Well, today we're going to be talking to someone that we're both obsessed with, who is the incredible Mahala Herald, who listeners, watchers will know from the HBO series Industry, which is back for its fourth season on January 11th. In it, Mahala plays Harper Stern. She's kind of like the young, lone American, growing up through this sort of cutthroat world of British finance. and we're kind of following her along in sort of a new adventure of this season.

0:47We were just talking before cameras were rolling about what really attracts us to industry and it's like, you know, the prestige and the drama of succession and like the, you know, sex and drugs of euphoria. So it's very that. And they're not children, which is great. It's so true. And I also feel like we are the age of these characters, kind of. And it began very much with them, with sort of recent college graduates just like entering a sort of training sort of program at what? Pure Point. Yeah, Pure Point and Co, a British sort of, wait, I'm trying to remember what the word is. Investment banking.

1:28Are they investment bankers? That's also a question. Honestly, who the hell knows? We don't know what they do. Maybe Mahala can clarify for us. We're such big fans, by the way. The thing about this show is that, like, no one actually knows what they're talking about at any time. But it's fun because they sell us on the drama of it. Exactly. It's like, it's such an intuitive show in a way where you can just follow the emotion. Yeah. And, you know, it's kind of like Shakespeare in a sense where it's like, you know, I get the gist of what you're saying. I have no idea what you're talking about. Totally.

2:01But I'm following. I'm tracking. Like, I can sense the beats. Rich stuff. Rich texts. Rich, indeed. Oh, my God. Her mind, folks. But let's begin, do I say? Yes, let's do it. Okay, welcome to Mahala. Hi, guys. Hi, how are you? How's it going? How much of that did you catch? Enough. Us being just insane. Marley and I just like, we do at our desks. All I heard was, are they investment bankers? Good. No one really knows. Okay, well. And that's true. We'll get into that. We have that question. Okay, great. Well, Mahal, we're so excited to have you. Congratulations. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.

2:39Oh, my God. We're so excited about this whole season. Marlee and I have been absolutely juiced. Congratulations on season four of Industry. Thank you. You've been playing Harper Stern for five years now. The show premiered in 2020, which, you know, what a different time. Yeah. So can you tell us a little bit how it felt returning to set for season four? Season four return felt very much like a triumph. we were this is maybe inside baseball but we were contracted for three seasons and truly you never know if you're gonna go again it's it's always dependent on the audience and what the studio wants and whatever so after three we're all like what's gonna happen there's no guarantee so getting picked up again and hbo being really excited about going again and bad wolf being excited and we were all really excited it felt very much like coming home in a way that i was like, oh, now I'm grown.

3:32I'm not just, like, coming home for spring break. Like, I feel mature in myself, mature in my understanding of the show. And I think that was true for all of us. We all felt like veterans. It feels like that translates on screen as well this season. I was going to say, because I feel like we're finding Harper really doing her own thing for the first time. And really, like, she's a boss lady. And really, dare I say, I mean, you know, for lack of a better term, tell us a little bit actually about where we are finding Harper at the beginning of season four kind of compared to where we were in season three.

4:08Yeah, totally. I mean, the end of season three is very much her being like, I'm going to be my own boss. This is the time when she like truly breaks away. She joins forces with Petra, which doesn't work out, but she's like doing her own thing. And now at the top of season four, we find her running her own book at Otto Mostyn's firm. She's like running her own book, meaning she's the one making the decisions on whose money gets traded where and where they're putting the money towards and whatever and what trades they're chasing, etc. So she's like her own boss. She has employees and she's running things.

4:42And this is the first time she has truly had autonomy in that. However, the first scene we see her in is her arguing with one of Otto Mosten's other employees who's kind of like her manager, even though she wasn't supposed to have one of those. And she's like, stop managing me. I'm supposed to be running this book on my own. So, of course, she is at the top of her game, but she's frustrated because she's feeling like there's a lot of oversight, which she doesn't like being told what to do. No, she doesn't. One thing that girl doesn't like. Okay, authority. What was the first scene that you filmed on this season?

5:16Do you remember? Yes, I do. Yes, I do. The first scene that I shot was with Tahib, which is one of our new characters. He's playing Kwabana. And I was doing like a really, really, really long speech. Like an angry long speech and telling him like, write my speech. And she's like really, really stressed out, which is sort of the speech and writing down of the speech. I'm not giving anything away. is like the beginning of the mess of the season for Harper. The mess. We love the mess. What a mess there is. We love the mess. What is it like for you guys? Like, you know, finance jargon does not come naturally to me.

5:56Sure. Do you already know a lot of these terms? Are you Googling? Like, how do you kind of like really, how much studying are you doing? Yeah. I mean, the first season I was very much like finance for dummies, like Google, what the heck is this? Now, a lot of the words, a lot of the jargon is really familiar. So I'm not doing that much Googling. It's more like asking Mickey and Conrad, and also like we have financial consultants who have been on the show, asking them like, okay, what is happening in this scenario? Like, I'm shorting this thing, but then that over there, why is this connected, whatever.

6:33And now that the show is like a little broader, like branching into journalism and politics and, you know, That sort of thing. It's like now more like a social question than it is about like directly the finance. But girl, no. I stopped trying to understand like what all the words meant a really long time ago. It's like this is not beneficial to me. It's actually stressful. I just need to know whether or not I'm doing a good thing or a bad thing or I'm like glad about the thing that's happening to me or I'm mad about it. It's basically it. I mean, to the credit of your performance, for dummies like us, we still generally understand what's going on based on your reacts.

7:12Thank you so much. I'm doing my job. We're interpreting. We're picking up context clues. And also it's amazing because I feel like what you always hear is people who are actually in that world are like, that show is very smart about what it's talking about. This is not like – they're not glossing. They're not kind of faking it. But, like, it does actually stand up if you know that world. Yeah. Mickey and Conrad don't want to spoon feed the audience. They're assuming that the audience is going to keep up with us. And whether or not they are in terms of, like, the jargon, they're on board enough to continue watching the show.

7:50That's great. It's like too many people treat their audiences like they're dumb. Yeah. And it ruins the quality of the show. And it's also, like, I actually don't need to be taught, like, about. I can Google it if I'm so curious. Yeah, totally. It's free. Google is free. Oh, my God. My favorite phrase. Something that you've spoken a little bit about is Harper's hairstyling being quite intentional in the show. And she's in braids. Like, what do the braids mean to you? What do the braids mean to me? Well, this time around, I asked Mickey Conrad, our showrunners before we, our creators, writers, showrunners, executive producers, our everything.

8:25Asked them, okay, so, like, where do we meet Harper and what is this season about? And they were like, this is, like, Harper's revenge. She's at the top of her game, and she's going harder than she's ever gone before. And I was like, well, obviously, it's got to be the micro braids with the human hair. It's got to be the most expensive, probably the most high maintenance, the most difficult thing, and the most elevated version of Harper. And I thought I would like to see whatever version of Harper in season one. Like, what is that girl's dream of herself? Which I think is Harper season four with the human hair micro braids.

9:01Because she's in her, like, rich girl era. Totally. Yeah. She has more money than she's ever had, the most autonomy she's ever had, and the most strength she's had. I think that also really comes across in the fashion. And we see Harper wearing this, like, there's a lot of power suiting in this season so far that we've seen. Can you tell us a little bit about working with Laura K. Smith on the costumes? Yeah, totally. Laura's a G. We love Laura. She is so, so, so good at costuming this show. And this season, she too was like, okay, Harper's at the top of her game. What does that look like? What does power look like?

9:41And you said power suiting. And we always trade boards. Like I was sending her pictures of Celine and YSL and a bunch of stuff. But it was basically just shoulders. Like all shoulder pads. And that was the thing that we sort of landed on. She said, okay, well, I'm going to make you a custom suit. Amazing. That's got, yeah, that first shot that we see, Harper, that gray, I think it's three-piece suit is a custom-designed and custom-made suit by Laura for Harper. Yeah, it's really crazy. So cool. And she was like, I want this to be, like, the hero piece for her closet and for her to be able to mix and match.

10:20So there's like this really beautiful sort of Japanese-inspired top. It's got like a sort of high neck and pleating. And then there's a skirt, but there's also trousers. And then there's two different styles of the suit jacket, one that's double-breasted with like the most tailoring you've ever seen in your life. It's like within an inch of my life. And then one that's single-breasted. So yeah, throughout the season, you'll see different pieces of that suit reimagined for different looks. So cool. Love. Yeah. I love when costume designers like actually consider how these things will be worn, you know.

10:55Totally. I think so often it's like, OK, you're just seeing one outfit and you'll never see it again. Yeah. Yeah. That's not how people live. No, it's not. What, you know, we've talked about what makes Harper feel good in terms of her clothes. What makes you feel like your best self? Oh, boy. I have always been passionate about dressing and getting dressed because I think whatever I choose to put on my body in any given day is like just an expression of how I'm feeling on the inside that day. And the beautiful thing about that is that it changes all the time. And because different kinds of clothes exist, that's why I love playing with them.

11:33I can express different parts of myself, different versions of myself. and when I get it really right, when I'm like the outside's really matching the inside, that's when I feel the most confident. So like school uniforms are really hard for me. Interesting. How did you like mess it up? I mean, I just got sent home all the time. I just got dress coded constantly. But I would like flip a collar or I would always do something interesting with my hair. And because I am black and was in a predominantly white neighborhood where my school was, whenever I did something with my hair, Teachers or whoever, the dean, would be like, my hell, your hair is done.

12:09I'd be like, ah, ah, ah, careful. Tread lightly. This could be a race thing. Shut them right up. Leave me alone. And they were like, close. And I was like, yeah, yeah, the fuck it is. But, yeah, anything I could. Accessories, scarves, socks, tights, hair bands, like whatever I could do to add a little flavor because I really, really didn't like being confined to a uniform. Did you have, like, style icons growing up? My mother has literally always been my style icon. She has, like, she's the one who's still got, like, boards that she's created that has cutouts from Vogue. Oh, my God. To, like, give her style inspiration.

12:49And then she'd be like, I'm going to build this outfit based on these. Wow. Really strategic. Yeah, totally. And she's really creative herself, so she loves to make stuff. She'll be like, kind of recently we were on vacation. She was like, do you recognize this? And her friend had a scarf around her head. And it was this fabric that my mom found in a fabric store just when I was looking for something. And she was like, I love this fabric. I don't know what I'm going to do with it. But she bought like the whole roll. But the fabric is like five different colors. And it's got, there's like so much texture.

13:17It's got silk, but it's also got knits. It's got things hanging off. It feels embroidered. It's like kind of. That's amazing. Yeah, it's really insane. So she's always been my style icon because she's really crafty. And she really loves like vintage and thrifting and, you know, building an outfit from scratch. scratch. I remember talking to you right before your first Met Gala in May, and you told a really great story about your mom and a pair of Timberland boots. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I hope I get the story right, because I had to, I remember telling that story, and she was like, that's not exactly how that went.

13:48And I was like, sorry. But I think the way I remember the story is that I really wanted tims because they're the coolest shoe and she was like oh i found these that were like a tim's knockoff at like a like a goodwill or something and she was like these are them they're like exactly the same shoe and i was like how dare you try to put me in these knockoff i was like 10 with no money like you know what no leg to stand on um but yeah so then at the met i wore my very first pair of Tim's. Wow. Custom Tim's. Custom. Thigh high moray Tim's pump with a Loire mini dress. It was like she got her Tim's already.

14:31It was the craziest clap back of all time. Was it worth the wait? Yeah. Totally. 100 % worth the wait.

14:40The run through will be back in a moment.

14:51Thank you.

15:21So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

15:29We also wanted to, well, sort of quickly talk about another of our sort of favorite past projects of yours for us, which was Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. Which also, like, I mean, I think at the time we were like, okay, this cast is very cool. But now especially, it's like everyone in that show, everyone in that movie is a star. Like, Chase, we wonder, Rachel Sennett, you obviously. and the director, you know, who did Baby Girl. Thank you. So, like, what a moment. And I remember seeing that in theaters and being like, obviously this rocks. Even though I'm not a horror movie person, you're not a horror movie person.

16:02No, not at all. Such a scary cat. It's so scary. Did you watch it back and find that scary? Not as much. I was still, like, jump scared every time. And, like, I had to watch it multiple times. And I still was like, oh, my God. I forgot that I filmed that. You know what I mean? Totally. No, I'm a sucker. I'm a sucker for a jump scare. I really, I just can't. My heart can't take it. I can't. Despite hating horror, you filmed another horror called They Will Kill You. I did. What can you tell us about what we can expect? This one, I think this is like not terribly dissimilar to bodies. It's kind of a genre exploring piece of film.

16:40Piece of film. I really think this, like the visual language of this movie is really interesting. Kirill Sokolov, our director, he is just cool. Like, he's just really cool. He's Russian and cool. I was watching the, like, bits and pieces of the movie. I've actually not even seen it, but it feels like I'm watching a video game. Like, the way the lenses he used and the way he moves the camera around is just really cool. There are some shockingly beautiful practical effects in the film. I don't want to give anything away. But it's really cool. And a really stellar cast. It's funnier than I thought it was going to be.

17:14So it's not your typical... Yeah. It's not your typical horror slasher scary movie, and it does have plot. So I hope people enjoy it. I was really surprised by it. I think it's going to be a fun watch. Totally. Will you tell us when it comes out? March 27th! Wow! March 27th is coming out. Oh, my God. Exciting. Yeah. In other exciting news, you're engaged. Hell yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. You guys have a very cute meet-cute. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Yeah, yeah. The abridged version. The abridged. is that I am marrying my biggest fan. Oh. I run the watch. As it should be. Yeah, it really should be.

17:53It's hope for fanboys everywhere. Okay. Listen, it works out. It worked for me. It could work for you. He watched Industry, and he sent myself and a couple other people on the show just a really normal, nice message. Like, congrats, I love this show. Whatever. I hope you have a nice life. Like, it was just a very normal, nice message. And I said thank you. and then the next morning I woke up to a string of video messages and I was like, ah, shit. He's a creep. But obviously my curiosity was sparked and I opened the messages and it was him recording himself and he was like, hey, my holla, it's Armando.

18:29I just wanted to say it was so cool of you to respond to my message. I wasn't expecting that. Again, I wanted to say congratulations on the show. I think it's really wonderful. Now that I'm out of your request, I thought I would just ask, mind you, videotaping himself. Wow. Which, like, I would never do that. I'm, like, way too shit. You know what I mean? He was like, if you've got five, ten minutes, I'm doing a project for my journalism course. I would love to interview you. And I was like, I can't very well say no to a child who's educating themselves. A student of life. And so I hopped on a Zoom the next day, and we were meant to be on for a few minutes, and, like, 40 minutes goes by.

19:06And by the end of it, I was like, so, where are you from? Oh, my God. Turning the table. I was, the tables had been turned and I was starstruck and quite literally immediately in love. And we found, I just kept finding like stupid ways to reach out. I think like less than a week later, I was like, did you get an A on your project? Like, you know, like I was really yearning. And in January, it will be five years later. Wow. How dear. I would just like to say that none of my J school projects ever ended in marriage. So I feel like I've been cheated out of my education. Keep trying. Check your DMs.

19:40Check your requests. You're not good, girl. Well, speaking of marriage, your co-star Marissa Abel recently got married, which is so exciting. And you were in the wedding as a bridesmaid. Can you tell us a little bit about the day? It was amazing. I mean, Marissa is truly like a force of nature, and she was running that ship like the Navy. I mean, she had it down to a T. Everything was perfect. They had been legally married a week before. It was a very intimate ceremony with her family. So they could get all the gushy stuff out. They could do the wedding the way they wanted to do it. And then they had the sort of big celebration with everyone.

20:20And yeah, it was just awesome. Like a day full of so much love. And it was so beautiful. The setting seemed insane. It was ridiculous. I walked in and I was like, am I on this set of industry? Literally. This place is beautiful. Literally. But it was like a sort of estate manory thing, like somewhere in the countryside. like not terribly far from where she grew up in Brighton. And I have been lucky to meet and get to know some of her friends. And of course, so many people from the industry cast, Mickey Conrad and Connor McNeil were all there. And it was just like a really big love fest. And they were so happy.

20:56And her now husband, Jamie, is also a musical theater fan. Really? And they did, he's into everything. I mean, he's done a bunch of stuff on the West End, But they did like a choreographed sort of flash dance feeling sort of thing on the dance floor like at the end of their wedding. And they had choreography. He was like in his bag. What song? Oh, I feel like it was something like I did it my way. Oh, French and Ultra. That's like the best song ever. Yeah. Yep. How sweet. Really iconic. Oh, my God. Wow. And you wore a really fab bridesmaid's dress. I know. Weren't those great? So many people have.

21:31I didn't know that it was like a thing. Maybe it's a thing in England for the bridesmaids to all be in white. Oh. I didn't know that that was a thing, but it is, and it's so chic. I mean, that was. Would you do that for your own? Would I do that? Yeah. I don't know if I want to do like a wedding party or anything, because I would be like, what about that, and then it would be like 25 people. Yeah. And it's too much. You know what I mean? To be fair, I kind of, I want somebody else to do the planning. I don't want to do, I don't want to have to be involved. It sounds like a lot of work. It's just like so much work, and I'm like exhausted just by the thought of.

22:00Honestly It's a full-time job Sometime when I have Like one day I'm just gonna be like It's time for the wedding Like I'm just You know what I mean I'm gonna be like Ready to go Yeah

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