A decade from now, moviegoers and television viewers will look back at the five seasons of “Industry” and revel in what is turning out to be a star-making cast. Former cast members David Jonsson and Harry Lawtey have already moved on to big movies, and Myha’la is beyond booked and blessed. But it’s Marisa Abela, as the scheming Yasmin, who already has a BAFTA Award on her mantle, played Amy Winehouse in “Back to Black,” and worked with both Steven Soderbergh and Greta Gerwig. How she’s transformed Yasmin over the first four seasons of Mikey Down and Konrad Kay‘s London-set drama, though, is something to marvel at.
This critically acclaimed season saw Yasmin segue to a political and publicity operative, assisting her husband Henry (Kit Harington) in his new gig as the CEO of an up-and-coming tech company, Tender. This puts her at odds with her good friend Harper (Myha’la), who worked to profit off Tender’s volatile stock performance. By the end of eight episodes, everyone’s lives are fundamentally changed, and Yasmin may not be the heroine viewers were initially rooting for when the first season dropped in 2020.
Having just wrapped her role in the new feature version of “Highlander” the day before, Abela jumped on a Zoom to discuss Yasmin’s journey and what she’s hoping for in the fifth and final season. Among other topics…
Please note: There are spoilers for season four of “Industry” in the context of this interview.
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The Playlist: It’s probably not as prestigious as winning a BAFTA Award for season three, but congrats on your first TCA Awards nomination for season four.
Marisa Abela: I mean, it’s amazing. It’s always insane. I think we’ve been doing this show for so long now. It’s such a huge part of not only my career, obviously, but my life and these relationships are so important to me and both creatively and personally. So, whenever it is acknowledged in that way, it’s just so exciting. It’s another chance for us all to celebrate what it is that we’ve created together and get to enjoy it with the people that enjoy watching the show. So I mean, it’s amazing.
You’ve been working on this show for seven years. How does it feel knowing that this is the final season? Are you sad? Are you happy? Are you ready for the journey to come to an end?
I mean, right now I’m just incredibly excited to film that final season. I don’t know how I’m going to feel when it’s the last couple days of shooting “Industry” this time around, because like you say, I will know then that this is my last time with Yasmin. So, I guess I feel nostalgic about that part of it, but right now that’s just fueling me to give the fans the best season that they’ve had so far. That’s the thing that’s really inspiring me when I already have episodes one and two. When I’m reading it and thinking about those scenes and the relationships, I’m just so amped up to really give it everything this season.
I want to talk about season four though. Is it me, or is this the first season where she’s really found her calling in a career way? What she’s really good at?
Yes. I feel like Yasmin finally knows what her skillset is. I don’t know whether she’s using it for good or evil necessarily, but she knows. I think Yasmin’s skills have always been getting people to do what it is that she wants them to do for her. And I think that finally this season, she’s found a way to become useful professionally by utilizing that rather than just trying to be like any other analyst on a desk. Yasmin was never the best at finance, that was never going to work. Now she’s in a much more relationships-based business, whether that is in marketing or working with a small company like Tender. Yeah, I think it looks to me like she’s found her calling more this season.
Did Mikey and Konrad give you a heads-up on where her storyline was going to go?
I had a conversation with Mickey and Konrad at the beginning of this season and they sort of told me the arc of Yasmin’s journey this year. And I mean really starting with that second episode with Kit with Henry and Yasmin in the house and that big setup for this sort of failure of a marriage and therefore why she goes on the journey that she goes this season in terms of a desperate vying for power in whatever way she sort of knows how. So yes, that was kind of what I was told. I was told that there was a storyline involving the corruption of power with Yasmin when she gets in close proximity to these men that maybe want or need young women around that. I knew that that was coming and that was something I was very afraid of actually. I mean both personally and also as an actor to motivate. I feel like I know Yasmin very well and know what motivates her when suddenly the creators bring something in that feels to me like I don’t know at the beginning of the season how I’m going to get there. I don’t know how I’m going to motivate that. I don’t know from the Yasmin that I have created how she gets to that episode eight in a way that feels authentic. So, I think the entire season for me was like a careful calibration of mapping out, “O.K., maybe in this moment there’s another loss or in this moment there’s another clinging to power or clinging to safety,” and all of those microbeats internalizing what I knew was coming in episode eight, if that makes any sense.
It does. Do you think she loved Henry? Do you think she wanted to divorce him?
I don’t think that was her goal when she got married. I don’t think she got married thinking I’m going to get divorced and get a big alimony check or whatever. That was not the goal. But I think you see in episode two, a woman that is desperately trying to save her marriage and I do think that that is her intention. I think the moment that it really shifts is at the very end of episode two when he turns around to her and says, “Maybe we should try and start a family.” And she just, you can see, I mean, even though I’m wearing sunglasses and scarf around my head, you can see that she’s like, “This man is deranged. And there is no way of me getting out of this safely. One of us is going to get out of this alive and it’s going to be me.
Do you think in her mind she’s thinking 10 years from now, 20 years from now? She wants to be this rich, she wants to be this powerful?
No, I don’t think Yasmin can see the future for herself at all. I’ve thought about this. What is her ultimate goal? I think Yasmin is a creature of prey. I think she plays the sort of big cat very well, but I think that Yasmine is a terrified little mouse, a mere cat-type animal, and I think she’s looking right directly in front of her. She’s only ever thinking one or two steps ahead. And she’s a very leap and the net will appear kind of person. She doesn’t think anything through particularly. She just thinks if everything around me is falling into molten lava, all I need to do is get to the next safe step. I’m not even thinking about the sort of promised land.
Do you think she thinks about morality and what she’s doing at all? Because there’s the moment in the final episode of the season where Harper is sort of shocked that she would hold that party. Is that something that she’s even cognizant of, you think?
I think at this very moment, at the end of season four, no. I think that she has completely lost all sense of morality and empathy for other people. I think she’s turned into, I guess, a bit of a sort of sociopath. I think that that is changeable. I think since the end of season three, Yasmin has been in a semi-state of fight or flight. And I think that she is acting out of sheer self-preservation. And for that reason, she’s not operating from a moral sense whatsoever. I think her answer to that question would be, “It’s a privilege to act from that place, and I don’t have that privilege right now.” I mean, whether she’s right or wrong, but that is how she feels. But no, I think morality has left the building right now. Hopefully it can come back.
Having played her for so long and been through so much of her journey, would you be sad if it didn’t come around at the end, or would you be like, “Oh, that was just a great character to play.” C’est la vie?
I think as a fan of the show, well, completely honestly, all I want is just the most sort of rich, shocking, amazing stuff. I don’t necessarily think that that means that she becomes evil incarnate. I actually think that that might be too simplistic for Mickey and Konrad. I think they’ve written something for themselves. It might be more interesting for them to find a way out of it or for her to find a way out of it. But I think as a fan of the show, I want Yasmin to win. I really do. I want her to come out of this having everything that she doesn’t know that she wants yet or needs yet. So yes, I would love for her to see the light as long as that’s fun, as long as that storyline is interesting and whatever, but I’m sure it will be.
Is there any one memory that just pops when you think about shooting season four?
I would say I think that there are two. Episode two when Yasmin comes upstairs in her big wig and she sees Henry doing blow on the table in their bedroom and there’s a long scene that’s all done in one take of Kit and I just absolutely going at each other. I think we maybe did it only three times and all of those are Yasmin saying stuff like when he says, “You didn’t even vote for me. ” And she says, “Well, what differences would my vote make? I’ve never voted.” I just think it’s so full of funny, very Yasmin at her kind of peak, angry, crazy girl energy. I love to play her when she’s like that. So, all of those moments when she says to him, “If you can’t find it in yourself to f**k me, then maybe you’re already dead.” When I read that, I laughed so much when I said it to Mickey and Konrad; I was just like, “You guys are so crazy.” So that one, and then also the scene with Harper in the club just before the club, sitting at the bar talking to one another, it was such a great vulnerable scene that all of the crew were amazing, incredibly respectful, super kind of quiet. There was a lot of care around that scene, and then we got to go and dance together in a club and kiss. That was really fun.
They do love the club scenes. I do have to say. Their club scenes are always good. They are usually at real venues, not sets usually, right?
They are in real clubs that obviously are shut down, but they usually go and come get their friends to come and DJ. DJ Tennis was in this season, I think. And so basically it’s just us and a room full of extras dancing to actual club music. It’s fun.
Is it doing a club scene day for night at 1:00 PM in the afternoon?
I mean, it depends. That scene was a night shoot. Because we go outside and we lie on the floor and we’re smoking, and so actually that one I think it was at 1:00 AM or something, but it felt authentic. That final bit, lying outside with the cigarettes and we’re kind of off our faces, it felt a bit too real actually.
Before I let you go, I have to ask, have you wrapped shooting “Highlander”?
I just finished yesterday.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Did you make it through unscathed, no scars?
Well, I mean, a few bumps and bruises, but you see [shows a small bruise on her arm] But I was injury free, which is amazing. Yeah, amazing.
Is your sword play up to par? Will people be impressed?
I’m going to be honest, and I’m very British in the sense that I don’t love to bake myself up for these kinds of skills, but I loved sword fighting, and I got very, very good at it. I think people will be excited to see. I mean, Henry [Cavill] is incredible. I mean, obviously people have seen “The Witcher” or whatever, but when someone who’s at the top of the call sheet is that brilliant and it gives that much to training, you kind of have no choice but to really throw yourself into it. So, I spent basically a year training sports, so it got pretty good.
“Industry” is available on HBO Max
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