Taken from our Spring 21 issue. Order your copy now.

“I always said I’m never going to end up sitting at a desk. Period. And then the first major job I get sits my ass down at a desk,” Myha’la Herrold laughs. The actor and I are discussing her latest role in Lena Dunham’s Industry: a drug-fuelled, ego-driven deep dive into the cutthroat world of investment banking, airing on HBO and BBC Two. The eight-part drama might be set in an industry entirely foreign to Herrold’s own, but beneath the layers of jargon she discovered a story she instantly related to. “The show is only a financial drama because it’s set in a bank. It’s really about how people navigate relationships and hierarchies with the ultimate goal of staking their claim.”

Departing from the typical The Wolf of Wall Street-style tale of white male power brokers on top, Industry focuses on life at the entry-level, in all its young and diverse forms. Herrold plays Harper, an ambitious young New Yorker who finds herself competing against her fellow grads for a permanent position at one of London’s top investment banks. As a young woman who has just entered the workforce, Herrold didn’t find it hard to connect with Harper’s character. “Reading the script, I thought ‘I am this. I’ve lived this’. If I were a different person, if I had a different life and family, then I could have been that bitch, you know? Out of all the potential versions of myself, Harper is definitely one of them.”

As a character, Harper is self-contained, staunchly independent, and unapologetically goal-driven. But she refuses to be what people expect of her. “I love that about her,” Herrold nods in excitement. “When you read a character on paper as ‘Young, Black, biracial American woman, has humble beginnings and family issues’, you expect her to be a certain kind of way. You might assume that she really cares about feminism or social justice, for instance. Whether Harper does or doesn’t, we don’t really know because she refuses to let anybody see her.”

As we watch each of Industry’s fully-fledged characters negotiate their identities as colleagues, friends, lovers and enemies on the trading floor, we’re never told how to feel. “The show doesn’t demand you feel a certain type of way about any of its dynamics — be it race, class, or gender. It’s simply inviting you to see them,” Herrold asserts, her voice full of admiration for the scriptwriters. “I love that, because then it inspires in the audience a need, a desire, an excitement to have those conversations amongst each other instead. To question in themselves: ‘How do I feel about this?’ I think that’s a really integral part of life.”

The show’s groundbreaking style can also be attributed to its raw, in- tense and unglossy portrayal of sex. “When I watch sex scenes that are emotionally driven and real, I think ‘This is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen’. I hope people feel that way when they… Well… Watch me do it,” Herrold giggles, but don’t confuse her laughter for embarrassment. “I love everything about sex and sexuality. I make it a point in my being to get rid of that taboo bullshit. There’s nothing we do as human beings that doesn’t have some element of sex in it, and that’s exciting. Sex is fun! There’s so much opportunity to make discoveries about who we are, what we want and how we find those things with other people. And there’s so much love and pleasure involved. So, going into it, I was like ‘Fuck yeah! I’m stoked!’” she says, on what it was like to film her first-ever sex scene. “I was so excited because I had this awesome opportunity to be involved in sex and sexuality on screen that wasn’t through a male lens, and in a way that felt authentic and purposeful.”

We’re way over our allotted interview time, but before Herrold leaves I’m dying to know if she will be returning to our screens after Industry, or if she will be going back to her all-singing, all-dancing stage roots. “Before, I had never considered film and television seriously. What really changed my mind and made me think ‘There’s a place for me here’, is that after I graduated there were so many auditions that were right for me and so many stories I could relate to. Even in the most low-key disrespectful way, like, ‘Looking for someone non-white’, and I think ‘OK, so you’re just filling a quota?’” she scoffs, her eyes rolling. “But like, fuck it. I’m gonna fill it and I’m gonna kill it.”