“We had something of a bromance,” says Lawtey of Kit Harrington, who joined in season three to play Robert’s new opponent Henry Muck. “It felt like we both knew where we were fighting from.”
Photo: Simon Ridgway/HBO
“It’s all you ever wanted, the validation of your superiors and a functioning interdependence with someone who is just as broken as you.” This is the brutal but accurate assessment of Harry Lawtey’s Robert Spearing, one of the industry‘s primary young banker, delivered by his sexually abusive client Nicole (Sarah Parish), in the season three premiere of industryTo make matters even more brutal, Nicole dies shortly afterwards.
That trauma, and Nicole’s parting words, will surely continue to haunt Robert, who arrived at Pierpoint & Co. with the looks of an aspiring banker – he’s a handsome white guy from Oxford – but comes from a working-class background, which is reflected in Lawtey’s northern English accent and has influenced his efforts to fit in among his new colleagues. So far, this has been most evident in his complex relationship with Marisa Abela’s much more posh Yasmin, who compensates for her own incompetence at work by sexually controlling Robert. But this class dynamic becomes even more apparent when season three introduces Sir Henry Muck (series newcomer Kit Harington), who is assigned to Robert when Pierpoint takes its green energy company Lumi public.
Henry, a true aristocrat with a vague sense of business ethics, dominates Robert, who tries to curb the founder’s impulses while desperately seeking his approval. In the second episode, “Smoke and Mirrors,” Robert attacks Henry for his lack of empathy for his own customers. Henry tries to get Robert to give him a “distinguished
Cunt,” and the two engage in a wrestling match in the middle of Lumi’s office playground. But Robert is quickly drawn back into Muck’s mess by Yasmin’s plan to save Lumi’s IPO. Robert is asked to accompany Henry to a meeting at a gentlemen’s club, where he must endure not only the aristocratic scorn of Henry’s godfather, but also the growing obviousness of the bond of privilege that binds Yasmin and Henry but does not extend to him.
“He always had the problem of looking for validation in the wrong places,” says Lawtey of Robert, who has taken his place as the bleeding, if misguided, heart of industrys third season. Before the season aired, he analyzed the factors that simultaneously promote and hinder Roberts’ “quintessentially British ambitions.”
Robert has to go through a lot right at the beginning of this season, with Nicole’s death and Lumi’s IPO. What was it like to be shot out of a cannon like that?
It’s nice to portray dichotomies, two opposite things in one. So Robert’s career seems to be going well. As the bank’s foot soldier, he’s given more responsibility. At the same time, his personal life continues to implode. He started the show as this very headstrong guy, very brash and overcompensating, and he’s gradually shrunk.
I like that he obviously spent all this money buying the house he, Yasmin, and Harper live in now, but he can’t finish the renovation.
It’s a perfect metaphor, this skeleton around him, eating him from the outside. It’s also a beautiful ode to people who don’t change. In the first season, he bought a motorcycle that he doesn’t need and just makes him look like an idiot, and the house is an extended version of that.
Before the season began, did you talk to creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay about where they wanted to take Rob?
We have a big conversation at the beginning where they lay out their ambitions, what they want to do, but it’s always very malleable. You don’t necessarily know what’s coming next. But we’re also at the point where they’re allowing us a nice level of autonomy. This show has always had a kinetic frenzy to it, and you can sense that as an actor you’re in a vortex. A big shift is really the key word for this season, and it’s time for us to be ambitious. Having people like Kit and Sarah Goldberg come on the show has helped with that. The fact that they’re so established and wanted to come and be part of our team.
What was it like working with Kit?
I loved it. We really had a bromance of sorts. It felt like we had chemistry from the beginning and we both understood where we were fighting from.
With Kit’s character, the class dynamic between him and Robert comes to the fore. There’s this posh guy who’s his boss, who he has to serve and who he can’t stand. What was it like playing him?
I’ve always thought that Rob’s development was completely driven by class and ambition. It’s a quintessentially British pursuit. I can’t say I know much more about investment banking than I did when the series started, but I think that’s not so relevant to my job because this stuff is really a vehicle for discussing notions of class. As Robert has gotten older, he gets the opportunity to ask questions about who he is and what he wants. He’s always had a problem of seeking validation in the wrong places. I don’t know if he’s realised that yet, but there are moments in this season where he really confronts that desire. There’s the ethical challenge when he realises that what Henry is doing to Lumi’s clients is inconsistent with where he comes from. It’s a weird “have it all and eat it all” situation where people want to outdo themselves but also be proud of who they are.
Your own parents come from the north, right?
My parents both come from a small working class town in the north (Barton-upon-Humber) and met when they were 12 years old. My whole extended family is from that town. I never lived there because my parents moved away. My father was a military aircraft engineer and took a job down south in Oxford in his early 20s. My parents’ brothers, sisters and friends thought it was incredibly glamorous.
But I’ve never lived in the place I feel like I’m from. I visit every Christmas to see my family and support the local football team. My voice has a northern accent but I don’t immediately sound like I’m from there. I have my own problems with that. That’s a bizarre quote, but do you know Rick Astley?
As in “Never give up”?
Yes, an absolute classic. But I heard this interview with him, and something that really struck me – and I think is relevant to Robert in the show – was he said his family was from Manchester. He grew up there in a very working-class household, then came to London and became a worldwide sensation with this song. He said he hadn’t lived in Manchester for 30 years and objectively leads a different life, but “I see the world through northern eyes”. I could relate to that because I see the world from my parents’ perspective. And I think Robert is exactly that. He got sucked into this callous dynamic that only measures you by the dynamic of ‘can you make money?’ And Rob is sometimes all heart and no head, and the show is a slow journey where he achieves a certain level of self-discovery.
She, Myha’la and Marisa Abela have been given some great career opportunities in the film industry through industry. What was it like having this show as a launching pad?
It’s strange. I try not to think out of body about my career, because that’s where the madness lies, but industry was a big part of my career and my life first and foremost. I shared it with Marisa and Myha’la… well, they are the show for me. They are so incredibly talented. There is a really supportive network for the three of us in our little WhatsApp group. We have been best friends since week two. In the second month of filming the first season, we went on holiday to Brussels. A niche destination! But basically Myha’la had to leave the country and come back to extend her visa, so it was just a place we could go on the Eurostar. A crazy weekend in the home of European diplomacy.
It’s funny to realise in season three that, oh God, new young people are coming onto the show. We’re not the babies anymore. When I started the show, I was asking everyone questions every day, and then this season someone asked me a few questions and I realised I had the answers! It’s always been a useful reflection in the fact that we came onto the show playing these graduates fresh out of university and thrown into an environment they didn’t understand, and that was completely true to life. I think we feel like the guardians of these characters now, and they mean something to us and have a real personal connection to us. Sometimes it’s scary: I was shooting a scene where Robert has a leak in his ceiling, and a week later I had a leak in my ceiling!
How are your interactions with industry Fans like that? Have you met bankers like Rob who watch the show themselves?
If you go to certain areas or certain bars, the Venn diagram overlaps the people who work there and the people who watch industry is pretty high. But I was surprised at how broad the demographics of people who enjoy the show are. Last week, someone came up to me, she was probably in her mid-20s, and said that she and her four roommates all industry together. That’s a beautiful thing! I have a lot of respect for the show and I love it, but let’s not beat around the bush, it’s a pretty cynical show. It has a crude and unfeeling view of the world, and rightly so. But the fact that it’s something that has brought people together in a mini-community, even just a shared flat, is a really beautiful thing.
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