‘Industry’ Star Marisa Abela On Finding Inspiration In ‘Real Housewives’ & Unpacking Yasmin’s Desperate Need For Power: “She Operates From A Place Of Fear”
In the final moments of Industry Season 4, Marisa Abela’s Yasmin Kara-Hanani takes a heel turn of sorts. After Tender goes under and Henry (Kit Harington) has little left to offer, Yasmin sets her sights on a new path to power — and a dark one at that. When her once-close f…
In the final moments of Industry Season 4, Marisa Abela‘s Yasmin Kara-Hanani takes a heel turn of sorts.
After Tender goes under and Henry (Kit Harington) has little left to offer, Yasmin sets her sights on a new path to power — and a dark one at that. When her once-close friend Harper (Myha’la) finds her in Paris, Yasmin is now organizing illicit interactions with underage girls and young women for ultra wealthy de facto neo-Nazis and conservative politicians.
It’s a chilling, if unfortunately logical, direction for this publishing heiress who has clung desperately to any proximity she can find to wealth and influence above all else, Abela says.
In fact, the unapologetic madam sitting across from Harper in that Paris salon is not as far off as she might appear from the new grad on the Pierpoint trading floor in Season 1, who at times seemed scared of her own shadow.
“I think she operates from a place of fear. There’s a kind of fight-or-flight energy in her that she’s incredibly good at hiding, and she’s gotten better at hiding it,” Abela tells Deadline. “That essence of the girl who feels worthless and fears she’ll be found out by everyone still exists in Yasmin in Season 4. Her way of operating has changed, to be proximal to power, so she doesn’t need to feel quite as afraid, but the fear is still there.”
Abela traced that through line across four seasons in the interview below, where she also unpacks some of her inspirations for Yasmin — including one of her favorite television franchises: The Real Housewives — and ponders where she’s headed in the fifth and final season of Industry.
DEADLINE: I was reading an interview you did recently where you said you’re a big Real Housewives fan. I’m currently making my way through Salt Lake City — I’ve never watched them before. It’s my first true Housewives experience.
MARISA ABELA: It’s iconic. You’re diving in at the best. I think Salt Lake City is really, really great. The great thing is you can watch it from the beginning and it’s not, like, 15 seasons.
DEADLINE: I just finished Season 5. I just got through the Puerto Vallarta stuff, which is truly wild. I promise there’s a through line here. It made me think — do you ever channel that type of energy into Yasmin? In some ways she’s pretty similar to some of these women, with a lot of wealth and desire to be aligned to power.
ABELA: Yeah, definitely. Mickey loves Housewives as well. He sometimes says to me, ‘which Housewives are you watching right now?’ Because if I’m watching a specific one, it can influence me too much. Once I was watching Real Housewives of New Jersey and he was like, ‘You’ve got to stop,’ because I had my fingers in everyone’s face. I think one of the reasons I love Housewives is because it allows women to exist in this kind of insane place. They run the gamut of every human emotion. They are exploitative and funny and intelligent and cruel — all of the things — and yet we still want to watch them, root for them. In that sense, Yasmin is kind of like a Housewife. She seems to have no shame. And the show is also quite high drama. We’re not afraid of going to places that feel extreme. The writing tries to undercut things, but plot-wise it can go into soap territory. Some of the stuff on the boat in Season 3, I remember being like, ‘We’ve got to be really careful this doesn’t just seem insane.’ So I guess it’s just about rooting the character in reality and in genuine motivations.
DEADLINE: I felt that way, too, about the scene at Henry’s birthday party in Season 4. That is such a surreal scene. You could have really gone off the deep end there if you weren’t careful.
ABELA: Totally. And especially in those costumes — more camp. There’s a scene in Episode 2 where Yasmin tells Henry to come downstairs and they have a huge argument. She says something like, ‘You fantasize about killing yourself, but it won’t be heroic. It will be small and pathetic.’ We’re really going at each other. And there’s a fear, when you read those kinds of huge scenes with huge emotional dexterity and depth, that it could swing too dramatic. You have to trust in the writing. It’s incredibly intelligent. And also trust in your own ability to really mean what you’re saying, so it feels understandable, rootable, and the audience isn’t like, ‘What are we doing here?’
DEADLINE: That’s one of my favorite scenes of yours in the whole season. It’s hard to watch, but it’s just a great scene. I wonder, with Kit or with any of these scene partners you’ve had to go to really dark places with and say really horrible things to, how do you work with that other actor to find a way to get there and to really get vulnerable?
ABELA: I think it’s different with everyone. With Kit, I have a kind of built-in relationship now, because we’ve been doing it together for so long. We just understand each other’s language so well. It feels easy and natural. We demand the best from one another. And we don’t get to work together that often on the show, so when we do have those scenes, they’re really meaningful to us as actors, and we come prepared. I think preparation is the most important thing. The best way to show respect to your colleague is being as off book as you possibly can be and as familiar with not only the lines, but the intentions and the reason you’ve gotten to this moment. Henry and Yasmin’s relationship is so interestingly thought out that we’re both incredibly excited to play those moments. We would map out their relationship in the season together. How many times do we get to see them happy before it gets bad again?
There are only three moments in Episode 3 where they’re kissing and it’s seemingly good. We have to really play those for what they’re worth, so that when I do walk in and see Whitney holding his arm, it feels like a loss, rather than us coming straight from Episode 2, where the energy is quite bleak. For that specific scene in Episode 2, Mickey and Konrad wanted it done in one take. We walked through the physical landscape of it. There was a hit in it — Yasmin did hit Henry — and we decided we didn’t think that was necessary. And also, what does it say about Yasmin if she genuinely is a woman who partakes in domestic abuse? So choreographing those moments where she goes to hit him and stops — that matters. Kit also is not afraid to lose an argument. It sounds insane to say that, but a lot of male actors don’t like that [and] wouldn’t like to yield to their wife. He doesn’t hold onto that power. They put me in those insanely high heels, towering over him. It’s a conversation between all of us. When Mickey and Konrad are direct, it really helps. We’re not second-guessing how we want it to look in the end.
DEADLINE: I like what you’ve previously said about how we expect female characters to have more of a moral compass than male characters. I’m curious how you think about how Yasmin views her own behavior as these scenes are unfolding?
ABELA: I think what Yasmin is acutely aware of is how other people view her. I think that’s an incredibly feminine characteristic. I think Harper is probably the same. What Mickey and Konrad have done incredibly well in writing these female characters is that, I think it would be unrealistic if they didn’t understand how the world views them. They understand it very well. For example, Henry might not understand the way the world sees him or might try to change that narrative. There’s that saying: Men look at themselves, whereas women look at men looking at women. Yasmin has grown up looking at herself in the mirror in every possible way. Does that mean she cares deeply about who she is as a person? Not necessarily. But she cares how she’s perceived, which is then meaningful when Harper perceives her in a disdainful or judging way, or when the world sees her as cruel or weak. That matters to her. But an internal metric about who she actually is as a person? No, I don’t think that crosses her mind very often.
DEADLINE: When you were first reading for this character and starting out in Season 1, what were some of the first character traits you noticed about Yasmin that you’ve really wanted to carry through to sustain her emotional arc across the series?
