“We are old now,” Myha’la says with a smile to her Industry costar Marisa Abela on Zoom. Considering the fact that both actors are 29 years old, that sentiment is far from true. However, four seasons into the buzzy British banking drama, it does feel like we’re a long way from the early days of Industry when their respective characters, Harper Stern and Yasmin Kara-Hanani, were first-years on the trading floor at Pierpoint & Co, diving headfirst into the wild world of finance.
In the penultimate episode of Industry’s fourth season, “Points of Emphasis,” Harper and Yas run through the gamut of human emotions. They begin the episode as business adversaries, hurling insults at one another, and end the episode as friends dancing till dawn in a perfect girl’s night out, sealed with a kiss—a fact that makes both actors giggle, recalling the shoot. For Abela, the club scene was both sentimental and nostalgic. “It felt like season one of Industry in that we’re just two girls dancing in a club,” she says. “It felt like that time in Berlin in season two, or all the season one stuff with Robert. It really felt like, ‘Oh yeah, this is the show that we set out to make.’”
But before they can get to that point, the frenemies have to hash it out. “I really resented you for being a breathing example of how I was less than,” Harper says to Yasmin, over drinks at a pub. “And I choose to love you for being a breathing example for how I can be more,” Yasmin responds. That conversation was “the most honest and vulnerable conversation that they ever have” in Myha’la’s opinion. “They both ask for each other’s comfort in a way that there’s no hidden agenda, there’s no nothing,” she continues. “It’s pure, platonic need for comforting each other.”
Many important characters have come and gone from the Industry universe—Gus (David Jonsson), Robert (Harry Lawtey), and most recently Harper’s mentor Eric Tao, played by Ken Leung. But throughout all the shifts and changes, Harper and Yasmin’s friendship—flawed though it may be—has served as the anchor of the buzzy HBO series. Below, Marisa Abela and Myha’la go deep on Yasmin and Harper’s complicated relationship, their sometimes toxic tether, and what we can expect for Industry’s season four finale.
Spoilers for Industry below.
Vanity Fair: After a season of being either separate or at odds, at the end of episode seven, we finally get to watch our girls together again, dancing at the club. What was it like filming that moment?
Myha’la: It was so special. As much as we know the audience wants our girlies together and to have their dancing at the club moment, we really wanted it too. It does feel like an accumulation of all the seasons, everything they’ve gone through together. It’s the most intimate they could possibly be—that they’ve ever been. It was also really fun. It was a very fun shoot day.
SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains plot details from “Eyes Without a Face,” Season 4, Episode 5 of “Industry,” now streaming on HBO Max.
On “Industry,” heroes are hard to come by. But in the HBO series’ audacious Season 4, Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche) is about the closest the show gets to one. Introduced in Season 3 as an entry-level employee at the since-collapsed bank Pierpoint & Co., Sweetpea fit right into the finance drama’s salacious intrigue, where sex is often just as transactional as the latest high-stakes business deal. In addition to her day job as an eager new analyst, Sweetpea had a side hustle on OnlyFans, where she sold pictures to the same older businessmen who talked down to her on the trading floor. Along with her name, Sweetpea’s extracurricular pursuits helped her quickly stand out even in a cast stacked with rising stars.
In Season 4, however, Sweetpea’s starting from a more vulnerable place. Her anonymous accounts have been made public, thanks to recently disgraced dirtbag Rishi Ramdani (Sagar Radia); now, the only job she can get in her career field of choice is working for Harper Stern (Myha’la), a Machiavellian striver who’s allergic to intimacy, and hardly a reliable boss. But beggars can’t be choosers, so Sweetpea follows Harper from Mostyn Asset Management to her independent venture SternTao. On “Industry,” however, underdogs are always the best motivated to succeed — and in the season’s fifth episode, “Eyes Without a Face,” Sweetpea finally gets her time to shine.
Harper had previously bet the fate of SternTao, a shorts-only fund that makes money when its targets fail, on the demise of Tender, a fintech start-up that’s suspiciously pivoted from facilitating porn payments to making growth-minded acquisitions in Africa. With SternTao’s short position squeezed by Tender’s stubbornly ascendant stock price, Harper agrees to send Sweetpea and Kwabena (Toheeb Jimoh), another SternTao trader Harper also happens to be sleeping with, to Ghana so they can take a look at Tender on the ground. There, Sweetpea puts her dogged investigation skills to use and returns with proof hard enough to save SternTao from ruin. Now Harper won’t have to commit fraud to secure more funding!
This being “Industry,” the win comes at a cost. On a quest to track down Swift GC, a company Tender acquired for an eyebrow-raising $50 million, Sweetpea goes to their office (it’s a PO Box), interrogates the M&A lawyer (his tiny office doesn’t scream “massive deals”) and interrogates Tender’s Africa chief Tony Day (Stephen Campbell) under the pretense that she still works at Mostyn. Day smells a rat and gives Sweetpea a blandly threatening phone call while she and Kwabena are kicking back a few beers on the beach. Shortly afterward, Sweetpea goes to the bathroom, where she’s assaulted by a stranger who breaks her nose along with her sense of security.
Rather than back down, Sweetpea resolves to “run a fucking train” on her adversaries. (She also sleeps with Kwabena to blow off some steam.) The men who look down on her for sex work are mostly faceless, but Tender offers a more specific target for her frustration. Luckily, a family friend of Kwabena’s provides the missing piece of the Swift GC transaction: Tender only said they paid $50 million for the company, which is little more than a decrepit office building. The falsely inflated acquisition was primarily a way of getting falsely inflated revenue off the books before prying eyes could apply real scrutiny. Having uncovered Tender’s house of cards, Sweetpea makes her triumphant return to London — but rather than accept Harper’s offer of a shoulder to cry on, Sweetpea flatly comes clean about the Kwabena hookup, makes clear she expects to be paid, and heads back to her apartment to break down in sobs.
“She believes that if she can see this through, then she is of some value that she feels she’s lost,” Petche says of her character’s motivation for seeing the Tender takedown through. A recent graduate of the prestigious Guildhall conservatory, Petche is, like Sweetpea, a relative newcomer who’s quickly established herself in a high-pressure environment. Petche spoke with Variety about shooting on location, how getting doxxed has affected Sweetpea’s mindset and what “Industry” has taught her about the art of making good TV.
Courtesy of HBO
This season is such a great one for Sweetpea overall. Headed into it, did you have a conversation with creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay about where they saw the character going?
I had a call with one of our producers much earlier on, specifically about Episode 5, before I’d even got the scripts for Episodes 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. So it was more just keeping that conversation alive and making me aware of what was going on, because this episode is so crucial — not only for Sweetpea, but for the arc of the season. I was like, “OK, I need to understand how she gets here. If she’s arriving here emotionally, what do I need to do, working backwards, to build up to this moment? If this is the peak of her arc, how do I plan every step before and then after?”
I assume that call was partly about going on location. Can you tell me a bit about filming in Africa?
We actually went to South Africa. We went to Durban in South Africa for, actually, a very short while. Most of the episode was filmed in Cardiff in the U.K. So there were only the shots that we couldn’t really — the ones that were necessary for us to be on location. For example, the beach shot, the moments when me and Toheeb are at the beach bar.
I mean, going on location is obviously so incredible as an actor, because you’re put into a different set of circumstances. But it wasn’t the entirety of the episode, which was a very interesting way to do it.
Chronologically, how did the Durban trip slot into the shoot?
It was at the very end. So we had done everything else and then, if I remember correctly, it was at the very end of that episode. It was pretty much 72 hours we were out there. It was a very, very, very short time. It was this whirlwind experience of wrapping up this episode.
After what happened to Rishi’s wife in the Season 3 finale, the possibilities for the show widened, and violent, scary things can happen. So as a viewer, the bathroom scene was quite alarming — I was curious what that scene was like for you to film as an actor.
I personally feel like that scene isn’t played for shock value. I think what matters the most to Sweetpea is this loss of control and safety, and how her sense of agency over the situation very quickly dissipates. And then from that moment on, she becomes different in her approach to Tender, to relationships. It really stays with her for a long time after that moment itself.
With the practical part, you want to make sure everyone is safe and everyone feels happy. We had stunt coordination. Everyone was checking in with one another. It’s like choreography, like anything that needs to be done with care. You go through it step by step, moment by moment, making sure everyone feels that they know what’s happening. Once you understand the choreography, you can then effectively communicate the scene to the audience. Once you have those steps in place, you can then really engage with the scene.
You speaking about Sweetpea feeling a loss of agency and control reminds me of how she must be feeling in the wake of this horrible violation and doxxing that she’s experienced. Do those feel like similar mindsets to you?
I think that in Episode 5, the stakes for her are quite existential. I think she pushes through these extremes, not because she feels admirable or she feels heroic, but because these stakes are so existential for her. This is her career, her credibility — and really, at the end of the day — her sense of self-worth. She believes that if she can see this through, then she is of some value that she feels she’s lost. It’s the lengths that she’ll go to to prove herself, and as seen at the end of the episode, what it costs her to keep going. But I think that loss of agency is implemented at the very beginning of the season, like you said, with the OnlyFans leak. I think this is her grappling with having a sense of control over her own narrative.
Courtesy of HBO
When Sweetpea and Kwabena talk about if there needs to be a “why,” I agree your character doesn’t need one for pursuing sex work. But in terms of her motivation for being in this incredibly cutthroat industry and working as hard as we see her work this season, what do you feel like propels her in this financial world?
I think that she is a person who believes her worth has to be proven, and that’s why she’s drawn to this high stakes environment. Because if she does these things, and if she’s brilliant enough, and if she’s useful enough and indispensable enough, then she can survive anything, even if it costs her emotionally or physically. She thinks that her brilliance is her safety. And I think what specifically this episode shows us is that it doesn’t keep her safe at all. In fact, it kind of collides with everything that’s going on. At the end of the episode, when she breaks down, I feel like that moment is the price of her composure finally being paid off. I wanted that moment to just feel like a relief and a letting go of everything from this season and the episode.
This episode also moves the Sweetpea-Harper relationship forward. On the one hand, Harper gives Sweetpea this job where no one else will. But at the same time, Sweetpea seems very clear-eyed about Harper’s faults and says no to her coming upstairs. What do you feel like Sweetpea’s attitude toward Harper is?
Their relationship is fascinating to me, because when I go back to Season 3 in my mind, when Sweetpea joins Pierpoint, Harper has already left. So all she has is these stories of Harper. I think Sweetpea admires Harper and sees her as this uncompromising, extremely intelligent, self-driven woman. So when Sweetpea has the opportunity to work with Harper, she grasps it with both hands. But then when they’re working with each other, the idealized version of someone gives way to the real person, and you realize what they’re actually like. There’s a frustration from Sweetpea that Harper, particularly at the beginning of the season, isn’t operating at her highest level for the entire team. And it frustrates Sweetpea, because she sees how brilliant Harper is, and how brilliant she can be.
She’s never really had an issue in saying that to her, or being quite blunt with her about how she feels. When she sees Harper not working for the team’s best interests, there’s this mix of admiration but frustration. When you want someone to be different, it’s a very interesting dynamic. Particularly in Episode 5, when Sweetpea comes back and says, “I want to be paid.” She’s putting up these walls to protect herself from what’s been taken on that trip away. She’s sort of protecting herself from the world.
There’s also a fascinating contrast between your character and Toheeb’s where Sweetpea comes straight out and says, “I hooked up with this person you’re also hooking up with,” and he doesn’t take the opportunity to be honest. You see that streak in Sweetpea where she’s able to be very straightforward, very blunt. Where do you think that tendency comes from with the character?
Funnily enough, when I was thinking about who she was in Season 3, I think she observes people around her. I think she observes how people succeed. I think she observed how people succeeded within the world of Pierpoint. She’s aware that it’s a very cutthroat dynamic. And I think that she psyched herself up to say, well, if I want to succeed, I have to be like the people that I’ve seen be successful before me. I have to be cutthroat. I have to be honest. I have to have an opinion. And maybe part of that confidence initially is bravado. Initially, it’s fake it until you make it, and then as time progresses, and particularly within this season, she is a lot more upfront with her genuine opinions and feelings. That bravado has given away to this woman who actually really wants to be very good at her job. So yeah, it’s a mix of learned behavior and also innately what was already there that she’s now giving space to as well.
Courtesy of HBO
Harper has become so compromised, and in contrast, Sweetpea is incredibly easy to root for. As the person who plays her, are you worried at all that over the long term, she will become a little more corrupted?
I am worried for her! I am worried for her, but it’s also one of the things I love about the show. These characters aren’t straightforward. They are morally complex, like human beings can be. They can change over time, and they can be one way one year, and a completely different person the year next. That’s what I really liked when I watched the first two seasons, before I was in the show — that you could be rooting for a character, and then the rug would be pulled from underneath you, and you think, “Oh, no, why did you do that?” That’s what I found endearing about the show. So I suppose, as much as I personally want the best for Sweetpea, I think that in line with the show, if she finds herself in some more complex situations or doing some more compromising things, I would understand why the character might have gone in that direction.
Like a lot of other people who have come into their own on the show, you’re very early in your career. What have you learned from being on this particular show that you hope to take forward with you into other projects?
I learned how TV is made, to be honest with you.
That’s important!
It really, honestly is. I like to know everything that’s going on. I’m like Sweetpea in that way. And honestly, it’s really helpful as an actor. I went to drama school, and you’re prepared with technique and emotional insight and all of these things. But I wasn’t taught about how a show is made, what it means to be a part of a season, how a set works. I’ve learned so much from this show, not only just technically as an actor, but just professionally.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey” is officially the biggest country song of all time in terms of sales. His rendition of the modern country standard—written by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove in 1981—has sold over 20 million units in the United States, making it only the third single ever to be certified double diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Stapleton now joins Bruno Mars’ “Just the Way You Are” and Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower” in the exclusive club.
Dillon and Hargrove first offered “Tennesse Whiskey” to George Strait, who turned it down. David Allen Coe ended up recording the original version for his album of the same name, and in 1983, George Jones’ cover went to No. 2 on the Billboard Country Singles chart. Stapleton’s take on the song first appeared on his 2015 debut Traveler, peaking at No. 20 on the Hot 100 after he and Justin Timberlake played it live at the 2015 Country Music Awards.
“Chris Stapleton’s undeniable vocal grit and storytelling have connected deeply – driving chart successes, earning major awards, and most importantly, resonating with fans,” RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier said in a statement shared by Stapleton’s label, MCS. “RIAA is proud to celebrate him alongside MCA as ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ today makes history.”
Watching Donald Trump’s press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, in which he said that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela and seize some of the country’s oil wealth “in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country,” my mind went back to 2003. In the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I spent several weeks travelling around the country’s oil fields, some of which were still littered with live ordnance, speaking with members of the U.S.-led Task Force Rio—the “Rio” stood for “Restore Iraqi Oil”—and local workers. I also went to Baghdad, where I interviewed officials from the Iraqi oil ministry.
Venezuela isn’t Iraq, of course, and so far, at least, there hasn’t been a U.S. occupation. (Although Trump remarked, “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground.”) Nonetheless, this is the second time in twenty-three years that the United States has deposed the authoritarian leader of an oil-rich nation—the third if you count the NATO strikes on Libya in 2011, which hastened the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. History has some lessons to offer.
Unlike Trump, who is an unashamed petro-imperialist, members of the Bush Administration insisted that their push for regime change in Iraq was unconnected to hydrocarbons—Donald Rumsfeld famously said it had “literally nothing to do with oil”—and that the postwar reconstruction of Iraq’s oil industry was designed purely to help the country. At an oil refinery in Basra, I sat in on a meeting chaired by the American brigadier general who headed up Task Force Rio. An aide to the general gave me a handout, which said, “Who will be running the Iraqi oil industry? Iraqis are responsible for the energy sector.”
Many queried U.S. intentions. Iraq then had the second-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the Middle East, and Bush, shortly after taking office in 2001, had declared an energy crisis. At the time, the United States was importing about half the oil it burned. An energy task force led by Vice-President Dick Cheney, who had previously been the chief executive of the oil-services company Halliburton, issued a report that recommended more investments in renewables, energy-saving technology, and fossil fuels. It also called for more imports from Latin America, including Venezuela, which was already the third-largest foreign supplier to the U.S., after Canada and Saudi Arabia. While barely mentioning Iraq, the report said, “Energy security must be a priority of US trade and foreign policy.”
Today, as a result of the shale-oil revolution—fracking—the United States is the world’s largest oil producer, even larger than Saudi Arabia, and a net exporter of petroleum. But the A.I. buildout is rapidly increasing the demand for power, and the Trump Administration, despite its aversion to renewables, is set on achieving what it termed, in its recently published national-security strategy, “Energy Dominance.” In this context, it’s hardly surprising that Venezuela, which now enjoys the status of the country with the largest proven oil reserves—more than three hundred billion barrels—has attracted Trump’s attention. Most of the Venezuelan oil is situated in the Orinoco Belt, which runs east to west in the north of the country. Many of the crude deposits are in the form of a heavy sludge, which is difficult to extract and refine. But, with expertise and capital, it can be done. Moreover, many U.S. refineries, particularly in the Gulf and on the West Coast, are configured for heavy crude.
Despite this domestic refining capacity, ramping up production in Venezuela will be a mighty task. Like its Iraqi counterpart under Saddam Hussein, the Venezuelan oil industry has suffered from many years of sanctions and chronic underinvestment. Many of its skilled employees have emigrated. Last year, the industry produced about a million barrels a day, roughly a third of its output a quarter of a century ago. On Saturday, Trump said that big U.S. oil companies would “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” It’s not that simple.
One challenge is the scale of investment required: one energy analyst told the Financial Times it would take more than a hundred billion dollars to double Venezuela’s oil output. Another issue is the price of crude, which recently dipped below sixty dollars, reaching a four-year low. At the moment, Chevron is the only major U.S. oil company operating in Venezuela. Shortly before Christmas, it emerged that the Administration had approached other U.S. firms, such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, to see if they are interested in returning to a country where they operated before the government of Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro’s predecessor, seized their assets. (Lawsuits sparked by that seizure are still ongoing.) Politicoreported that some responses to the Administration’s feelers were negative. “Frankly, there’s not a lot of interest from the industry, in light of lower oil prices and more attractive fields globally,” one source told the news site.
Beyoncé has joined the ranks of billionaires, according to Forbes, becoming the fifth musician to be crowned the elite status.The Grammy Award-winning superstar now stands alongside Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna and her husband Jay-Z, according to a report published by the outlet Monday.The 44-year-old’s financial ascent follows a landmark year in her career. Beyoncé took home the industry’s top trophy, winning Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammys for her country album “Cowboy Carter,” released the year prior. She also made history as the first Black woman to win the award for Best Country Album.With 35 Grammy wins and 99 nominations, she is the most-awarded artist in the history of the awards, including those she won with Destiny’s Child, a chart-topping girl group that helped launch her storied career.The “Cowboy Carter Tour” grossed more than $400 million, making it the highest-grossing country tour in history, Reuters reported, citing Live Nation.In 2024, music charting site Billboard named her the greatest pop star of the 21st century, highlighting “her full 25 years of influence, impact, evolution,” Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger wrote.Her 2023 “Renaissance World Tour” drew massive crowds, with fans – known collectively as the BeyHive – flocking to see her perform across Europe and North America.In Stockholm, where she kicked off the tour, fanfare drove up hotel and restaurant prices and even slowed down Sweden’s declining inflation, according to economists.In addition to her musical achievements, Beyoncé has built a diverse business empire. She has launched successful clothing and hair care lines, and expanded into the beverage industry with a whisky brand named after her great-grandfather, SirDavis. Her entrepreneurial ventures have contributed to her growing fortune.Beyoncé’s road to superstardom began in the early 1990s, when she appeared on “Star Search” as part of Girl’s Tyme, a six-member group. She later joined Destiny’s Child, which became one of the best-selling girl groups in the late 90s and early 2000s.The group’s other members, Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland, reunited with her on stage earlier this year during her “Cowboy Carter” tour in Las Vegas.Since Destiny’s Child announced its hiatus in 2001, Beyoncé has released a series of acclaimed solo albums, starting with “Dangerously in Love” in 2003, which won five Grammy Awards the following year.She has headlined major music festivals, including becoming the first woman of color to lead the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2018.In 2023, she surpassed conductor Georg Solti to become the most awarded artist in Grammy history.
Beyoncé has joined the ranks of billionaires, according to Forbes, becoming the fifth musician to be crowned the elite status.
The Grammy Award-winning superstar now stands alongside Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna and her husband Jay-Z, according to a report published by the outlet Monday.
The 44-year-old’s financial ascent follows a landmark year in her career. Beyoncé took home the industry’s top trophy, winning Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammys for her country album “Cowboy Carter,” released the year prior. She also made history as the first Black woman to win the award for Best Country Album.
With 35 Grammy wins and 99 nominations, she is the most-awarded artist in the history of the awards, including those she won with Destiny’s Child, a chart-topping girl group that helped launch her storied career.
The “Cowboy Carter Tour” grossed more than $400 million, making it the highest-grossing country tour in history, Reuters reported, citing Live Nation.
In 2024, music charting site Billboard named her the greatest pop star of the 21st century, highlighting “her full 25 years of influence, impact, evolution,” Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger wrote.
Her 2023 “Renaissance World Tour” drew massive crowds, with fans – known collectively as the BeyHive – flocking to see her perform across Europe and North America.
In Stockholm, where she kicked off the tour, fanfare drove up hotel and restaurant prices and even slowed down Sweden’s declining inflation, according to economists.
In addition to her musical achievements, Beyoncé has built a diverse business empire. She has launched successful clothing and hair care lines, and expanded into the beverage industry with a whisky brand named after her great-grandfather, SirDavis. Her entrepreneurial ventures have contributed to her growing fortune.
Beyoncé’s road to superstardom began in the early 1990s, when she appeared on “Star Search” as part of Girl’s Tyme, a six-member group. She later joined Destiny’s Child, which became one of the best-selling girl groups in the late 90s and early 2000s.
The group’s other members, Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland, reunited with her on stage earlier this year during her “Cowboy Carter” tour in Las Vegas.
Since Destiny’s Child announced its hiatus in 2001, Beyoncé has released a series of acclaimed solo albums, starting with “Dangerously in Love” in 2003, which won five Grammy Awards the following year.
She has headlined major music festivals, including becoming the first woman of color to lead the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2018.
In 2023, she surpassed conductor Georg Solti to become the most awarded artist in Grammy history.
Whether you’re just getting through Hanukkah or gearing up for Christmas, the holidays can be a stressful time. So here are some last-minute hoiliday shortcuts to save you time, money, and headaches!
– Make use of leftovers. Or freeze em. Stash some leftover turkey and gravy into Ziploc bags and freeze them, or turn them into a great soup, pot pie, or club sandwich. There’s no reason to go through the trouble of preparing big meals unless you can make use of the leftovers (and save time cooking more lunches and dinners). Throw the carcass into a crockpot with leftover carrots and celery, some water, and let it do it’s thing all day for a terrific and flavourful (and easy) stock. If you really don’t know what to do with all those leftovers, make up some care packages for neighbours. Or donate it to a local soup kitchen.
– Have extra Tupperware, baggies, and bins on-hand. Kids will be tearing through toys and playsets that have lots of little pieces, so it’s best to have a few organizational tools to keep things in order. That way, pieces won’t get lost. It will also make putting the new toys away later a little easier.
– Have a potluck. Instead of hosting and being in charge of an entire meal, ask everyone to bring one dish so the food prep is more evenly distributed. Switch things up and do fondue or make-your-own pizzas.
– Buy ready-made cookie, pastry and bread dough. Why make it from scratch when you already have so much to do?!
– When baking, make extra and freeze it for last-minute gifts in a pinch. Package cookies in a brown paper bag decorated with your child’s artwork for a distinctly rustic look, or stack in a repurposed Pringles’ can for a creative touch.
– Enlist help from the kids. Kids can do a lot around the holidays to lighten your load. Have them make homemade cards for neighbours and teachers, decorate cakes or cookies, or help with decorating by giving them simple projects like making paper chains.
– Take a little time for you. Stop for five minutes. Sip a cup of tea while watching the snowfall. I know you have lots to do, but you need to pause and rest, even for a few minutes.
MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SEA — With the spirit of Christmas-by-the-Sea on its way, the Manchester-by-the-Sea Museum, 10 Union St., is hosting several holiday events this weekend and beyond.
First up is an Open House and Children’s Art Workshop, both free, on Friday, Dec. 5, 3-8 p.m., during the town’s Holiday Stroll event. The museum will be decorated for for the season and children may enjoy an ornament crafting and art workshop with instructor Martha Chapman. Refreshments provided.
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California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom recently convened a meeting that might rank among the top sweat-inducing nightmare scenarios for Silicon Valley’s tech bros — a group of the Golden State’s smartest, most powerful women brainstorming ways to regulate artificial intelligence.
Regulation is the last thing this particular California-dominated industry wants, and it’s spent a lot of cash at both the state and federal capitols to avoid it — including funding President Trump’s new ballroom. Regulation by a bunch of ladies, many mothers, with profit a distant second to our kids when it comes to concerns?
I’ll let you figure out how popular that is likely be with the Elon Musks, Peter Thiels and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world.
But as Siebel Newsom said, “If a platform reaches a child, it carries a responsibility to protect that child. Period. Our children’s safety can never be second to the bottom line.”
Agreed.
Siebel Newsom’s push for California to do more to regulate AI comes at the same time that Trump is threatening to stop states from overseeing the technology — and is ramping up a national effort that will open America’s coffers to AI moguls for decades to come.
Right now, the U.S. is facing its own nightmare scenario: the most powerful and world-changing technology we have seen in our lifetimes being developed and unleashed under almost no rules or restraints other than those chosen by the men who seek personal benefit from the outcome.
To put it simply, the plan right now seems to be that these tech barons will change the world as they see fit to make money for themselves, and we as taxpayers will pay them to do it.
“When decisions are mainly driven by power and profit instead of care and responsibility, we completely lose our way, and given the current alignment between tech titans and the federal administration, I believe we have lost our way,” Siebel Newsom said.
To recap what the way has been so far, Trump recently tried to sneak a 10-year ban on the ability of states to oversee the industry into his ridiculously named “Big Beautiful Bill,” but it was pulled out by a bipartisan group in the Senate — an early indicator of how inflammatory this issue is.
Faced with that unexpected blockade, Trump has threatened to sign a mysterious executive order crippling states’ ability to regulate AI and attempting to withhold funds from those that try.
Simultaneously, the most craven and cowardly among Republican congresspeople have suggested adding a 10-year ban to the upcoming defense policy bill that will almost certainly pass. Of course, Congress has also declined to move forward on any meaningful federal regulations itself, while technology CEOs including Trump frenemy Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, Meta’s Zuckerberg and many others chum it up at fancy events inside the White House.
Which may be why this week, Trump announced the “Genesis Mission,” an executive order that seemingly will take the unimaginable vastness of government research efforts across disciplines and dump them into some kind of AI model that will “revolutionize the way scientific research is conducted.”
While I am sure that nothing could possibly go wrong in that scenario, that’s not actually the part that is immediately alarming. This is: The project will be overseen by Trump science and technology policy advisor Michael Kratsios, who holds no science or engineering degrees but was formerly a top executive for Thiel and former head of another AI company that works on warfare-related projects with the Pentagon.
Kratsios is considered one of the main reasons Trump has embraced the tech bros with such adoration in his second term. Genesis will almost certainly mean huge government contracts for these private-sector “partners,” fueling the AI boom (or bubble) with taxpayer dollars.
Siebel Newsom’s message in the face of all this is that we are not helpless — and California, as the home of many of these companies and the world’s fourth-largest economy in its own right, should have a say in how this technology advances, and make sure it does so in a way that benefits and protects us all.
“California is uniquely positioned to lead the effort in showing innovation and responsibility and how they can go hand in hand,” she said. “I’ve always believed that stronger guardrails are actually good for business over the long term. Safer tech means better outcomes for consumers and greater consumer trust and loyalty.”
But the pressure to cave under the might of these companies is intense, as Siebel Newsom’s husband knows.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has spent the last few years trying to thread the needle on state legislation that offers some sort of oversight while allowing for the innovation that rightly keeps California and the United States competitive on the global front. The tech industry has spent millions in lobbying, legal fights and pressure campaigns to water down even the most benign of efforts, even threatening to leave the state if rules are enacted.
Last year, the industry unsuccessfully tried to stop Senate Bill 53, landmark legislation signed by Newsom. It’s a basic transparency measure on “frontier” AI models that requires companies to have safety and security protocols and report known “catastrophic” risks, such as when these models show tendencies toward behavior that could kill more than 50 people — which they have, believe it or not.
But the industry was able to stop other efforts. Newsom vetoed both Senate Bill 7, which would have required employers to notify workers when using AI in hiring and promotions; and Assembly Bill 1064, which would have barred companion chatbot operators from making these AI systems available to minors if they couldn’t prove they wouldn’t do things like encourage kids to self-harm, which again, these chatbots have done.
Still, California (along with New York and a few other states) has pushed forward, and speaking at Siebel Newsom’s event, the governor said that last session, “we took a number of at-bats at this and we made tremendous progress.”
He promised more.
“We have agency. We can shape the future,” he said. “We have a unique responsibility as it relates to these tools of technology, because, well, this is the center of that universe.”
If Newsom does keep pushing forward, it will be in no small part because of Siebel Newsom, and women like her, who keep the counter-pressure on.
In fact, it was another powerful mom, First Lady Melania Trump, who forced the federal government into a tiny bit of action this year when she championed the “Take It Down Act”, which requires tech companies to quickly remove nonconsensual explicit images. I sincerely doubt her husband would have signed that particular bill without her urging.
So, if we are lucky, the efforts of women like Siebel Newsom may turn out to be the bit of powerful sanity needed to put a check on the world-domination fantasies of the broligarchy.
Because tech bros are not yet all-powerful, despite their best efforts, and certainly not yet immune to the power of moms.
If politics makes strange bedfellows, war sometimes makes strange career paths. In her 20s, Iryna Terekh was a “very artsy” architect who viewed the arms industry as “something destructive.” Now Ms. Terekh, 33, is chief technical officer and the public face of Fire Point, a Ukrainian defense company. She and her team developed the Flamingo, a long-range cruise missile that President Volodymyr Zelensky has called “our most successful missile.”
Donald Trump is a compulsive issuer of executive orders: since January, there have been more than two hundred of them. Some are glorified press releases; others are more significant. “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security” falls decidedly into the second category. Signed last week, on the same day that the Department of Justice indicted James Comey, it is designed to facilitate the transfer of a social-media platform with a hundred and seventy million American users to a consortium that features several of the President’s political and financial benefactors. According to news reports, the potential investors in the TikTok deal include two conservative billionaires—Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, and Rupert Murdoch, the proprietor of Fox News—and two investment firms with ties to the Administration: Susquehanna, which already owns a stake in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance; and Andreessen Horowitz. Also said to be involved is MGX, an investment fund backed by the government of the United Arab Emirates that recently deposited two billion dollars into crypto assets created by World Liberty Financial, a company that the Trump family controls.
Perhaps the timing of these developments was coincidental, but it didn’t appear that way. Indicting Comey and bringing the U.S. arm of TikTok into the MAGA fold seem like part of the same grand project to concentrate media power in Trump’s hands, or the hands of his allies, and to rout his perceived enemies. To be sure, the executive order was signed days after Disney pushed back against the White House’s pressure campaign and restored Jimmy Kimmel to the air after a brief suspension. But, in today’s media ecosystem, late-night comics on network television don’t have anything comparable to the reach of a social-media behemoth such as TikTok.
The campaign to force TikTok to divest its U.S. operations started out as a bipartisan initiative driven by ill-defined concerns that the app represented a threat to national security. Trump, toward the end of his first term, issued an executive order to ban the social-media platform on these grounds, but the courts struck it down. When Joe Biden was in the White House, he formally rescinded Trump’s ban but demanded a divestment. In 2024, Congress passed a bill, with support from both parties, that mandated a sale or closure of the app by January of this year. While campaigning for reëlection, Trump used TikTok to reach out to younger voters and had a change of heart about banning it. Since coming to office, he has disregarded the language of 2024 legislation and postponed the deadline for a sale four times. The deal he has finally come up with to resolve the impasse warrants inspection from every angle.
When a major company decides or is legally obliged to dispose of one of its big subsidiaries, it would normally engage an investment bank to find a buyer or buyers. This intermediary would then obtain financial and operational information about the business and pass it on to potential bidders, with the goal of starting an auction and commanding as high a price as possible. Organizing an initial public offering of stock in the subsidiary would be another option. In this case, the law requiring a divestment and the involvement of the Chinese government complicated things. But we know precious little about how the potential sale was arranged, whether any financial intermediaries were involved, or how the Ellison consortium was selected.
We do know, partly because Trump said so earlier this year, that at least four groups expressed interest in bidding. They included a cadre led by the billionaire Frank McCourt, who formerly owned the Los Angeles Dodgers. In June, McCourt told the “CBS Mornings” show that he and his associates had informed Vice-President J. D. Vance’s office that they were “ready, willing, and able to buy the platform.” Other potential buyers reportedly included Amazon, the A.I. firm Perplexity, and a coalition led by Tim Stokely, the founder of OnlyFans. The executive order that Trump signed doesn’t say what happened with the other suitors, or how the winning consortium was put together. It merely notes that Vance led an interagency process that determined that the proposed deal amounted to a “qualified divestiture” under the 2024 legislation. This interagency process involved not only Vance’s office but the National Security Council, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of the Treasury, the Justice Department, the Department of Commerce, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Last week, Trump said the owners of the U.S. operations of TikTok would be “American investors, American companies, great ones, great investors.” He didn’t mention the investment firm MGX, which is backed by the Emirati government and run by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al-Nahyan, an Emirati royal who is also the monarchy’s national-security adviser. When MGX bought two billion dollars’ worth of stablecoins issued by World Liberty Financial earlier this year, the purchase established the Trump company as a major player in the crypto world. And, as the Timesreported earlier this month, the move came as the U.A.E. was trying to buy thousands of advanced microchips designed by the U.S. firm Nvidia. The Trump Administration subsequently approved the purchase of the chips.
How did MGX pop up in the TikTok transaction? That’s another open question, as is the issue of whether the potential buyers are getting a sweetheart deal. Last week, Vance said the deal would value TikTok’s U.S. operations at fourteen billion dollars. That is a lot lower than previous estimates of its worth, which ranged as high as fifty billion dollars. It “could be the most undervalued tech acquisition of the decade,” Ashwin Binwani, the founder of an eponymous investment firm, told Bloomberg last week. However, another report from Bloomberg provided a possible explanation for the low valuation: even after the divestiture deal goes through, ByteDance will continue to receive about half of the profits that TikTok generates in the United States even though its ownership stake will be reduced to twenty per cent.
US Steel is shuttering production at a mill in November, but its hundreds of workers will keep their jobs – for now – thanks to an agreement the company reached with the Trump administration.Related video above: U.S. job growth weakens; immigration enforcement adds to strainUS Steel will stop producing steel at its Granite City, Illinois, mill at the end of October, but the 800 workers at the plant will stay on the job, maintaining equipment, until at least 2027. That’s due to the structure of the deal the company reached with President Donald Trump to allow its purchase by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel. The agreement included various job protections and production guarantees.“US Steel will optimize its footprint by focusing on producing and processing steel slabs at the Mon Valley (Pennsylvania) Works and Gary (Indiana) Works, and reducing slab consumption at Granite City Works,” the company said in a statement to CNN Monday. “As a result of this decision, US Steel will not lay off any Granite City Works employees nor adjust their pay rate.”The company added that it would not idle the plant and keep it in an operational state.As for what the workers will be doing without any steel to produce, US Steel said it will continue some ancillary operations and that the facility will be “maintained by employees so production could resume quickly if the situation changes.”Trump promised at a May rally at a US Steel mill outside of Pittsburgh that the deal and new 50% tariffs on steel imports would be good for US Steel employees.“The deal got better and better and better for the workers. I’m going to be watching over it. It’s going to be great,” Trump said at the time. “They’re going to be here for a long time… There will be no outsourcing and no layoffs whatsoever.”The clock is ticking. US Steel’s deal only blocks it from closing Granite City and laying off workers until June of 2027.The White House did not have an immediate comment on the closing plans, nor did the United Steelworkers union. While USW locals in Pennsylvania supported the agreement with Nippon, the larger USW organization objected to the deal. “Issuing press releases and making political speeches is easy,” the union said in a statement after the rally in May. “Binding commitments are hard. The devil is always in the details, and that is especially true with a bad actor like Nippon Steel that has again and again violated our trade laws, devastating steel communities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.”The plant in question has 700 hourly workers represented by the USW and about 100 salaried staff. But that is a fraction of the 2,000 hourly workers it used to employ when the plant had its own blast furnaces to make steel from raw materials such as iron and coke.Granite City Works’ first blast furnace was shut in 2019, and its remaining one closed in 2023. Since then, it has only processed slabs made at other mills.
US Steel is shuttering production at a mill in November, but its hundreds of workers will keep their jobs – for now – thanks to an agreement the company reached with the Trump administration.
Related video above: U.S. job growth weakens; immigration enforcement adds to strain
US Steel will stop producing steel at its Granite City, Illinois, mill at the end of October, but the 800 workers at the plant will stay on the job, maintaining equipment, until at least 2027. That’s due to the structure of the deal the company reached with President Donald Trump to allow its purchase by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel. The agreement included various job protections and production guarantees.
“US Steel will optimize its footprint by focusing on producing and processing steel slabs at the Mon Valley (Pennsylvania) Works and Gary (Indiana) Works, and reducing slab consumption at Granite City Works,” the company said in a statement to CNN Monday. “As a result of this decision, US Steel will not lay off any Granite City Works employees nor adjust their pay rate.”
The company added that it would not idle the plant and keep it in an operational state.
As for what the workers will be doing without any steel to produce, US Steel said it will continue some ancillary operations and that the facility will be “maintained by employees so production could resume quickly if the situation changes.”
Trump promised at a May rally at a US Steel mill outside of Pittsburgh that the deal and new 50% tariffs on steel imports would be good for US Steel employees.
“The deal got better and better and better for the workers. I’m going to be watching over it. It’s going to be great,” Trump said at the time. “They’re going to be here for a long time… There will be no outsourcing and no layoffs whatsoever.”
The clock is ticking. US Steel’s deal only blocks it from closing Granite City and laying off workers until June of 2027.
The White House did not have an immediate comment on the closing plans, nor did the United Steelworkers union. While USW locals in Pennsylvania supported the agreement with Nippon, the larger USW organization objected to the deal.
“Issuing press releases and making political speeches is easy,” the union said in a statement after the rally in May. “Binding commitments are hard. The devil is always in the details, and that is especially true with a bad actor like Nippon Steel that has again and again violated our trade laws, devastating steel communities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.”
The plant in question has 700 hourly workers represented by the USW and about 100 salaried staff. But that is a fraction of the 2,000 hourly workers it used to employ when the plant had its own blast furnaces to make steel from raw materials such as iron and coke.
Granite City Works’ first blast furnace was shut in 2019, and its remaining one closed in 2023. Since then, it has only processed slabs made at other mills.
Chris and Andy talk about the trailers for Severance Season 2 (0:00) and Say Nothing, which were released this week (1:00). Then they talk about two recent independently made shows—Penelope from Mark Duplass and Shatter Belt from James Ward Byrkit (21:08)—and how this burgeoning independent TV industry compares to the independent movie scene of the ’90s (37:40).
Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen
When the creators of Industry wrote the show’s third season, they didn’t know whether HBO would greenlight more episodes—so they made sure to throw everything they had into it. By the end of Industry’s season three finale, the stakes for the show’s beautiful fuckups—and for the bank itself—are fairly existential.
Yasmin (Marisa Abela) lands in the deepest water by the end of season three, literally and figuratively. While dealing with the scandalous aftermath of her father’s drowning, she finds herself locked in a love triangle between her lovelorn friend, Robert (Harry Lawtey), and Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington), a man with enough money and power to both protect her from the world and provide her with life’s not-so-little luxuries. “Robert really does make Yasmin feel very safe in a way that definitely the other men in her life don’t,” Abela tells Still Watching. “He really sees her and loves her, whereas Henry or her father or Eric—I don’t think she feels that they really see her.”
On the latest episode of Still Watching, both Abela and Lawtey stopped by to talk about their onscreen chemistry and their offscreen friendship. (Listen or read below.)
Vanity Fair: Your characters both had a very emotionally intense season. When you read the season three scripts, were there any moments or revelations that surprised you?
Harry Lawtey: Yeah, it’s par for the course now with this show. Every page is a bit of a surprise, to be honest. But I agree. In this [season] especially, a lot of the arcs and journeys of these characters are very much reaching boiling point. That’s certainly the case for Robert. I remember saying to Mickey [Down] and Konrad [Kay] a while back that he’s someone who’s been wanting to cry for about five years now, and hasn’t felt able to show his feelings in that way. It feels like once the dam is broken, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. It’s all on show now.
Marisa Abela: This was the first year that I felt it was really necessary to have a sit-down about what had happened, what was going to happen, where everything was heading. And that was very different to play, holding knowledge that was hers and no one else’s. And also, the relationship between Robert and Yasmin this season—it was the first time that it really, really mattered whether or not Yasmin knew what she wanted, and knew what she was getting into.
Your characters have been circling each other through the whole series, and Robert has been pining for Yasmin since the beginning. How do you see their relationship at this point?
Lawtey: The relationship has so much more substance and integrity than it did at the beginning. Robert’s attraction to Yasmin was always socioeconomically informed. He found the idea of a relationship with her aspirational…. They’re at a stage now, at the end of this season, where I think there’s very genuine love there. It doesn’t mean they can necessarily express themselves and share how they feel, but they know what’s going on. In the last two episodes, part of their journey is to try to get rid of all the nonsense.
Years ago, a writing instructor told me writers should avoid party scenes. They’re often chaotic, introduce too many characters, and, in general, are very, very hard to do well. That’s why I’ve always taken Industry’s party scenes as proof of the show’s excellence. Some of my favorite episodes are party episodes: Seb’s failed sushi dinner party, the Christmas party where Greg ran into the doors, and Harper and Yasmin in the club in Berlin. In Industry, parties are opportunities to showcase subterranean tensions alongside ludicrous set pieces. “Useful Idiot”is no exception, though no one is at the actual party in this episode.
It’s Pierpoint’s 150th birthday, and the traders are supposed to be celebrating. But no one is celebratory because Pierpoint’s share price has plummeted. The end is nigh. The bell is tolling, etc etc. Eric is telling Rishi (who has a broken arm and Vinay breathing down his neck) to sell everything he can and make money wherever possible. The light on the floor is flickering and hellish, like a real-life version of Robert’s hallucinatory trip.
The mood is even grimmer on the 13th floor, where Eric and Bill Adler are summoned for a summit on how to save Pierpoint. It’s a curious scene. As a viewer, I’m so used to seeing last-ditch hail-Mary attempts to save this or that thing, and usually, I am meant to care if the thing is saved. (Westeros from frozen zombies, the known world from an alien who got rid of half the population by snapping.) In this case, I do not care if Pierpoint lives or dies. Instead, I’m watching these scenes for pure drama. I want to see building tension and release. I want to see Eric shake off his sticky midlife mess. I want to see the ruthless, wide-grinned man from season one who out-maneuvered Daria to return in the final moment.
And at first, Eric sort of waffles. He’s confused about why he’s at the illustrious table, as is the new Pierpoint CEO, Tom. Eric is a bit of an ingenue, blinking in the bright lights as the head honchos of Pierpoint look for someone, anyone, to infuse the bank with enough cash that it doesn’t completely unravel. Their first stop is, of course, the government. It’s an American bank, so they call the assistant secretary to the U.S. treasury, who is hilariously wheezing away on the phone, flatly rejecting Pierpoint’s pleas. Thank goodness — I just remembered that I do care if a big bank survives or fails if it means the little guy (a.k.a. us) has to pay for a government bailout of said bank.
As the group moves on to other possible sources of cash, Bill Adler pitches his big idea. He’s been warming up a relationship with Mitsubishi and wants to bring the Japanese bank in to solve Pierpoint’s problems. There’s a manic glint in his eye, and it’s clear that Adler sees this move as his way to the top. To me, it sounds like the ravings of a very ill man, which is deeply sad.
Maybe Eric has been so lackluster and gross all season because there wasn’t anyone exciting enough to knife in the back. In the conference room, watching Adler and Wilhelmina battle over their succession in the bank, something starts to flicker back to life in Eric. He’s assessing the room, seeing what cards he could play. This horrible moment in the bank’s history could be just the opportunity for him to launch his career forward. But who will he screw over? Wilhelmina or Adler?
When a Barclays acquisition backed by Wilhelmina falls through, it looks like Adler’s suggestion of bringing the Japanese in is the only viable option. Before they arrive, Eric meets Bill in the bathroom to review the proposal deck, which has a discrepancy that Eric notices. He chooses to say nothing about the deck — Nature is healing, Eric is being underhanded for his own gain again. When Mitsubishi is at the table, Eric throws Adler under the bus, apologizing for the inaccuracy on page 12. It’s not something that could throw the deal itself off, but it’s enough to throw Adler out of his game. Eric gaslights Adler into thinking that they talked about this in the bathroom, which causes Adler to unravel, confessing his brain tumor at the table. Of course, the Mitsubishi deal falls through, but more importantly, as Bill is sent home to convalesce, Eric twists the knife, dropping the act. This elicited a complex set of feelings in me. On the one hand, I’m happy to see Eric stop messing around with his incestuous psycho-sexual drama with Yasmin and turn his attention to more grown-up matters at hand. On the other, I think he may have just killed Bill Adler, which, uh, does not say great things for his personal growth.
No matter! Eric has a backup plan to save Pierpoint, which involves calling up Ali, the Arabic-speaking trader plopped unceremoniously on his desk this season. He turns out to have ties to the Egyptian royal family. In a graceful series of moves, Eric maneuvers a deal where Ali’s family floods Pierpoint with cash for a controlling stake in the bank. It’s not lost on me that Eric’s idea was simply Bill Adler’s idea, just dressed up in a different kind of sovereignty. That is to say, it’s not that Eric won because he had a better idea, but because he was more willing to play dirty than Adler was. Am I happy for him? I don’t know.
Braided into this storyline of Pierpoint’s possible failing is Rishi struggling to survive by essentially selling himself out to Harper, saying he’ll act as her mole on the inside to help time when she sells and buys back the Pierpoint stock she’s hoping to short. There’s also a storyline of Harper being chewed out by Petra when Petra finds out how Harper actually got the information necessary to short Pierpoint, i.e., illegally. I must confess these two storylines felt like mere threads to me, which indicates just how un-Harper focused this season has been. We’re in the penultimate episode, and Harper is a blip who barely gets her comeuppance. I don’t even care about what’s happening with her! I am sad because I want to see more of Myha’la, but I am not sad because this episode’s second half is about Rob and Yasmin.
Where to even begin with these two. At first brush, it seemed like a case of garden variety workplace horniness, but over the course of three seasons, these characters and their will-they-won’t-they-mostly-won’t-they have developed a complex, cynical tragedy. Robert never seems to feel man enough to make a move on Yasmin. Yasmin can’t see Robert as a viable romantic option because he isn’t deeply awful to her. Not to mention the giant chasm of class that separates the two of them and the way they see the world.
Yasmin, unemployed, is blindsided by yet more horrible news. Though Hanani Publishing is willing to take care of all of the damages caused by her father’s embezzlement, they want Yasmin to be the public fall person for Charles’ inappropriate (dare I say abusive) relationship with women who he paid off across his lifetime. Sins of the father, sins of the daughter, etc etc. Ought Yasmin take their urging and accept culpability for her family? While I am in favor of Yasmin facing the music and growing up, this seems cruel to me. She isn’t Charles. In fact, she is a victim of Charles. Even after she “killed” him, he seems to keep on winning.
To take Yasmin’s mind off of the new clusterfuck, Robert invites Yasmin along with him to Wales, where he is interviewing for a job as the finance guy for a hallucinogen startup. That passing moment two episodes ago where Henry said someone should monetize tripping — well, Robert seems to have taken that to heart. While the two are on their road trip, Yas gets a call from Maxim, who you may remember from last season as her sometimes-fuck-buddy/family friend who handles the Hanani family assets. Hi Maxim! Maxim is calling from a retreat in San Francisco (??) to tell Yasmin he somehow knows about the blackmail ploy the Hanani Publishing people are pulling, and he wants to give her leverage: Hanani Publishing was in on Charles’ payouts to the women. Yas could potentially blackmail Hanani Publishing into covering her father’s embezzlement damages if she were willing to throw the women Charles/Hanani Publishing paid off under the proverbial bus.
Before Yas can do anything with this information, she and Rob get to their destination, a quaint little bed and breakfast. I am reminded of season two Yas, who sneered at staying in a Marriott; oh, how times have changed! After checking in, they get a bite to eat, or rather, Robert gets a battered sausage for them to share, which he declares perfect. Oh, Robert! Your definition of perfect is not Yasmin’s definition of perfect! She needs Michelin stars and luxury oozing out of every pore; you are a humble man happy to eat carby meat on a nice night. It’s never going to work.
Yasmin gets coy with Robert and says there will be no room hopping, to which Robert calls her on her weird sexual mind game. For once, Yasmin gets honest with him, saying that her first instinct with love is to make it ugly as quickly as possible. I mean, yeah, I get it. Your dad weaponized intimacy. Of course, you want to transform love into something despicable. It’s what Yasmin knows best, and what she imagines keeps her safe.
When the pair share a clandestine kiss in the hallway between their rooms and no room swapping indeed occurs, the lack of sex between them is somehow the most intimate, romantic thing. But Yasmin ruins it all by taking way too many mushroom pills and cutting her hand open, requiring Rob to come in and clean up her mess as she moans about wanting to be a good person. Yasmin! WHY! ARE! YOU! LIKE! THIS!!!
The next morning, Yasmin decides not to take the high road. She will throw those women under the bus if it means her hide is saved. I am disappointed by this decision. Sure, Yasmin might not be popular if she takes the face of the Hanani Publishing scandal, but how many people are aware of the publishing house scandals? Surely her money would have insulated her from any real harm? Rob, on the other hand, kind of gets the job and kind of doesn’t. The University associated with the psilocybin startup has put the kibosh on funding, which sounds like it might be bad news but instead means Rob now has a job looking for funding from venture capitalists. The two of them in the car is a study in opposites. Yasmin has firmly mired herself in her father’s mess, engaging in the sort of selfish tactics that he might have. Robert, on the other hand, has found something to lift him out of Pierpoint and into another life. I can’t imagine these two will end up together.
• Shout out to the Pierpoint bathrooms. Seriously, these stalls have seen nearly all of the vital drama of this show, from Hari’s death in season one to Harper and Yasmin’s small power struggles. I like the way they are used by the series, such as de facto confessionals, a place where the traders are stripped down under harsh LED lighting.
• I must confess I was afraid when I learned Yas and Robert were going on a road trip. There have been so many allusions made to Princess Diana this season when it comes to Yas and her being hounded by the paparazzi (for example, her charity day costume); once she and Rob got in their car, I felt sure they were both going to die in a horrible pap-driven accident. I am happy to report that this was merely a case of me looking way too far into the subtext.
• In EXTREMELY important news, Industry was renewed for a fourth season! I was beginning to thinkthis was the final season based on how these character storylines were shaping up, so I am surprised. My face is the surprised Pikachu meme. I can’t believe I read this so wrong!
• While I, too, found the check-out girl at the bed and breakfast annoying, Yasmin was so condescending and awful to her. I suppose it shouldn’t have been a surprise that she decided to do the un-feminist thing with HP.
Finally, some good TV. MAX, the artist formerly known as HBO, is back to dominating my Sunday nights with its highly addictive, highly stressful brand of terrific television.
After The Idol flopped so badly, I worried that MAX wouldn’t ever live up to its glory days. But Industry, which was a compelling quarantine-watch that I feared might fizzle out in its third season, has proven itself to be the streamer’s latest juggernaut — and possibly one of the best shows of the year.
Move over prestige period dramas and fantasy epics – the hottest show of the fall is all about the cutthroat world of high finance. HBO’s Industry has quietly become must-see TV for its potent cocktail of ambition, excess, and anxiety that capitalizes on our love for “eat the rich” dramas.
It’s like Succession and The White Lotus had a baby, except instead of the quiet comedy of the former or the slow, sleepy thrill of the latter, Industry is an anxiety-inducing feat of stress and success. While The Bear’s third season was just a flash in the pan, thanks in no small part to its immediate release of all of its episodes, Industry is coming out one episode at a time and really allowing us to sit in the stress it creates. And I love every second of it.
Industry, like all the beloved shows du jour, revels in depicting the bad behavior of the obscenely wealthy. But unlike overly didactic versions of this like Blink Twice or even Don’t Worry Darling,Industry follows a cohort of young finance hopefuls, exploring how a generation raised on social media and economic instability navigates the rarified air of high finance. The result is a show that feels both timeless in its examination of power and greed and painfully specific to our current cultural moment.
What is Industry about?
Simply put, Industry is about investment banking. But what an antidote to the “looking for a man in finance” song that went viral this summer. If these are the men in finance, keep them away from me! Industry follows a group of analysts at Pierpont, a fictional London investment bank. But it spins all stereotypes on their head.
There’s the spoiled nepo-baby heiress Yasmin (Marisa Abela); the prototypical Oxford boy who turns out to be a sensitive scholarship kid; Rob (Harry Lawtey), the privileged Nigerian golden boy suffering from disillusionment; Gus (David Jonsson); and our main anti-hero Harper (Myha’la), a Black woman from a state school who is both a prodigy and a fish out of water.
Now in its third season, Industry has solidified its place as the rightful heir to the anti-hero drama throne once occupied by titans like Mad Men and The Sopranos. But instead of 1960s ad men or New Jersey mobsters, we’re following viscous Gen-Z frenemies It’s a world of obscene wealth, ruthless competition, and morally bankrupt decision-making. And though Harper, — called a “diminutive Black woman” in a recent episode — might seem the opposite of my beloved yet deeply flawed Don Draper, she’s a talented outsider struggling to make it in a world of wealth. And talk about an underdog we hate to love rooting for.
The cast makes each of their characters so compelling we can’t look away — even when they’re making a trainwreck of their lives. Myha’la anchors the show with her complex portrayal of Harper Stern, bringing a fierce intelligence and vulnerability to a character who could easily have become a caricature in less capable hands. Marisa Abela’s Yasmin Kara-Hanani has become a fan-favorite for her portrayal of a woman navigating the intersection of wealth, privilege, and gender politics in the boys’ club of finance. “I got a surprisingly large gay following,” she says in one of her opening scenes this season — and I get it.
But it’s not just the charm and quotable quips. What sets Industry apart is its unrelenting pace and frenetic energy. In an era where prestige TV often favors measured storytelling and slow burns, Industry hits like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. Honestly, it shares more DNA with the anxiety-inducing rhythms of The Bear with an upper-class flair.
Admittedly, the middle of the second season dragged. And with all the finance jargon and plotlines heavily contingent on the ups and downs of the market, sometimes it’s tough to follow. Sometimes I call up my friends who are deep in the trenches at Goldman or J.P. Morgan to simply translate whatever I just saw — and to provide a lens on what’s actually realistic. I worried that the third season would let me down. But instead, it ratcheted up the show to a level of intensity that shows Industry at its best.
Watch the Industry Season 3 trailer here:
Why Industry Season 3 is a game changer
This latest season doubles down on the show’s stress-inducing tendencies, with the most recent episode drawing comparisons to the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems for its relentless tension. The last time I was this stressed watching an episode of television was during The Bear season 2’s famous episode “Fishes.” If you know, you know that episode was a departure from the Season’s quiet meditations on its characters. It was the epitome of a chaotic family Christmas. And it was critically acclaimed for a reason. Similarly, White Mischief breaks from the narrative to focus on giving us heart palpitations.
Rishi has been a character on the sidelines who delivers some of the best — though sometimes pretty vile — one-liners. But in this episode, we get an unprecedented spotlight on Rishi as he navigates an even more chaotic Christmas than Carmy’s family. From work to home and back again, the episode takes us through a harrowing 48-hour period of gambling, drugs, and increasingly risky trades. And though it takes such a narrow focus compared to other episodes of the show, this episode exemplifies everything that makes Industry so addictive.
Season 3 has upped the ante considerably, with the addition of Kit Harington (of Game of Thrones fame) as an unstable — and perpetually shirtless — tech CEO disrupting the lives of our beloved Pierpoint characters.
But what exactly is the point of Industry, beyond giving viewers weekly panic attacks over concepts they barely understand? At its core, the show is an examination of ambition and its costs — literally and metaphorically. Through its characters’ struggles and their differing axes of identity — the rich trying to get richer and the poor trying to be just like them — it asks how far we’re willing to go to succeed in a system that may be rigged from the start. Through its ensemble of deeply flawed but magnetic characters, Industry explores the toxic allure of power and wealth and the toll it takes on those who pursue it relentlessly.
As we head further into Season 3, fans are on the edge of their seats to see how the various plot threads will interweave and resolve. Will Harper’s risky plays pay off and allow her to rebuild the glory she tasted for a moment at Pierpont, or will her house of cards finally come crashing down? Can Yasmin successfully navigate the minefield of office politics and her complicated personal life? And where the hell is her father? Will Harry get his emotions under control and deal with his grief instead of drinking it away? And just how long can Rishi’s luck hold out before everything implodes spectacularly?
I mean, we all saw the ending of Uncut Gems…
These questions — combined with the show’s sharp dialogue and on rushing pacing — have made Industry appointment-television for all of us who tuned in to watch Succession and White Lotus. It’s the kind of show that demands to be watched in real-time, lest you fall behind on the water cooler — or, more accurately, Slack channel — discussions the next day. In a television landscape often dominated by IP-driven content and safe bets, Industry feels fresh and unpredictable.
The week between each episode feels unbearable. But if you’re like me, the best way to distract yourself from the wait between good TV episodes is to watch more good TV.
Now, if you like Industry, you’ll like these shows — and vice versa. From timeless rewatches to new favorites, this is what I’m watching while waiting for the next episode of Industry.
1. Mad Men
For the Industry fan craving another dose of high-stakes professional drama, Mad Men is the ideal binge. Set in the cutthroat world of 1960s advertising — March 1960 to November 1970 — this AMC classic shares Industry‘s fascination with ambition, power, and the moral compromises we make in pursuit of success.
Jon Hamm’s Don Draper is the OG antihero who paved the way for Industry’s morally ambiguous leading characters. Like Harper Stern navigating Pierpoint’s treacherous waters, Draper’s journey from mysterious outsider to advertising titan is a masterclass in reinvention and survival. Mad Men may swap Industry‘s glass-and-steel offices for wood paneling and cigarette smoke, but the underlying tensions feel remarkably familiar. Both shows excel at exploring workplace dynamics, gender politics, and the psychic toll of constant performance.
With 16 Emmys and universal critical acclaim, Mad Men set the gold standard for prestige TV. Its influence on shows like Industry is undeniable, from the meticulous period detail to the complex character studies. The type of stress it creates is different and more simmering, as you wonder if Don Draper is going to get away with his indiscretions and if his company will retain their accounts. But it’s just as thrilling. For viewers who appreciate Industry‘s incisive writing and nuanced performances, Mad Men offers seven seasons of equally riveting drama.
2. Succession
HBO’s critically acclaimed drama about the dysfunctional Roy family and their media empire shares Industry’s fascination with wealth, power, and the corrupting influence of both. Where Industry focuses on hungry young graduates clawing their way up, Succession examines what happens when you’re born at the top — and the constant fear of falling. Both shows excel at depicting the often absurd world of the ultra-wealthy, balancing sharp satire with genuine pathos.
Jeremy Strong’s Kendall Roy could easily be a glimpse into the future of Industry’s most ambitious characters, What happens when you achieve everything you thought you wanted, only to discover that it’s not enough? The ensemble cast, including Brian Cox, Sarah Snook, and Kieran Culkin, delivers performances as nuanced and compelling as anything in Industry. With 13 Emmy wins and counting, Succession is the definitive show about wealth and power in the 21st century. Succession‘s razor-sharp dialogue and complex character dynamics will feel instantly familiar to Industry fans.
3. The Sopranos
HBO’s groundbreaking mob drama paved the way for the complicated anti-heroes that populate shows like Industry. Both shows excel at exploring the psychological toll of existing in a world of constant pressure and moral compromise. The Sopranos may focus on organized crime rather than high finance, but the themes of loyalty, power, and the American-Dream-gone-sour resonate strongly with Industry’s explorations of late-stage capitalism.
The Sopranos set the template for the kind of nuanced, morally complex storytelling that Industry excels at. For viewers who appreciate Industry’s deep character work and unflinching look at a cutthroat world, The Sopranos offers 6 seasons of unparalleled drama. Each time I watch Industry, I can relate to Tony’s panic attacks.
4. The Bear
If Industry is the adrenaline rush of a million-dollar trade, The Bear is the heart-pounding intensity of a dinner service in the weeds. FX’s breakout hit about a high-end, fine-dining chef taking over his family’s struggling Chicago sandwich shop shares Industry‘s frenetic energy and exploration of high-pressure work environments.
Jeremy Allen White’s Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto — like Industry’s Harper Stern — is a talented but troubled protagonist trying to prove themselves in an unforgiving world. Both are prone to panic as much as moments of pure genius; we can’t help but root for them while hoping they finally get out of their own way.
Both shows excel at depicting the toll that constant pressure takes on the characters, balancing moments of triumph with crushing setbacks. The Bear swaps financial jargon for kitchen slang, but the underlying tension feels remarkably similar. The Bear has quickly established itself as one of TV’s most exciting new dramas, finding moments of connection and humanity amidst the chaos.
5. The Fall of the House of Usher
For Industry fans seeking a different flavor of high-stakes drama, The Fall of the House of Usher offers a gothic twist on tales of wealth and corruption. Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s works, Mike Flanagan’s Netflix limited series shares Industry’s fascination with the dark side of ambition and power. Bruce Greenwood’s Roderick Usher — the patriarch of a pharmaceutical dynasty — can be viewed as a cautionary tale for Industry’s young strivers. Both shows excel at exploring the moral rot that often accompanies great wealth and influence.
Where Industry finds horror in plummeting stock prices, Usher leans into supernatural terrors. Yet both understand that the most frightening monsters are often the ones we create ourselves while in pursuit of success. It’s too new for major awards, but Flanagan’s track record (including the acclaimed The Haunting of Hill House) suggests Usher will be a contender.
For Industry viewers who appreciate that show’s psychological depth and examination of familial legacy, The Fall of the House of Usher offers a compelling, horror-tinged alternative.
6. The Morning Show
Apple TV+’s The Morning Show shares Industry‘s fascination with high-pressure work environments and the often murky ethics of corporate America. Swapping finance for broadcast journalism, The Morning Show offers another perspective on ambition, power, and the price of success. Jennifer Aniston’s Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson — like Industry’s Harper and Yasmin — navigate a cutthroat world where personal and professional lines are constantly blurred.
NBC’s Good Girls offers a fresh spin on the high-stakes world of finance that Industry inhabits. Both shows explore how financial desperation can drive people to cross lines they never imagined they would. The stress in Good Girls is more visceral and violent, but the underlying question is the same: what would you do for money?
Where Industry finds drama in legal (if ethically dubious) financial maneuvers, Good Girls dives into outright criminality. Yet both understand that in a world driven by money, the line between legitimate business and organized crime can be surprisingly thin.
8. Severance
Apple TV+’s Severance shares Industry‘s interest in the dehumanizing aspects of corporate culture — albeit through a surreal lens. This sci-fi thriller — about employees who surgically divide their memories between work and personal life — offers a different flavor of workplace anxiety. Adam Scott’s Mark Scout, like many of Industry’s characters, grapples with the all-consuming nature of his job. Yet both understand that in our late-capitalist world, the boundaries between work and life are increasingly blurred.
9. Billions
For Industry fans craving more high-stakes financial drama, Showtime’s Billions is the natural next step. Following the chess match between a hedge fund king and the U.S. Attorney determined to bring him down, it shares Industry‘s fascination with the ethical compromises and psychological warfare inherent to the pursuit of vast wealth.
Where Industry focuses on young graduates entering the world of finance, Billions examines those at the very top of the food chain. These aren’t messy college kids living in a house flat who don’t know what to do with their money. These characters have far more to lose — but they’re playing equally fast and loose with their love and money.
Chris and Andy talk about this week’s Rishi-centric episode of Industry. They talk about how this episode was the show’s version of Uncut Gems (1:00), how the power dynamics between characters in Industry are constantly changing (15:28), and why in Industry the viewer doesn’t have to fully understand the workings of the finance world, they just have to understand how the people in that world are reacting to it (28:10).
Joel Kim Booster is well aware that showing skin is part of his personal brand. In his 2022 Netflix comedy special, Psychosexual, Booster jokes about having his nudes readily available on the internet, quipping that he still sends naked photos of himself out “with reckless abandon.” However, the Loot and Fire Island star didn’t expect that his reckless abandon would lead to a steamy guest-starring role on the third episode of the third season of HBO’s breakout series Industry,created by Konrad Kay and Mickey Down.
“This never happens to me, but they came to me with this role,” Booster says. In episode three, “It,” Booster guest stars as Frank Wade, a Pierpoint employee in the equity research division who has to publish a buy-or-sell recommendation on Lumi, the green energy company run by Kit Harington’s Henry Muck, which recently IPO’d.
A fan of Industry since it premiered in 2021, Booster tells me that he’s “never had an easier time” booking an acting role than on the series. “The boys are apparently fans,” Booster says, of Kay and Down. “They had this part written and they came to me and said, ‘There’s this creep in a steam room and we immediately thought of you.’ I guess the brand is strong.”
The steam room wound up becoming a sauna, where Pierpoint banker Rob, played by Harry Lawtey, flirts with Frank in the hopes of influencing his buy-sell recommendation. Their cackling chemistry is reminiscent of the sauna scene in Challengers between Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor except for one major difference—Booster is completely naked. “They said very early on that this would be a requirement,” he says. “It was included with the offer, like, ‘Are you cool with that?’”
He was so cool with it, in fact, that Booster says it wasn’t even the most nerve-wracking part about the shoot. “I was more nervous about stepping into a prestige HBO drama than I was about the nudity, because the nudity is pretty par for the course for me in my everyday life,” says Booster. “Professionally, this was a big deal for me to be taken seriously as an actor and have people believe that I can do a pretty grounded, dramatic, serious part that’s not comedy heavy. I’m really grateful for that opportunity.”
Over the phone, Booster chats about the trickiness of looking hot while sitting, working with Lawtey, and what he believes really went down in the sauna.
Vanity Fair: So, let’s talk about your big scene, which happens to take place in a sauna when you’re butt naked.
Joel Kim Booster: You know what’s so funny to me? This is not the first interview I have done about my brief appearance on Industry, and you are the only person who’s asked about this scene in particular, explicitly. It’s like, ‘Guys, I’m a one-episode guest star. I have a one episode arc on this show where I’m in approximately three scenes and you are not going to ask me about the reason you really want to interview me about this episode?’ The reason it’s a big deal is because I’m doing full-frontal for the first time. Let’s be real.
Did you have to think about whether to say yes at all?
I didn’t think about it at all when I initially said yes. It was an exciting opportunity to do something really different. And as I famously said in my Netflix special, my nudes are out there. If you want to see me naked, it’s readily available if you know the correct search terms and dark web websites to visit. And I continue to this day to send out my naked pictures of myself to random strangers frequently. So it didn’t seem like that big a deal at first to do it, at first I would say.
Take me to the actual moment where you’re on set, and it’s time, and the camera’s about to roll. How did that feel?
It is crazy because it didn’t really dawn on me until right before we shot. All of my nudes that have leaked online previously, it is my hard penis, okay? With a flaccid penis, there’s a lot of variables at play. It can look a lot of different ways. Stress is a big factor in that. I woke up and I was like, ‘I cannot think about this because the more I think about this, the more I will spiral.’ And then you lose control of what’s going on down there. I will say Harry Lawtey, who plays Robert on the show, is who I filmed the bulk of my scenes with. [He was] so nice, so welcoming, made me feel truly a part of the team at Industry. He has also been in my position doing full-frontal, and I couldn’t have had a better scene partner who put me at ease and just really made me able to focus on actually doing that scene and not be thinking about what’s going on downstairs.
Last season, you introduced Jesse Bloom as an outside provocateur. This season, it’s Sir Henry Muck. What was the inspiration, and did you have Kit Harrington in mind from the start?
Down: We wanted to show how a bank like this would operate within a real world context, with a company that people can understand. And we wanted to do it through a more cynical lens, like a green energy startup run by this paragon of privilege. We’ve seen the Adam Neumann/Elizabeth Holmes version of a startup CEO, and we tried to think of the British real equivalent of that. They’re always insanely privileged, and then when it gets fucked up, the government’s there to bail them out. But the groundwork’s been laid for success for him, so that when he doesn’t get it I think he feels like an even bigger failure. I think he really has insecurity about his privilege.
Kit plays Muck with such a great mixture of narcissism and vulnerability.
Down: Kit found the vulnerability in someone who is, on paper, really without empathy. A right wing billionaire scion of a family that is probably to blame for many of the bad things that have happened in the last 30 years. And for some reason, I think we empathize with him, because he has obviously had all this trauma. There’s this young, vulnerable child wanting to be loved.
Kay: I think Kit recognized a few things about ambition, but also about the sorts of people that he might have grown up around, and also the sort of people he met post-Thrones. We only spent about 20 minutes in each other’s company before we hired him. He said that in 10 years of Game of Thrones, he never once got to make a joke. He would beg David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] to write him a joke, and they would kind of tease him about the fact that he was so self-serious and honorable. And he’s so funny in this part! The show’s not a comedy, obviously. We were just trying to make sure season three is denser, but also more light on its feet.
We find out that Henry Muck is notorious for his sexual quirks. I couldn’t help wondering if Henry would get along with Kendall Roy, who probably also has a penchant for being peed on.
Down: There’s no doubt, if we expand the universe of these business adjacent shows on HBO, that they would be friends.
Kay: In the real world, 100%.
If you ever feel like doing a crossover Succession/Industry episode at some point, I give you my blessing.
Down: I think Jesse Armstrong might have something to say about that. [Both laugh.] There’s slightly more upside for us.
Yasmin’s journey this season from debauched socialite to embezzler heiress is extremely dark. Can you talk a little bit about shooting the yacht scenes that open the first episode and run through the season?
A new government program is trying to encourage Internet service providers (ISPs) to offer lower rates for lower income customers by distributing federal funds through states. The only problem is the ISPs don’t want to offer the proposed rates.
obtained a letter sent to US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo signed by more than 30 broadband industry trade groups like ACA Connects and the Fiber Broadband Association as well as several state based organizations. The letter raises “both a sense of alarm and urgency” about their ability to participate in the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. The newly formed BEAD program provides over $42 billion in federal funds to “expand high-speed internet access by funding planning, infrastructure, deployment and adoption programs” in states across the country, according to the (NTIA).
The money first goes to the NTIA and then it’s distributed to states after they obtain approval from the NTIA by presenting a low-cost broadband Internet option. The ISP industries’ letter claims a fixed rate of $30 per month for high speed Internet access is “completely unmoored from the economic realities of deploying and operating networks in the highest-cost, hardest-to-reach areas.”
The letter urges the NTIA to revise the low-cost service option rate proposed or approved so far. have completed all of the BEAD program’s phases.
Americans pay an average of $89 a month for Internet access. New Jersey has the highest average bill at $126 per month, according to a survey conducted by . A 2021 study from the found that 57 percent of households with an annual salary of $30,000 or less have a broadband connection.
