Why You Already Recognize the New Characters in 'Industry' Season 4 Opener
HBO's Industry returned on Sunday night for season four, but the highly anticipated premiere didn't open with any of the show's familiar characters. Instead, it began with an encounter between a man and a woman that the audience has never met before. After following her around London from afar, the man approaches her at a nightclub and goes back to her apartment to (presumably) sleep with her. Only the next morning does he reveal himself to be a financial reporter trying to get an interview with her boss at Tender, a payment processing startup that will seemingly play a central role in the new season.
But while audiences have never seen either of the characters—Jim Dycker and Haley Clay—before, their faces are likely to have looked familiar to many TV fans. That's because both actors play prominent roles in other major television shows.
Charlie Heaton Is a Stranger Things Star
Finance journalist Jim Dyker is played by Charlie Heaton. Netflix audiences are likely to recognize him as Jonathan Byers in Stranger Things, one of the streaming era's biggest hits. The sci-fi show just aired its final episode earlier this month after a 10-year, five season run on Netflix. Heaton has also appeared in films like The New Mutants (2020) and Marrowbone (2017).
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Kiernan Shipka Grew Up as Mad Men's Sally Draper
Although she plays Tender assistant Haley Clay on Industry, Shipka first made a name for herself as a child actor on AMC's Mad Men, where she played Don Draper's daughter Sally. Although she began appearing on the show as a young child, she grew up over the course of seven seasons and eventually played a significant role in many later-season episodes.
Since then, she's also starred as Sabrina in Netflix's The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a moody reimagining of the '90s sitcom. More recently, she's appeared in films like Longlegs, The Last Showgirl, and Twisters.
In a new interview with Decider, Shipka explained how the scene came together and what it was like working with Heaton.
“I didn’t know Charlie before and I think he’s so excellent and so, so good in this, and like such a sweet boy,” Shipka said. “And we had a lot of stuff to do in those first moments.”
She explained the scene's thrilling construction, noting how it sets the tone for the new season.
“I mean, it goes from, you know, wild and sexy to like angry… You kind of don’t know where it’s going and there’s a lot of levels and a lot of stuff to play with,” she said. “By the time that we got to the part of it where I’m like chasing him out of my house with a knife, we’d gotten to know each other already.
“I think there’s always something so fun about yelling at someone that you know in sort of like an incubated environment. Getting to go at each other when there’s a sense of trust and love and we’re going to laugh about this after.”
Series Co-Creator Sounds Off
Mickey Down, the co-creator of Industry, explained why he chose to kick off the season with familiar actors playing new characters. “These are recognizable people doing pretty unrecognizable things for the people they played before, which is really fun," Down said to Decider. “When we first thought about Kiernan Shipka in this role, that was really quite fun. A little bit of circularity that we’re doing a work-based drama [like Mad Men].”