Industrys Miriam Petche weighs in on Sweetpeas big episode, including those devastating final moments
Fans of HBO's Industry know that Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche) has a bit of a detective streak.
In Season 3, she leveraged her wide web of connections to figure out that Pierpoint & Co. was on the verge of collapse, well before anyone else on the trading floor. Now, in Season 4, she and her colleagues at SternTao are pursuing a new lead: the potential fraudulence of fintech company Tender.
Sweetpea, in particular, is tenacious in her desire to take Tender down. There's a personal angle to this drive: Tender served as a payment processor for adult sites like OnlyFans and the fictional Siren. Sweetpea's anonymous account on those sites got leaked, making her the target of further scrutiny and harassment in the finance world.
Since then, Industry has presented sex work, especially Sweetpea's, in a new light. In Season 3, they highlighted it as empowering. ("I love a woman who doesn't leave money on the table," Harper Stern (Myha'la) says of it in the season 3 finale.) But in Season 4, Industry ponders the exploitative side of Sweetpea's work as well, coinciding with her exposure and her subsequent focus on taking Tender down.
"She feels that this is the most defining thing for her," Petche told Mashable in a video interview. "[She thinks,] 'If I get this right, how bad can it be? If I make myself indispensable at work, then the worst situation can't happen.' She's driven by this desperate need to prove herself, to prove that she's okay and good at what she's doing."
That need to prove herself brings Sweetpea center stage in Season 4, episode 5, "Eyes Without A Face," which sees her and co-worker Kwabena Bannerman (Toheeb Jimoh) heading to Accra to investigate Tender's workings in Ghana. In Sweetpea's words, what they find is "a feedback loop of fakery." Tender, and its cash and clients, is nothing, but it's passing itself off as something quite valuable.
Sweetpea is on fire on the path towards this discovery, embracing her inner Erin Brockovich as she pins down Tender's fraud and even secures a potential whistleblower.
"The things that are compasses to her are her intelligence and her curiosity, and when her curiosity and intelligence are stimulated, it's like a thread that pulls her, and she cannot turn away from it," Petche said.
Yet as fulfilling as pulling on that thread is, this episode also puts Sweetpea through hell. She's violently attacked in a bathroom, with the perpetrator smashing her head into a mirror and breaking her nose in hopes of warning her off the investigation. It doesn't work, and Sweetpea sports a bruised face throughout the rest of the episode, even removing her sunglasses to show it off like a badge of honor.
For Petche, so much of Sweetpea is about how she weaponizes her hyper-competent work persona. "She's someone who has to perform that she's great all the time, and perform that she's productive and of value," Petche said.
However, in "Eyes Without A Face," audiences see Sweetpea's armor slip. Upon arriving home, Sweetpea sits silently by herself before breaking down, all the events and adrenaline of the past episode catching up to her.
"This is someone who believes they have to handle everything on their own," Petche explained. "When things are great, she'll handle it on her own, and when things are bad, I think she thinks that it's her own fault. So that moment was everything unraveling."
The scene is one of the rare moments when audiences see Sweetpea alone, and the effect is sobering. Gone is the usual self-assured clip of one-liners and financial savvy, replaced with gut-wrenching sobs.
Sweetpea's breakdown is made all the worse by the fact that just moments ago, she turned away Harper's offer to comfort her. On top of that, she pushed Harper away further, reminding her of their employer-employee boundary before letting her know that she and Kwabena hooked up in Ghana.
According to Petche, the move comes from a place of Sweetpea wanting to protect herself, but it might not be the right one in the long run.
"She only feels truly safe when she's alone," Petche said. "She has an offer from someone else to come and sit with her, and she says, 'No, please don't.' That might be what she thinks she needs, but what she needs is to be held when she's not performing. That really stuck with me."
New episodes of Industry Season 4 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.