Kit Harington Drew Out the ‘Boris Johnson Element’ in Industry’s Henry Muck

Photo: Nick Strasburg/HBO

Henry Muck, suitably nicknamed Prince Hal by his family and friends, may be Industry’s version of the ultimate privileged wastrel. He’s a member of the British aristocracy — a literal sir — who has convinced himself he can save the world with the green-energy company Lumi. He has also convinced a number of investors as well as management at Pierpoint & Co., where the HBO series’ main characters are tasked with managing Lumi’s IPO. The only problem is that company doesn’t have the fundamentals to actually succeed in the marketplace. In the first two episodes of the show’s third season, Lumi flounders after going public, while Harry Lawtey’s Robert tries and fails to manage Henry’s ego. In the third episode, as all the characters converge on a green-investing conference in Switzerland, one of Pierpoint’s own analysts (himself played by comedian Joel Kim Booster) turns on Lumi. It’s not all bad news for Henry, however: He decides to get out of his investment while he can and pivots his attention to his new favorite Pierpoint employee, Marisa Abela’s Yasmin. As Henry seduces her in a very Cruel Intentions–style pool scene, you get the sense he’s as despicable and self-deluded as he is also, unfortunately, handsome and charming.

That’s an effect that Kit Harington, Game of Thrones’s former Jon Snow, intended to emphasize in the character. Himself a lockdown-induced devotee of Industry, Harington leaped at the chance to sign on to the series and found himself fascinated by the way men like Henry float through the world armed by their charm. He brought out, as he told me in an interview before the season premiered, all of Henry Muck’s Boris Johnson–esque smarmy charm. “That’s how so many of the public-school guys get away with stuff,� Harington told me. “Because they’re funny.�

How familiar were you with Industry when you first started talking to creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down about Henry Muck?
I had seen it, and I was a big fan. So much TV now treats you like an idiot, and the audience isn’t fools. I love TV that takes a leap and says they’re going to trust you to follow nuance and subtext. I don’t know what any of the banking stuff means, but the characters are so strong and the actors in it are incredible. I had heard through the grapevine that there was a new season and a few characters that were quite cool. I dipped my toe in, asked my agent, “Is there anything in that?� They reached out, and we had a chat about Henry. I thought, I could do this. I definitely know who this guy is.

As an American, I’m sure I’m missing tons of cultural context for Henry. What was your way into figuring him out?
On the surface, he’s such a prick. You’re like, Oh God, you douchebag! But I’ve met people like Henry, and there’s a charm to them. You shouldn’t like them, but you do and you don’t know why. That was fascinating to me. He doesn’t see himself as a posh-boy shyster. He genuinely thinks he has a good product and if you would just let him do it, he would be part of saving the world and making money. Then he’s also driven by this horrific backstory — which I won’t get into yet — but there’s real trauma there that helps him connect with the characters. He’s a strange, fucked up, charming, but deeply sad guy.

Henry has a distinct kind of posh sense of humor to me, too, especially when he’s trying to seduce someone or sell them something. What was your approach to this show’s kind of comedy?
That’s his charm, right? He’s got a slightly Boris Johnson element. There’s something about that kind of self-deprecation, the public-school way of charming people into forgiving you for things. There’s something quite sinister about that. Henry wouldn’t have worked if there wasn’t that charm. I hope it does work!

A lot of your early scenes are with Harry Lawtey’s Robert and Marisa Abela’s Yasmin, and we see two very different sides of Henry. What was it like working with them?
I’ve loved Harry since I saw him in this. He’s so, in his own words, vulnerable about the character he’s playing. Harry and I really struck it off in a bro-love way, which helped for the characters we were playing.

We’ve seen a bit of the way Yasmin learns how to push Henry’s buttons sexually — especially his apparent interest in piss play. What’s it like to play those scenes?
It speaks to the show that those scenes sometimes end up delivering unexpected things. When you read it on the page, it feels hilarious and grotesque in a very Industry way — and maybe people won’t see it this way — but it also ends up feeling both romantic and potentially manipulative. Henry uses the word vulnerable a lot. He therapy-talks people into stuff. I think we’re manipulated by a few of the characters in this world into laughing along and then if you look back, we go, Why did we laugh along with that?

A lot of the codes of class in this show are expressed through the costumes. How did you talk about how Henry would dress?
I was quite involved with Laura Smith, the costume designer. I just shamelessly loved the clothes. There were little details that were fun to point out all the way through. He went to Winchester so, unlike an Eton boy, he wouldn’t wear mismatched socks on purpose. There are all sorts of little rules that you don’t know about unless you’re in the club. And a lot of it is about Henry welcoming Yasmin to this world, which is so strange.