Max Minghella on Playing the Big Bad of ‘Industry’ Season 4: “I Would Almost Black Out Shooting the Show”

SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains plot details from “Points of Emphasis,” Season 4, Episode 7 of “Industry,” now streaming on HBO Max.

Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella) is in the wind. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Harper Stern (Myha’la) and her fellow short sellers, Whitney’s fraudulent financial startup Tender has collapsed in on itself, leaving puppet CEO Henry Muck (Kit Harington) holding the bag. (Whitney and Harper had previously hooked up in an encounter that revealed his preference for, uh, penetrating interactions.) But before Whitney skips town, leaving his phone behind in an ominous sign of total abandonment, he tries one last audacious play: acquiring Pierpoint, the bank where HBO drama “Industry” — created by former bankers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay — first established itself before the entire institution collapsed in Season 3.

Whitney co-founded Tender with his Stanford buddy Jonah (Kal Penn), whom he pushed out of the company in the Season 4 premiere. Ever since, the entrepreneur has been on a mission to fake it until he makes it, covering the company’s fraudulent balance sheet with inflated acquisitions in Africa and attempting to pivot a payment processor for pornography sites into a mainstream bank. Taking a run at Pierpoint is one last, desperate attempt at distraction from increasingly loud calls for an audit, and Whitney sells the hell out of it. “We want speed. We want scale. We want certainty. We want America,” he tells a room of rapt shareholders. It’s almost enough to convince them, and us, that Tender can survive through sheer bravado.

But in the end, Whitney can’t escape his fate, at least while staying in the spotlight. He may put on a brave face, but behind the scenes, he’s being threatened by faceless Russian backers via his deputy Ferdinand (Nico Rogner), who tries to tell him running isn’t an option. Whitney chooses to risk it anyway, abandoning both Tender and his obvious infatuation with the aristocratic Henry. The mix of aspirational invention and forbidden same-sex attraction puts Whitney in the same lineage as other fictional antiheroes like Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley — which is fitting, because Minghella’s late father Anthony directed the 1999 adaptation of “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

Minghella arrived on “Industry” as a newly minted fan of the show, after nearly a decade on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a radically different (though in some ways, equally dystopian) series. Minghella has the perfect background for a story populated by American strivers — including Whitney, Harper and Harper’s mentor Eric Tao (Ken Leung) — trying to make it in the London financial scene. A native Londoner who now lives in the States, where he spoke to Variety about his time on “Industry” from his home, Minghella has spent time on both sides of the Atlantic. He applied that perspective to a performance he characterizes as spontaneous and ambiguous in a conversation that touches on Minghella’s inspiration, technique and approach to playing a fundamentally mysterious character.

Courtesy of HBO

You’ve said you weren’t familiar with the show before you became involved with it, but once you did become acquainted, what made you excited to enter this world?

I knew a lot about the show, because truly all of my closest friends — people whose taste I trust — it’s their favorite show. They had, like, a weekly screening of the show, and they watched together, and they loved it. I felt intimidated by that, that people I cared about were invested in it. I was also conscious of the fact that the season was going to be quite different. I view it almost like a reboot of the show in a way, so I felt tremendous responsibility.

But Mickey and Konrad, from reading the scripts and then watching the series and talking to them, I truly thought I was interacting with generational talents. They’re amazing, and they’re operating at such a high level, and the writing was so to my taste. I’ve since learned, having worked with them, that we really do share very specifically the same taste, and it’s a joy when you get to work with people who share your taste. It’s a very rare thing. It’s a lovely thing when it happens, because it leads to a sense of joy and excitement in the process. 

Before this role, you were coming off of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which you were on for eight years. What was it like for you to shift gears between these two shows?

They’re very different in style, and so my approach was radically different to each part. I always viewed, correctly or incorrectly, Nick Blaine as a sort of archetypal character. That show was very heavy, and I always — maybe this is an incorrect perception of what his purpose was in the show — but I felt like his narrative was there to provide a sense of relief and melodrama and break from the more intellectual aspects of the show. And so I didn’t approach that part as naturalistically. I always saw it in a very specific way: embedded in a Brontë-esque literary history, something larger than life. I never approached it with naturalism. I always approached it within that context of something very heightened and almost like a soap opera, if I’m being honest. And I really enjoyed that, but that was very much the approach for that.

Then for this, it’s obviously something hyper-real. And so it was much less methodical. I would say it was much more about — I would almost black out shooting the show, because I would just let anything happen. I didn’t go in with any kind of plan or agenda of how I wanted anything to go. I would just let each take happen, and whatever happened in that take happened, for better or worse. It was very freeing and very different. It felt right for what the material was, and also the character, who I wanted to feel dynamic and unconstrained. I didn’t want him to feel like somebody who was deciding when to sit and when to pick up his mug.

This character, for obvious reasons, is fuzzy and unreliable in terms of what his background is. In your head, do you have a more definitive backstory, or did you prefer to keep it ambiguous on your end as well?

It’s a really relevant question, I think, to this character and to our process. I tried to be as honest as I could in the scenes themselves and at the same time, when I look back on it now with time, I lean probably a little bit towards the manipulation over the authenticity, or any kind of earnestness in his emotional state. My understanding, especially in how things come together in the edit and all of that, it gives you a new perspective on things. And with some distance, I consider him somebody so purely Machiavellian in his intent. But that could be wrong! That’s a Mickey and Kon question for sure. 

Courtesy of HBO

I feel like whenever there’s a con man who’s sexually obsessed with his mark, the spirit of Tom Ripley has entered the room. Were there any influences like that that you were looking to when you were formulating who this person is?

Obviously, I noticed that. And there’s other characters — Steve Jobs in the Aaron Sorkin movie — that Whitney sort of resembles. Tom Ripley is tricky, because Tom Ripley doesn’t share any of the personality traits of Whitney. Tom is, in such a beautiful way, so openly sensitive and vulnerable and fragile. Whitney is the opposite of that. Thematically, I love those kinds of stories. I’ve always been drawn to those kinds of stories, for obvious reasons, I suppose. I don’t know how applicable that is to Whitney. 

There were real people in the world, pretty inside baseball people, I guess, that we talked about. But they articulated on the page such a clear person and such an extraordinary role to get to play. I was very conscious the whole time of how unique it was to get to say these words and play somebody this multifaceted and complicated. It’s just very rare, and so I will endlessly be grateful to them for giving me this chance.

Before Whitney and Harper are set on this collision course with each other, they have a sexual encounter where you learn about Whitney’s proclivities. What do you think that scene, which is intimate on multiple levels, reveals about who Whitney is?

I would lean on there being some honesty there in that scene. If only because of the scene that happens later in Episode 6, where he says to Harper, “I wonder if that’s why I showed you so much of myself so quickly.” Which is alluding to that. To me, that feels like an admission of sorts. Because it could be interpreted easily that he’s planted that [strap-on] there to give Harper this moment of empowerment. Maybe he could subconsciously read whatever Freudian desire that she’d been harboring, that she sort of actually states earlier in that episode. It could be that. 

What I like about these questions about Whitney is, I actually don’t know the answers. Really. And I didn’t find that prohibitive in playing him, because he is somebody who, however you interpret him, is a performer. That was enough for me to go off.

Watching Episode 7, it really hit home for me just how much the Whitney-Henry relationship is kind of this bizarro version of the Harper-Yasmin relationship. How did you and Kit Harington work together, and work out this dynamic between these two very different people? 

I think it was different for both of us. First of all, I’d say that Kit was just a really important person to me in this whole process. He’s just so good, really lifts you up as an actor, but he’s an incredibly kind person and generous person. I was very nervous, intimidated by the whole thing, and kind of out of my depth, I think. And then he made me feel so safe. He was so supportive. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t have done it without him. So I was endlessly grateful to him on a personal level.

On the approach, the character dynamics, I’ll say this. I think, not to speak for [Kit], that [Henry] very much saw Whitney as a father figure, as a paternal figure, and leaned into that a lot in his thinking. For me, I related to Henry more than any other character in the show, in a kind of profound way. I found Henry so close to where I was at in my life, doing the show, going into it.

That was so great for me, because obviously Whitney, whether it’s authentic or not, is interested in this person. That was so easy for me, because I felt he found him so relatable. And that was really great. 

Because Whitney, in many ways, possesses tributes I don’t have, and wish I did. But he’s so far away from who I am as a person. He’s got this confidence that’s amazing, this articulation that’s so impressive. It’s fun to pretend to be somebody who could do things you can’t. But at the same time, I was very grateful for how much I connected to Henry, who’s much more of a fool.

Without getting too personal, what did you find relatable about Henry as a character — who is in life circumstances I think most people do not find relatable? 

In the broadest terms, I think he’s a very stunted person, and I consider myself, openly, a very stunted person. I don’t know if I dislike that about myself, but I would say I’m definitely frozen a bit in time. I’m not much different talking to you now than I would have been 22 years ago. There’s something interesting about that to me, in the character, that I really identified with. There’s other more personal things I identify with, but it was lovely. And also part of what I loved about this season. Episode 2, which I wasn’t really in, that’s my favorite episode of the season. It’s very much focused on Henry, and I was amazed by what the boys came up with on that one. 

Courtesy of HBO

This is also a great episode in terms of the sexual interest that Whitney takes in Henry. Do you read that as Whitney letting the facade slip, or do you see it as another manipulation tactic?

My answer to all these is, I don’t fully know! I think that was very much the initial intent. I could say that. When we first were talking about this and we first started shooting the show, I think it was completely intended to be authentic. I do think things have changed as we shot it. That’s now become much more opaque in a really interesting way. A lot of these things that in the script are maybe a little bit more prescriptive became much more ambiguous. That’s another thing I share with Mickey and Kon is an interest in stuff that’s not didactic. So every time there was a shift towards ambiguity, it was always delightful to me. 

Maybe authenticity isn’t the right framing. Whitney is clearly interested in Henry in that way. What do you think draws him to this person who he can clearly see the failings in, but is also pulled toward?

We don’t know the reality of Whitney’s story, but I know that he is not to the manner born at all. He’s an autodidact. He taught himself everything. So I think that’s what it is, you know? He wishes that he had that confidence, the actual innate confidence or comfort of somebody who had a silver spoon in their mouth, even if it was a toxic one. He probably finds even the toxicity rather glamorous and unattainable. 

This episode, you also get the car confrontation scene, which unlocks aspects to Whitney we haven’t seen before. It’s the first time we’ve seen him backed into a corner and panicked and not sure what to do. What was it like to play the character in that mode after him being relatively in control for most of the season?

It was really fun. It was all really fun to me. But again, my approach was so consistent, which was, whatever happens in this space is going to happen in this space. And it felt very freeing to approach it like that. It was all quite exciting and unpredictable and also scary, because I didn’t feel a tremendous amount of control over the performance. It sort of felt like it was controlling me a bit. That was nerve wracking, I suppose, but I really enjoy doing that. 

I also found it funny. I found it funny when he was so pathetic and I didn’t really know what he was doing. Every time I watched it, I was like, “Oh, that’s what he was doing in that scene!”, if that makes sense. When I saw how pathetic he is when he gets out of the car, he just looks so vulnerable and fragile in a way that I found just very humorous.

You’ve played American characters before, and you live in America. But Whitney is an ultra-American archetype, which plays into his whole Pierpoint spiel and certain things he says in the premiere. As someone who didn’t grow up here, was it interesting for you to step into that kind of person? 

Well, I don’t know that Whitney is American.

That’s a good point!

So I didn’t necessarily treat it that way. I treated it as somebody who’s pretending to be something he’s not. And inherently, by me not sounding like me, that’s a very easy way to immediately be like him, right? We don’t know if he might be from Lithuania or somewhere else. We don’t know anything about him. That just never becomes explicit, anyway. So I just assumed he might not be. There’s even little, very subtle things I try to do with the accent to maybe raise that question. Probably in a way that just causes confusion more than anything else! But

I just thought he should have an undefined accent. It should maybe sometimes slip between regions in a way that’s a bit confusing. That was something I thought could be interesting.

This interview has been edited and condensed.