Latest news with #HarryLawtey
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Industry' Creators on How Their Storytelling and Characters Have Evolved (in Bleepable Ways) and HBO's 'Fantastic Notes'
The traders of Pierpoint were in the London spotlight on Thursday as Industry co-creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay shared some anecdotes and insights into their hit drama at the inaugural SXSW London during one of Thursday's Screen Keynote sessions. 'We were in development hell on Industry for three years,' Down recalled. 'We wrote the first episode like 60 times.' More from The Hollywood Reporter Disney+ Inks New Deal to Bundle With Crave, TSN in Canada New Lena Dunham, Sarah Snook Shows Touted as Universal U.K. TV Labels Execs Talk Sector Cuts Nickelodeon Acquires Animated 'Mr. Crocodile' Series, Based on French Children's Book He lauded HBO for ordering the show and allowing the creators to let the series evolve over time. 'It started off as a slice-of-life London thing,' Down shared. 'And that kind of unlocked the show.' Over time, the series and its characters have grown up, the duo highlighted. Down drew laughs, highlighting how Harry Lawtey's character Robert has gone from a 'two-dimensional fuckboy' to the 'emotional heartbeat' of Industry. Kay shared insight on the growth in terms of storytelling that the creative duo went through. He told the audience that 'we were interested in, but not confident enough in expanding the horizon of the trading floor to actually say something, maybe a little bit more about capitalism and Britain.' But over time, 'we started to look at newspapers, politics, the intersection of all that stuff in season three,' he noted. 'So when we came back for season four, we wanted to do an actual proper newspaper storyline, or an actual political storyline. We don't have to wed ourselves necessarily to the financial story. It takes us 18 months to make eight hours of TV. It's about how we are going to keep ourselves creatively engaged. And the truth is, we've got older, we become more interested in this stuff, it's just a natural broadening of the canvas to keep me and him engaged.' 'My and Mickey's creative impulse really is a negative one,' said Kay. 'That was what we really galvanized over as a creative duo, looking at stuff that we didn't like rather than what we like.' In their actions with HBO early on, 'we would be a little bit sharp-elbowed about the way we interacted with that stuff,' he also shared. 'And honestly, their notes are always fantastic, and they continue to be fantastic. And even if we don't end up doing one of their notes, it makes us interrogate something, or it makes us look at something two steps back. I think we've just become, naturally, a little bit more collaborative, and that comes from experience.' HBO renewed the darkly comic investment-banking drama, starring Marisa Abela, Harry Lawtey and Ken Leung, among others, for a fourth season in September. Season 3 featured their characters making a big bet on a green tech energy company led by a member of the British peerage, portrayed by Kit Harington, who told THR he's been a long-time fan of showrunner duo met as students at Oxford and went on to work in the finance world depicted in Industry. SXSW London runs through June 7. Penske Media, the parent company of The Hollywood Reporter, is the majority stakeholder of of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Industry Season 4: Everything We Know So Far
Some big changes are in store when the soapy finance drama Industry returns to HBO for Season 4. From first-time creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the series follows a group of drug- and sex-fueled financiers as they navigate the intensely stressful world at a leading international bank in London. The pressure-cooker environment provides an insider's view of the black box of high finance, while examining issues of gender, race, class and privilege in the workplace. More from TVLine Is Grey's Anatomy's Baby-Faced New OB Just What the Doctor Ordered? Succession Creator Jesse Armstrong's HBO Movie Gets Title and Release Date - Get a First Look at Steve Carell and the Cast Nathan Fielder Uses Role-Play to Prevent Plane Crashes (?!) in Season 2 of The Rehearsal - Watch a New Trailer Industry stars Myha'la (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Ken Leung (Lost), Marisa Abela (Back to Black), Harry Lawtey (Joker: Folie à Deux), Conor MacNeill (The Tourist), Sagar Radia (The Good Karma Hospital), Sarah Goldberg (Barry) and Kit Harington (Game of Thrones). The series was renewed for Season 4 back in September, three days before Season 3's penultimate episode aired. The upcoming fourth season has added some highly intriguing names to its cast list, while one major player has exited for good. Scroll down to learn everything we know about Season 4 so far and be sure to bookmark this page! We'll be updating with more details as soon as they're available. Kiernan Shipka has a new job in the Industry. The Mad Men and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina vet has joined Season 4 and will play Haley Clay, 'an executive assistant at payment processor Tender.' Kal Penn (Designated Survivor), Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things) and Claire Forlani (NCIS: Los Angeles, CSI: New York) have also joined the financial drama, Deadline reports. Penn will play Jay Jonah Atterbury, CEO and co-founder of payment processor Tender; Heaton will portray Jim Dycker, a finance journalist; and Forlani is Cordelia Hanani-Spyrka, a corporate PR heavy-hitter. Max Minghella (The Handmaid's Tale) has been added to the ensemble as Whitney Halberstram, the CFO and Founder of Tender. Also boarding the series are Toheeb Jimoh (Ted Lasso) as Kwabena Bannerman, a trader at Mostyn Asset Management; Jack Farthing (Poldark) as Edward Smith, a troublemaker and long-time friend of Harington's Henry; and Amy James-Kelly (Coronation Street) as Jennifer Bevan, the newly promoted Minister in the Labour government. Unfortunately, we won't get to see if Robert's new start-up takes off because his portrayer Harry Lawtey is leaving the cast after three seasons. A source has said the exit is due to scheduling conflicts. Lawtey played the young Pierpoint investment banker for the first three seasons of Industry, which debuted on HBO in 2020. Robert endured a lot throughout his run — most notably, he had his heart broken by love interest Yasmin (Abela) when she announced her engagement to filthy rich tech CEO Henry Muck — but things were looking up as Season 3 closed, with Robert taking on a new role as a pitchman for a psilocybin start-up. Aside from Robert's big career change and subsequent exit, things were equally as transformative for Pierpoint. After Eric threw Bill to the wolves and brokered an intro between the Pierpoint board and Al-Mi'raj, he was tossed out as well. The new owners began hacking more staffers than originally planned, and the London office will now be focusing on private wealth. (Read our full finale recap here.) Worried about the Al-Miraj takeover, Rishi took a meeting with Harper, but all she did was humiliate him while Sweetpea watched on. (Oh, and his wife was shot and killed after he got in over his head in gambling debts.) Otto Mostyn confided to Harper that he was looking for a spiritual successor for his operations. He wanted to find someone who views trading the way that he does. Harper seemed intrigued, noting that the optics were good, but in a later meeting, Harper chose to double down on her partnership with Petra. After reading about Jesse Bloom's release from prison, Harper revealed to Mostyn that she wanted to start a short-only fund. He was intrigued by her subversive 'anti-fraud fraudsters' pitch, but Harper told him it would only be criminal if they're caught. She wants to run this new scheme from New York. Are we bidding farewell to London and relocating to the States for good? An official release date and synopsis have not yet been revealed, but we'll update this post as soon as they become available. A trailer for Season 4 doesn't exist yet, but as soon as it drops, we'll post it here. Best of TVLine Weirdest TV Crossovers: Always Sunny Meets Abbott, Family Guy vs. Simpsons, Nine-Nine Recruits New Girl and More ER Turns 30: See the Original County General Crew, Then and Now The Best Streaming Services in 2024: Disney+, Hulu, Max and More
Telegraph
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Industry's Harry Lawtey: ‘A lot of actors, then and now, are quite liberal with their sexuality'
Harry Lawtey's drunk. We're in the pub in west London on a Monday – a Monday lunchtime – and here he is: eyes gone, slurring this way and that, basic motor skills lost. The carcass of a halloumi sandwich decays before him. 'So…' he begins, reaching for an empty glass, missing, then grasping it loosely, his wrist swilling around like he's holding a sparkler. 'You can see the brain making its choices, can't you? Any effective masking is gone. I pick up the glass and then…' His head flicks up, an index finger thrusts in the air. 'I realise I haven't finished my first sentence… I'm lagging, my body can't do things because my functions are down. I'm malfunctioning. And that's quite funny, isn't it? It's like watching a toddler.' Lawtey sets the glass back down. My requested 'How To Act Half-Cut' masterclass has concluded. Lamentably, actors don't really get drunk in interviews these days. Lawtey's had a beer with lunch, but a ginger one. 'You know,' he adds, 'I worked with an actor once who, before each 'drunk' take, would just spin around in circles until he almost fell over. And the scenes looked great. So there's no right way to do it.' Lawtey is a sensible man, the sort of 28-year-old whose Monday night plans go no further than 'the big shop at Lidl, then maybe the gym', but he's had plenty of practice playing a brand of bloke who's just the opposite: impulsive, idealistic, sweet but damaged. For the last five years, he's played youthful finance bro Robert Spearing in three critically acclaimed seasons of Industry. Now, he's portraying the original suave hell-raiser, Richard Burton, in Mr Burton, a film about the Welsh actor's beginnings. Both roles regularly called on those drunk acting abilities. 'I guess I have had to do it quite a few times now,' he concedes. Lawtey's in a faded off-white T-shirt, ankle-grazer beige jeans, Adidas Sambas and a baseball cap. Bashful and mannerly, he occasionally seems uncomfortable with the amount of natural charm he emits. Judging by the consideration a student-age waitress is paying to our table, she's either a huge devotee of The Telegraph or we have one of his many fans in our midst. I suppose we'll never know for certain. Industry, a BBC/HBO co-production, follows the chaotic lives of a group of 20-something graduates at a fictional London investment bank. In the early series, Robert was a Jack the Lad who'd mask his insecurities by shagging, snorting, smoking or shotting whatever vice was put before him. As a result, Lawtey says, some people have met him on nights out and 'assumed I'm a right sesh head'. The reality is far healthier. 'I was actually quite a late bloomer, drinking-wise. Over time I migrated towards it, joining in with friends, and realised what an amazing bonding agent it can be – especially in Britain.' In his shy, dry teenage years, Lawtey spent a lot of time observing. 'It's a mad thing, this completely legalised, mind-altering drug that in the wrong hands is entirely destructive. Maybe this is just indicative of the boys I call my friends, but we're all in a kind of ongoing dialogue with our own drinking, and there's no pressure or expectation.' In the week before Christmas, for instance, he met his three best friends for a pint. By chance, they all ordered 0% Guinness. 'We had a laugh but that was the end of it. And I think that's really cool.' He pauses. 'But drinking can be great as well! It just depends where you're at.' On either side of the Atlantic, viewing figures for Industry climbed with each series, while its stars – including the trio of Lawtey, Marisa Abela (Yasmin) and Myha'la (Harper) – have become some of the most in-demand young actors in Hollywood. Abela played Amy Winehouse in Back to Black. Myha'la played opposite Julia Roberts in the Netflix film Leave the World Behind. Lawtey was cast in Joker: Folie à Deux opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. Industry begins production on a fourth series this month, but Lawtey will not be returning. The named reason of 'scheduling conflicts' is technically true, given Lawtey is making the Cold War thriller Billion Dollar Spy with Russell Crowe in Los Angeles, but both actor and character were also ready for a new start. The finale of series three saw Robert happy and ambitious again in California, eyes firmly on the future. Lawtey could relate to that. 'Ultimately I feel like I'm in a place where I've said everything I had to say with a character, and I think both me and the writers felt mutually happy with where we left him,' he says. Lawtey has never actually seen Industry – 'I don't need to, it's not for me' – but he was happy with the conclusion. 'There was actually a stage direction after my final line, in my final scene of the show, which literally read: 'On Robert – transformation complete.' And that sat really well with me. 'Now, I feel unmoored, but in a really good way. And ready for the next chapter.' The production of Industry was based in Cardiff, and chance has seen Lawtey make four or five other things in Wales ever since he was a child actor. If a job is in the UK, he tends to drive himself from his home not far from here, and it's now at the point where crossing the bridge on the M4 is what he 'associates with going to work'. He laughs. 'People don't know how amazing Wales is. The girls on Industry used to say I could work for the tourist board.' But Mr Burton could hardly have been made anywhere else. It charts the beautiful and remarkable story of how Richard Jenkins Jr, a miner's son from Pontrhydyfen, in the Afan Valley near Port Talbot, and the 12th of 13 children, rose to become one of the most celebrated actors in the world in large part thanks to a schoolmaster, Philip Burton (played by Toby Jones), who spotted his talent. After the death of their mother when he was two, Richard was largely raised by an elder sister before eventually moving in with Philip, his acting tutor. The latter would become his legal guardian, and in 1943, Richard adopted his surname. In later life, Philip called Richard 'my son, to all intents and purposes'. The actor would write that 'I owe him everything'. Richard Burton has been played before, of course – notably by Dominic West opposite Helena Bonham Carter's Elizabeth Taylor in the 2013 film Burton and Taylor, and Johnny Flynn in the 2023 play The Motive and the Cue – but those portrayals have largely focused on the man as myth: crisp tailoring, tumbler in hand, stentorian purr, and never far from Taylor. 'It makes sense because he and Elizabeth were so vivid and sensational,' Lawtey says. 'Those [depictions] have always been interesting but not necessarily accurate or sensitive to either party. I'm a general sceptic of biopics, I think they rarely work, but I always think the best recipe is to hone in on a period and find a junction where you can find the DNA of a person.' He marinated himself in Burton's diaries, interviews, old footage and recordings. 'I can't think of another life in the public sphere where the distance between the place he begins and the place he ends is so phenomenal. It's the quintessential working class hero story. 'There's this amazing diary entry where he's thinking about who among his friends he'd like to be on a desert island with. He basically lists the most iconic figures of the day – JFK, Salvador Dalí, James Baldwin. All these people wanted a piece of Richard, and he's a miner's son from Port Talbot. So it'd be a fool's errand to try and tell that whole story.' He went through Burton's back catalogue 'very nervously, really, because I did feel the burden of it', and recalled something Abela said before Back to Black: 'At some point you just have to take some ownership of it, otherwise you're just going to be immobilised.' Abela suffered tabloid and social media scorn for playing Winehouse, long before anybody had seen her performance. 'Don't even get me started on that,' he says. 'Just as a friend it infuriated me, the lack of tact and awareness to allow that cycle to repeat in some ways. It was beyond nonsense.' After the halfway mark of Mr Burton, the action jumps eight years to Burton at the Royal Shakespeare Company. By that point he is closer to the legend we know: the sweetness has been tempered by ego and alcohol, and the voice has become the voice. 'You don't get actors these days who are identifiable by a single trait, but Richard came from a generation who were first and foremost orators. He's kind of literally the voice of a generation, a whole cohort listened to War of the Worlds. So that was an added pressure.' Sometimes he would be both Burtons – downtrodden, rugby-playing schoolboy then swaggering, chain-smoking celebrity; unvarnished South Walian lilt then RSC-trained baritone – all in the same filming day. 'They didn't feel like the same character at all. But are you the same person as you were eight years ago? There's an emotional spine that remains the same, but a casing, an armour, that's different.' Lawtey is impressive throughout, but particularly brilliant as the later, more age-appropriate Burton. He had the blessing of Burton's actor daughter, Kate, 'which meant the world'. The first time she visited the set to offer observations, Lawtey was terrified. 'Then within a minute of meeting her I was like, 'You're an idiot, he obviously belongs to her – he's her dad. He's someone's dad.' But she has such a spirit of generosity with sharing his memory.' Ultimately, Lawtey 'had to realise that I have him on lease. He doesn't belong to me, but for this period of time I'll take care of him… as wanky as that sounds.' Lawtey grimaces slightly, then shakes his head and laughs. 'But it's a wanky profession.' If it's on a menu, Lawtey almost always orders the halloumi. 'Squeaky cheese, we call it in my house. I ate copious amounts as a child,' he says. His parents met in Barton-upon-Humber, North Lincolnshire (he's a devoted Hull City fan), but his father's job as an aircraft engineer in the RAF saw the family – Lawtey has one elder brother, George – move to Cyprus after his fifth birthday. 'I was brought up on an island in the Mediterranean, but on a British military base you've got every regional accent. So my party trick became voices. My brother used to get me to put on accents for his friends. It was like conditioning.' His parents never put pressure on either of their sons to continue the family line of military men (George is a football analyst who's just finished a role at Swansea City), and later asked Lawtey if he'd like to go to drama school in London. He did. Aged 13, he auditioned for the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School and, thanks to scholarships and subsidies, started later that year, staying with a host family in term time. It was trying for a timid and anxious teenager, but acting became a relief. 'A distraction from life. Life's difficult. I was quite a sensitive, fragile but happy child, and this was just a great way for me to engage with the universe and activate me.' A few years later, his parents moved back to the UK – they're now based near RAF Brize Norton – while Lawtey enrolled at Drama Centre London. 'Trauma Centre', as its alumni half-jokingly call it. 'I only realised after I left but I chose the drama school that was most similar to the military. It was f—king rigorous, completely tribal and cultish and… brilliant. I loved every minute.' He's far from the only actor raised as a military brat. The itinerant upbringing, among all walks of life, where parental rank quietly looms over everything, makes code-switching a necessity. 'Of course, but we're a nation of code-switchers. My parents still do it, they're in a constant dialogue with their own class. Because we're obsessed with it as a country. 'Pretty much any piece of work I've done that I'm interested in – certainly Industry and Mr Burton – speaks to class. Acting is still about class. It's better than it was, but it's never going to be a meritocracy, that's just not the system we operate in.' Lawtey's own relationship with social class 'had become confused even before I got an opportunity to be on the telly, because I certainly didn't have the childhood my parents had, but they've coloured it with their perspective.' As a result, he may be on billboards in Times Square, feel familiar enough to drop the 'Lady' from Gaga when he talks about her, and find himself at the odd fashion show – he appeared in an advert for the designer Thom Browne – but he's tried not to get lofty. What's his most extravagant purchase? 'There's only one – a home. Genuinely, ask anyone.' (I later ask two of his friends, and they confirm it.) In fact, the first time Lawtey had a meeting with his agent at drama school, she asked what his long-term goal was, expecting, 'winning an Oscar '. 'I said I want to be a homeowner. She laughed and was like, 'All right, no one's ever said that before. We'll see what we can do…' But it was an emotional goal for me. Like, if my hobby can support my life, what a dream that would be.' Industry gave him that dream – as well as two 'lifelong friends' in the 'special people and true generational talents' of Abela and Myha'la. When the show started, it caused a sensation for its commitment to sex, drugs and rock 'n' bankrolling. The tone was set when Yasmin ordered Robert to masturbate in front of her in the office toilets, then eat the results off the mirror. And people say Gen Z are afraid of the workplace… Lawtey and Abela used to joke that they knew the show must be getting good when journalists stopped solely asking about nudity and intimacy co-ordinators. Learning how to take drugs was bad enough. Google helped, he says, as did a crew member who 'had a lot more experience in that area'. Robert, Lawtey says, was always a 'lost boy' who only began as a caricature. He and the young Richard Burton are, I point out, two charming men who attempt to break into a rarefied industry some believe they don't belong in. They've also got a sexual ambiguity about them. He weighs this up. 'Yeah, I think that's fair. They both had that. There were suggestions, I think, throughout Richard's life, though nothing necessarily concrete…' A smile dances across Lawtey's face. 'I think a lot of actors, then and now, are quite… liberal with their own sexuality. And why not, I suppose.' Is he? 'Er, I'd rather not speak about anything like that, the more people know me intimately, maybe the less interesting I am as an actor. Or less convincing. My favourite actors are the ones I know least about.' One of those favourites has always been Toby Jones, another Joaquin Phoenix. He first met the latter two years ago with the camera already rolling on Joker: Folie à Deux. Phoenix was in full Joker make-up as Arthur Fleck; Lawtey was the clean-cut antagonist Harvey Dent. Lawtey can be 'a complete neurotic' about work, and had a small crisis before that film. 'I was very, very nervous, I'd been working consistently for about 14 months and didn't feel match fit. But then the day before shooting started I just thought, 'It's too big to feel nervous. This is as big as it gets. If this isn't fun, go home. You're wasting your time.'' That freed him to put in what is perhaps the best performance in a film critics otherwise eviscerated. Gaga, he says, was 'so generous, so encouraging about my work'. Had she seen Industry? 'Ha, no. I don't even think Todd [Phillips, the director] had seen it. No one had a clue who I was, genuinely.' The limp critical and box office response 'didn't bother me in the slightest. Maybe that's easy for me to say as it wasn't resting on my shoulders, but I had a premiere in Leicester Square, and I remember being on the red carpet and seeing my parents seeing me in this world… I'd take that over a box office hit any day. 'The film is what it is, but I admire their appetite to take a swing. In the current climate it's easier than ever to sit back on IP and rest on your laurels, regurgitating safety. And they certainly didn't do that.' By now, people have compared Lawtey to all sorts – Jude Law, Daniel Craig, Michael Fassbender – and mooted him for everything from James Bond to the upcoming Harry Potter series (he dismisses both). As it is, he has Billion Dollar Spy and an unannounced TV series to get on with, but no bucket list. 'Not at all. Why would I? I have almost zero autonomy over my own career,' he insists. Ideally, he simply wants to build a reputation like Jones's, who never seems to choose a bad project. 'Don't chase being famous, just chase that: that people think whatever you do will be good.' Lawtey pulls his cap down. As we get up to mosey towards the Tube, talk returns to biopics. The thing you so often get from them, he says, is the impression that to be a brilliant artist, you have to be an insufferable person. 'And I suppose it's often true, but it certainly shouldn't be a prerequisite,' Lawtey says. 'I've been so lucky so far, working with some real elite talents. And that's my main takeaway: you don't have to be a dick.' He grins. 'It's really heartening.' Mr Burton is in cinemas from 4 April
Gulf News
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf News
Oscar winner Russell Crowe set to headline thriller 'Billion Dollar Spy' with Harry Lawtey
Oscar winner will join Harry Lawtey, who last played Harvey Dent in Joker: Folie a Deux Last updated: March 13, 2025 | 13:55 2 MIN READ Russell Crowe and Harry Lawtey (Image Source: Instagram/@harry_lawtey)
