Kiernan Shipka has opened up about her character’s racy sex scene in the latest episode of Industry, admitting she knew it would “get people talking”.
The Mad Men and Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina actress has joined the most-recent series of the BBC and HBO show, taking on the role of Hayley Clay – an executive assistant at the startup Tender.
Episode three sees Hayley engage in a threesome with Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and her husband Henry Muck (Kit Harington) while staying at an Austrian castle, while the two women watch each other competitively.
“I looked at that scene and went, yeah, that’s going to get people talking,” Shipka told the Los Angeles Times, before explaining the power dynamic of the moment.
“I think she knows how powerful sex is. She knows that because of her own experience and going into that situation, whatever the outcome of it ends up being, I think she has in her head: ‘This is probably going to be good for me.’”
Co-creator Konrad Kay further called it “a very raw, vulnerable scene for an actor to do”, adding that Shipka “brought a lot of herself to it in more ways than one”.
“Both me and [co-creator] Mickey [Down] are really proud of that scene. I think it’s one of the strongest sex scenes we’ve done in the four seasons of Industry.”
The fourth series of Industry debuted earlier this month, with fans praising it “the best season yet” and “pure cinema”.
Meanwhile, Kay and Down have revealed that real people from the world of finance have contacted them about the show, and suggested they have missed the point of the series.
“And a lot of finance bros just watch the first act and just think, ‘OK, that looks fun, I can do drugs and have loads of sex and that looks like rock ‘n’ roll,’” Down told The Wall Street Journal.
“And they don’t really watch the third act where it all implodes. It’s weird because I still get LinkedIn messages and there’s usually a slew of messages from people being like ‘Bro, I love your show. Got me into finance.’”
Kay added: “There’s a level of dishonesty as well with the way people engage with this thing, I think, where they watch Wall Street or they watch Industry and they say, ‘These people are sociopathic, they’re dead-eyed,’ when in fact what they’re really saying is: ‘I recognise parts in myself that I haven’t necessarily nurtured or I’m too scared to think about.’ But those traits – avarice, blind ambition – they exist in everybody.”