By Alison Herman

According To The variety SPOILER ALERT: This story contains plot details for “Nikki Beach, or: So Many Ways to Lose,” Season 3, Episode 6 of HBO’s “Industry,” now streaming on Max.

Last week, “Industry” ended on a rare cliffhanger: with Yasmin (Marisa Abela), the publishing heiress turned finance associate turned tabloid target, seemingly confessing to the murder of her disgraced, missing father Charles (Adam Levy). This week, the HBO drama finally shows its audience what happened on that fateful yacht ride in Mallorca. In an extended flashback, we learn that Yasmin didn’t technically kill Charles — she simply failed to alert anyone when Charles jumped into the water, a futile attempt to emotionally manipulate his daughter in the midst of an explosive fight.

Written by Joseph Charlton, directed by Isabella Eklöf, and overseen by co-creators and showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the episode puts a spotlight on a character who’s become the de facto protagonist of the series’ rapturously acclaimed breakout season. With American antihero Harper Stern (Myha’la) fired from their once-shared workplace at the bank Pierpoint & Co., Yasmin has struck out on her own, dating a wealthy client with a fetish for golden showers (played by “Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington) and collaborating closely with Harper’s former mentor, an adrift Eric Tao (Ken Leung). The opening flashback is dramatic, but it’s just the beginning of what turns out to be a grueling hour for our poor little rich girl. In the present, Charles’ body is finally recovered, and Yasmin insists on seeing his decayed corpse. Shell-shocked, she has lunch with Eric, then loudly and publicly calls him out for crossing a boundary and clumsily flirting with her. (She isn’t imagining things; Eric immediately rubs one out in a bathroom stall as part of his ongoing midlife crisis.) Finally, Harper manipulates Yasmin into giving her information on Pierpoint’s overexposure to trendy ethical investments, a breach that affords an already ego-bruised Eric the excuse to cut Yasmin loose, firing her over the phone.

All of this culminates in a blowout argument between Yasmin and Harper in their kitchen. (The codependent friends are also roommates.) Harper showed up for her peer in Mallorca, helping her clean up and keeping her secret; back in London, she throws Yasmin under the bus, then refuses to apologize. In fact, Harper goes right for the jugular, branding Yasmin a “sex object” and “victim,” labels that hit right at the ambivalent nepo baby’s insecurities around how her father’s creepy leers have poisoned her relationships with men. No wonder Yasmin responds with a slap, which Harper returns.

“It’s an incredibly intense relationship,” Abela tells Variety. “They see the other one more vividly than they see anyone else.” In a wide-ranging interview, Abela broke down the slaps, her character’s fateful decision — and why Yasmin working an office job is “like seeing a fish on a bike.”

This episode is the most explicit the show’s ever been about the Yasmin-Charles relationship having an inappropriately sexual undertone. Was that always part of how you understood that dynamic?

I remember having a conversation with Mickey and Konrad when we first met Charles, which was in Season 2. In Season 1, the absence of him was enough to understand Yasmin’s relationship to men, rather than necessarily Yasmin’s relationship with her father. That felt like a good-enough place for me to work from in Season 1. And then as soon as I knew that Season 2 was going to involve him, I wanted to be more specific about how she related to him, and not just men and the male gaze because of him. 

I remember saying something about how I think Yasmin became aware of herself sexually through her father’s eyes. And I think that as her body started changing, her relationship to him started changing. I knew that she had a complicated relationship with herself, physically and sexually, because of her father. Those choices fed into a slightly more explicit, as you say, nature in Season 3. Then it was really about deciding exactly what form that took for me as an actor.

I think what’s brilliant about the series — which is why I don’t necessarily want to say what I think happened — is it’s open to interpretation from the audience. In terms of what exactly that looked like, how exactly they related to one another, how he related to her physically and emotionally. That’s important, because I think that a lot of women will be able to read into this relationship, and I value that. I value the ability for people to respond in whatever way feels important to them. Whatever it is that an individual audience member will take away from it is almost more important than my idea of what exactly happened.

In terms of actually filming that final argument scene, it seems like physically filming on a boat was quite difficult. What was it like through that scene on the water?

It was wild. It felt sort of like guerilla filmmaking. The boat was rocking intensely. Sometimes I would literally be thrown up and placed back down on the boat while I was screaming at him. But it felt kind of like everything was reflecting her emotions in these moments. I don’t know that Yasmin would have let it rip in the same way if they were in a restaurant. I doubt very much that she would have done so. All of those things added to what came through in the scene. They’ve also probably been partying on this boat for three days, and it’s messy and it’s intense, and it feels epic. That setting allows them to make the choices that they make.

In terms of choices, the big one is Yasmin deciding not to alert anyone that Charles has jumped in the water. Do you have your own read on what is going through Yasmin’s head in that immediate aftermath?

On the day, my feeling was that during that argument, and right up to the very end, when she’s like, “I wish you would die. It would be the most meaningful thing you’ve ever done” — she means that, 100%. He has ruined her life, her capacity for relationships, her capacity to feel happy. This is exactly how she feels. And if he didn’t exist, if he’d never existed, her life would have been better. So when she’s walking away, she means that fully. Then when he jumps, that’s in the immediate aftermath of those feelings. 

In the heat of the moment, you say things and you feel them, and they’re real to you, and I don’t think she has enough time to cool down before that decision has been finalized by him. First of all, he’s a narcissist, so he’s pushing her and testing her to save him in this moment, and she has no capacity to. She doesn’t push him. She wouldn’t push him. He jumps. So what she would have to do is save him in that moment, make a complete emotional 180. She’s not gonna save his life in that moment. Would she have pushed him off the boat if she had a gun in her hand? Would she have shot him? No, but she can’t save him. It’s too far gone. 

This episode also sees the unfortunately literal climax of the Eric-Yasmin tensions that have been building all season. What did you make of that relationship that’s struck up in Harper’s absence?

In my experience of the show, that relationship was the most alive, bubbling thing that we’d worked with so far, in the sense that it really took on a life of its own. I had no idea that was where it was going to go, and to be honest — they might be annoyed with me saying this — I’m not sure that Mickey and Konrad did either. I think they watched the rushes every day of our scenes together, and they were like, “What is this relationship like? What is happening between them?” And I think Yasmin and Eric are just as confused. 

So when it reaches that point in Episode 6, there’s been hints from Episode 4 onwards that maybe Yasmin thinks this is a little bit inappropriate, but I don’t think she wants to go there. It’s much more comfortable if she doesn’t go there. He’s her boss! At the end of the day, she needs him. So when that happens, I think it’s the ultimate betrayal for Yasmin that what could have been a professional male mentor figure also sees her as an object of desire. 

Can you tell me a bit about getting to work more with Ken Leung?

I was so excited. Mickey and Konrad asked me at the end of Season 2, “What is it that you’d like to do a bit more with Yasmin?” And I was like, “Honestly, I trust you guys. But also, I’d love to have at least a scene with Ken.” I was like, I’ve never worked with him, and it’s so weird.

I love working with Ken. He’s such a present actor. And I like to think that that’s the place that I at least aspire to work from, is real presence in a scene. Part of the reason that the relationship is the way it is, is that our techniques are similar in that we watch and observe and respond. We’re very observant actors. I think that comes through in the scenes that we have together. I think that our relationship on screen reflected, in all the best ways, our relationship off screen in that I have a lot of admiration for Ken as an actor, and I want him to think I’m good at my job, just like Yasmin does. So that was useful.

Speaking of job performance, people in this episode, including Eric, are really hard on Yasmin  and her abilities as a salesperson. Do you think she really is that poorly suited to working in finance? 

100%. Only in the episodes to come did I realize how badly Yasmin was suited to that environment. Because, outside of it, she’s so different. Yasmin in the office is like seeing a fish on a bike. It’s like, Why is she here? And whenever she’s out of the office, I think what Yasmin is best at is making people do what she wants them to do. That’s her talent. If she had been able to find a role in finance that suited that, she’d have been much better, but working on a trading floor and an investment bank was not what she was born to do.

Everything culminates in that amazing confrontation scene between Yasmin and Harper. The episode really spans the highs and the lows of that relationship. Do you think there’s a world where those two could have formed a functional friendship, or was it doomed from the start? 

There is a world, and what’s incredibly difficult is, when they really need one another to be there for them, they can do that. Harper proved that throughout all the flashbacks on the boat. When they need a friend in the moment, to make the other one laugh or feel loved or feel supported, they can do that — if it has nothing to do with the other person. But the other person might be collateral. They’re willing to go there, because they’re both very ambitious women. If Yasmin asked Harper to do the same thing Petra has asked Harper to do, she would have done it as well. Yasmin was in the way of something that Harper needed, so she was always going to be collateral damage. But if there’s no stakes for the other one, they’ll always be able to help. So I think that in a world where they don’t work in the same field, and they won’t necessarily be collateral damage to one another, they could be friends, but they’re just too ruthless when they’re working to be able to make the relationship work.

It’s an incredibly intense relationship. They probably know more about one another than anyone else in their lives at this moment, or at least they see the other one more vividly than they see anyone else. And they feel very seen by the other person. I think that with Harper and Yasmin, when they don’t like themselves, when they don’t want to be seen, that’s when things go really badly wrong for them. When they feel vulnerable, that’s when they’re good, or when they are happy and they’re loving themselves, that’s also when they’re good. Sometimes there are relationships in people’s lives that feel dangerous because of how honest the relationship has become that it starts to feel out of their control. They can’t control the narrative of their lives anymore, because this person sees them too clearly. And that can be a really comforting thing at certain parts of the season for the two of them, and then a very, very uncomfortable feeling as well.

Myha’la mentioned that Harper reciprocating the slap was her idea. How did you two work on that scene together?

We work together here and there in terms of little scenes, but whenever we get a big moment together, it’s so exciting for us. A Yasmin-Harper scene is incredibly enjoyable for us. So when we got this one and it felt very important, we spoke about it and workshopped it. Why are they so upset? What are the trigger points? We came to the realization that they were both kind of heartbroken by the other one, for different reasons. 

Yasmin sitting there waiting for Harper — I wanted to lean into that feeling. It’s the kind of conversation that you can imagine Yasmin had been having in her head all day, seething over and stewing over for so long. I was happy to do that as an actor too, really just wait and see what Myha’la was going to bring. Yasmin is hoping that Harper apologizes. As an actor, I know that that’s not coming, but I’m really holding out that apology. And the second I see that’s not going to happen, it’s gonna derail the whole thing. 

When Yasmin makes that physical decision to slap Harper, which is a huge violation of a friendship or any relationship, Harper’s not going to sit back and just let that happen. She’s already gone in with her words so hard that after that slap, there’s nothing else that Harper could say to Yasmin. So it’s kind of her only option, unless she walked away. And the stakes are too high in that moment to just fully walk away.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.