MYHA'LA HERROLD KNOWS SHE'S GOOD

The Industry star is just as ambitious as her junior banker character. The big difference? "I don't act crazy."

- ALLISON P. DAVIS

RIGHT BEFORE Industry's first season started taping in Wales, Myha'la Herrold, who plays Harper Stern, the show's chaotic center, was invited to Lena Dunham's cottage in the Welsh countryside. Dunham was directing the first episode of the HBO financial drama, and she wanted to get to know the cast. So Herrold and the three actors who play her cutthroat competition at a fictional London investment bank, Pierpoint & Co., joined Dunham for a sleepover. They had tea and Domino's pizza, Herrold recalls the chipper cadence you might use to describe your day to your mom. They did some acting exercises and communed with sheep. Toward the end of the night, the director gave Herrold an assessment that she took to heart and repeats now in a near-perfect impersonation of Dunham's uptalk and vocal tics: "She said, 'You literally cannot do anything wrong. You are perfect? You're the best actor in the world, and I literally love everything you do."

She'd needed to hear that. The days before shooting had been a strange purgatory for Herrold. Here she was, 23 years old (she's 26 now), nine months out of her musical- theater program at Carnegie Mellon University. This being at the top of the call sheet of a hot HBO drama was her first major job and only her third time on-camera. When she'd landed in London (her first time outside the U.S.), she discovered her phone wasn't working and she didn't have any friends to hang out with and she didn't have a sense of self in this strange place. Once in Wales, she waited out the time before shooting started by walking the boardwalk with two other cast members and going to the water park.