{"id":391342,"date":"2026-01-26T14:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T14:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/391342\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T14:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T14:09:09","slug":"kiernan-shipka-on-industry-threesome-sex-scene-and-child-star-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/391342\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiernan Shipka on ‘Industry’ Threesome Sex Scene and Child-Star Status"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains plot details for \u201cHabseligkeiten,\u201d Season 4, Episode 3 of\u00a0HBO<\/a>\u2019s \u201cIndustry<\/a>,\u201d now streaming on HBO\u00a0Max.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnyone who last saw Kiernan Shipka<\/a> as little Sally Draper in \u201cMad Men,\u201d or even as wand-waving adolescent Sabrina Spellman in \u201cSabrina the Teenage Witch,\u201d may well blink twice upon seeing her latest role as Hayley Clay in \u201cIndustry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the first scenes of the Season 4 opener alone, she\u2019s popping pills in a nightclub, getting frisky on the dance floor (with Charlie Heaton\u2019s Jim, also a new character) and giving colorful descriptions of her vagina to her new acquaintance back at her \u2014\u00a0quite impressive \u2014\u00a0apartment. And this all before Hayley is eventually introduced as an executive assistant at shady financial startup Tender.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it\u2019s Episode 3 that truly kicks whatever remaining child-star status Shipka has left firmly into the annals of TV history in a scene in which she\u2019s playfully encouraged to have sex with trouble aristocrat Henry Muck (Kit Harington) by his deviously manipulative wife Yasmin (Marisa Abela). Hayley obliges, perhaps too enthusiastically, prompting Yasmin to get involved in the action herself so as not to be outdone in the endless game of power play. Naturally, with this being \u201cIndustry,\u201d and a season in which creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down have all but blown the doors off the show\u2019s financial roots, this threesome takes place in a medieval Austrian castle run by a family of fascists, where paintings by an \u201cA. Hitler\u201d hang on the walls.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Shipka notes, \u201cIndustry\u201d is a show that is not only \u201cbrave and it\u2019s rule-breaking and it\u2019s pushing limits\u201d \u2014 but it\u2019s a show that manages to \u201cget away\u201d with it.<\/p>\n

\t\tAt first, Hayley seems to be the doting assistant, albeit one who also likes to go out and hook up and take drugs. But we see more of her identity as show moves on. How would you describe her?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I taped for the show, it was pretty much the opening sequence, and then it was a scene from a later episode. And I was kind of going, \u201cWho is she, who is this girl?\u201d I could sense that she was playing some sort of game, and was also wild and living her life, and had a much grittier, more raw quality to her, given how much she explodes within the first five minutes of meeting her. But I really didn\u2019t know what she was all about.<\/p>\n

\t\tAnd then what did you later find out at her?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce I came on, I read the first four scripts, and I talked to Mickey and Konrad about what her later arc was going to be, and got to really map out this real long game that she plays. I find Hayley to be an incredibly smart and calculated and oftentimes deceptive character. I think that she is playing a game of chess and is sort of figuring out what kind of chess piece each moment is after she lives out the moment. She\u2019s very emotionally linked to all these people as the show goes on \u2014 I think her business is interpersonal relationships, these complicated power dynamics with other people. And that was so fun to play. She\u2019s got a real \u201cdive in, nothing to lose\u201d quality to her that I really liked. As calculated and fine-tuned as I found her, I also found that she didn\u2019t have this \u201cAm I doing the right thing?\u201d thing, and had a forward movement to her game that was intoxicating.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKiernan Shipka in \u201cIndustry\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tWe have to talk about the threesome scene in Episode 3 with Yasmin and Henry. There\u2019s a lot of power play going on in there. At first it seems like Yasmin is being manipulative over Henry, and merely using Hayley, but this seems to quickly turn. How did you see it?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s such an important scene for all three characters. But what I think is so interesting about that scene is that everybody\u2019s got this wildly different emotional arc: You\u2019re doing something together, but everyone is on kind of their own journey. The actual physical nature of the scene came last for me. It was much more about what this meant for Hayley \u2014 why she was doing it, and what she kind of knew she was getting herself into. And obviously, for Marisa and for Kit, it was equally about where their characters were and why they had found themselves in the situation, and what it meant for them. And for those three worlds to come and collide and feel all those different energies, it was a really interesting moment. And a really fun thing to do.<\/p>\n

\t\t\u201cIndustry\u201d has been daring throughout the last three seasons, but I think there are some lines in that scene that will still raise eyebrows. When you read the script, was there a part of you that was like \u201cOh, ok, this is what we\u2019re doing then?\u201d\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe amount of stuff that I that I read and went, \u201cOh, I guess I\u2019m saying that!\u201d I\u2019ve never been on a show where I\u2019ve read the scene, and then in real time gone, \u201cOh, wait, no, no, I\u2019m actually doing that.\u201d But also, at the same time, I feel like we\u2019re in such good hands. And that\u2019s why the show, for lack of a better term, gets away with this stuff as it\u2019s done, in such a careful, tasteful manner. But it\u2019s brave and it\u2019s rule-breaking and it\u2019s pushing limits. And I think that\u2019s why everyone\u2019s excited about it.<\/p>\n

\t\tI hope it wasn\u2019t your first day on set\u2026\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, that would be a different story! But we\u2019d shot some stuff, so I knew everyone by then!<\/p>\n

\t\tThere\u2019s a bit of editing from the sex scene straight into Yasmin eating oysters for breakfast that is quite wonderful.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is! And that was in the script. So it\u2019s really testament to Mickey and Konrad knowing exactly what kind of show they wanted to make.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tCasting director Julie Harkin said she really wanted to give you a role that was something completely against what audiences have seen you in before. As someone who last saw you in \u201cMad Men,\u201d this is obviously very different. Was that a consideration of yours as well going into this?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, it was really exciting. I and I\u2019m very grateful to Julie and to Mickey and to Konrad for seeing me in this part, because she is different and she\u2019s more grown up. I mean, I\u2019m 26 now, but people have known me since I was 6. And I\u2019m very aware of what kind of weight that holds. So for them to say, \u201cHey, I think she\u2019s the girl for Hayley,\u201d is very exciting for me. It\u2019s a part I love. So I was definitely aware that I was doing something more mature. But I wasn\u2019t really thinking, \u201cI\u2019ve really got to do this sort of thing next.\u201d It\u2019s about the people and the material. But when it can also be something that challenges someone\u2019s perspectives of me as a performer and when it goes up against stuff I\u2019ve done previously, that\u2019s so exciting and so fun.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains plot details for \u201cHabseligkeiten,\u201d Season 4, Episode 3 of\u00a0HBO\u2019s \u201cIndustry,\u201d now streaming on HBO\u00a0Max.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,555,88572,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-391342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-industry","11":"tag-kiernan-shipka","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}