Industry Season 4: Where You've Seen The Cast Before

If you haven’t gotten on board with Industry just yet, there is still some time to brush up before the hotly anticipated fourth season begins. The first episode is set to drop on BBC iPlayer on January 12, from which point it stands a decent chance of becoming the most talked about show of the year—though A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and The Pitt season 2, both of which will be competing for eyeballs very soon, may have something to say about all that.

If you’re new to the show’s world of misbehaving stock traders and horny financiers, you’re not the only one—this is a show that needed a couple of seasons to shake off the doubters. For me, it really found its groove in 2023, during its blockbuster third season, when writers Mikey Down and Konrad Kay (who based the show on their own personal experiences) began not only directing each episode but also taking some big creative swings. 

If that standard is upheld in season 4 (where Down and Kay have again directed every episode), fans will be in for a treat—especially since the showrunners have added more famous names and recognisable faces to their established roster of stars. Read on to learn more about them and the returning cast, and use the guide below to discover some of their other work on services like AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.  

Ken Leung (Eric Tao)

Every big new show, especially when it comes to HBO, needs a big name to help get things rolling. As untested newcomers, Down and Kay might not have had the clout to attract an A-lister. In Ken Leung—a reliable “that guy” actor of ‘00s TV and movies—they rediscovered a long-underappreciated gem.

Leung really caught the world’s attention with the attitude he brought to playing Miles on the last three seasons of Lost, but he had been popping up in the films of big-name directors for almost a decade before landing that iconic part—including Stephen Spielberg (A.I.), Tony Scott (Spy Game) and Spike Lee (Inside Man). 

Since Lost ended, however, Leung went a little off the radar, but his gutsy performance as Eric Tao has sparked an overdue comeback—alongside Season 4 of Industry, you’ll be able to catch him opposite Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary this year. I’ll be seated for whatever comes after.

Marisa Abela (Yasmin Kara-Hanani) 

The first few seasons of Industry alone have already helped launch the careers of David Johnson (who departed after season two before popping up in Alien: Romulus and The Long Walk) and Harry Lawton (who appeared in the Joker sequel and is still in the running to be the next James Bond). Given how season three ended, it was unclear if Marisa Abela, whose performances as Yasmin Kara-Hanani have only gone from strength to strength since the pilot in 2020, would be returning for another run, but thankfully, it looks as if she’ll be one of the main players again when Industry returns. 

If it’s to be her final season with the show, it will not come as a huge surprise—after appearing in a small role in 2023’s Barbie, the actress has gone on to win positive reviews for her portrayal of Amy Winehouse in Back to Black and more or less stole the show in Stephen Soderbergh’s starry Black Bag last year. Look out for her in John Wick director Chad Stahelski’s Highlander reboot—though you might have to wait a minute for that one.

Kit Harington (Henry Muck)

Concerns that Kit “Jon Snow” Harington was a bit of a one-trick pony were mostly put to rest with his wonderfully greasy performance as Henry Muck in the last season of Industry. Like Jasmin, fans weren’t sure if they’d seen the last of the character when the series wrapped up in 2023, but it looks like he’ll be coming back to stir the pot once again—presumably putting those already fragile-looking nuptials to the test with more of his petulant, privileged behaviour.

Perhaps it was karma for the final season of Game of Thrones, but it certainly hasn’t been smooth sailing for the actor since that long running HBO show ended—his most notable credit since has been a little movie called Eternals—but with Industry and a decent cameo in Lena Dunham’s Too Much in the last couple of years, his career seems to once again be trending in the right direction.

Myha’la (Harper Stern)

Of all the up-and-coming actors to sign on for the first season of Industry, the quickest to make a wider splash in the movie business was Myha’la. Soon after the first season aired, the mononymous and remarkably confident actor started popping up all over the place: first in Halina Reijn’s Bodies Bodies Bodies, then in Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money, then opposite Ethan Hawke in the megahit Netflix movie Leave the World Behind.

Alongside reprising her role as Harper Stern this year, you’ll be able to see Myha’la in the upcoming Dead Man’s Wire, a period-set true-crime movie from the great Gus Van Sant.

Kiernan Shipka (Hayley Clay)

Having played little Sally Draper across all seven seasons of Mad Men (and later starring in the Sabrina reboot for Netflix), Kiernan Shipka, the first newcomer on our list, feels like a perfect addition to the business world of Industry.

Outside of those two well-established series, Shipka has been threatening a big screen breakout for several years now—notably appearing in Longlegs, Twisters and The Last Showgirl in 2024 alone. It’s difficult to say how big a role Shipka will play in Season 4 as Hayley Clay, an ambitious executive assistant, but don’t be surprised if she walks away with it.

Charlie Heaton (Jim Dycker)

Our next Industry newcomer, Charlie Heaton, is an actor who needs no introduction to any fan of Stranger Things—the Leeds native played Johnathan Byers for nine years on the hugely successful Netflix show, even meeting the apparent love of his life in the process.

Outside of that, Heaton hasn’t racked up too many credits elsewhere, but with the Hawkins saga finally coming to an end, he may be looking to spread his wings a bit in the next few years. His role as journalist Jim Dycker in Season 4 of Industry comes after co-starring alongside Al Pacino in Billy Knight last year. Watch this space.

Max Minghella (Whitney Halberstram)

When The Social Network was released in 2010, most people presumed that Max Minghella—handsome son of legendary director Anthony Minghella—would quickly establish himself as an up-and-coming star in Hollywood. Then, for whatever reason, it didn’t quite work out.

Naturally, Minghella hasn’t disappeared —you can see him in memorable roles in movies like Babylon, Darkest Hour and The Ides of March—but he’s had to wait a while for his next big part. Here’s hoping that his role as Whitney Halberstram—a CFO of a payment processor called Tender (where Shipka’s character also works)—in Industry Season 4 is the launch pad he’s been looking for.

Toheeb Jimoh (Kwabena Bannerman)

Since breaking out with his endearing—and Emmy-nominated—performance as Sam Obisanya in Ted Lasso, Brixton-born actor Toheeb Jimoh’s star has been rising steadily. Outside of that beloved Apple TV+ show, he appeared briefly in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch in 2021 and played Romeo in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet at the Almeida theatre in 2023.

For the new season of Industry, Jimoh is playing a trader named Kwabena Bannerman at Mostyn Asset Management, which will presumably be a key location in the upcoming run of episodes, given how things ended at Pierpoint at the end of Season 3.

Kal Penn (Jonah Atterbury)

Since the end of season one, each new run of Industry episodes has introduced a new big fish or two for the show’s cash-hungry sharks to nibble at. Season 2 gave us Jay Duplass’s Jesse Bloom, a hedge fund manager, while season three brought in both Harington’s green energy CEO, Henry Muck, and Roger Barclay’s billionaire investor, Otto Mostyn. If the trailers are anything to go on, the season four equivalent looks to be Kal Penn’s Jonah Atterbury, the CEO of Tender.

If you know Penn from anything, it’s probably for being the latter half of the Harold & Kumar movies, a series of stoner comedies that brought the humour of Cheech and Chong to a new generation in the early ‘00s. We can expect his vibe in Industry to be a little less chill.

Amy James-Kelly (Jennifer Bevan)

The last new recruit for Industry Season 4 is Amy James-Kelly, an Antrim-born actress who began her career in Coronation Street when she was eight years old—playing Maddie Heath for 131 episodes from 2003-2005. More recently, James-Kelly starred as Anne Boleyn in Netflix’s Blood, Sex and Royalty. Now Industry has come calling.

In Season 4, James-Kelly will appear as Jennifer Bevan, a newly promoted Labour Party minister who, I expect, might have her morals tested in the show’s seedy world of corporate greed. All will soon be revealed.