This story contains major spoilers for episode four of season four of HBO’s Industry, “1000 Yoots, 1 Marilyn.” Click here to read GQ’s conversation with Charlie Heaton’s Industry co-star Sagar Radia about this week’s episode.
It’s been only a month since Charlie Heaton said goodbye to Stranger Things—and now he’s doing the same with Industry, just four episodes after making his debut (as a seemingly-crucial new character) in the season 4 premiere. Despite the short run, he says, his Industry swan song was even tougher to film in some ways, mostly given how disgusting he felt during his character’s “coke-demon binge.”
“It was pretty visceral and filthy,” Heaton says of episode four’s climactic scene, which ends with the apparent overdose death of his character, financial journalist Jim Dycker. “We were doing it in this council block. It’s gross in there. You’re using lactate powder [for the cocaine], drinking NA beer, and you’re going through all those motions of that behavior and energy, and it’s hot and sweaty. I remember going home and being like, Wow, that’s fucked. I felt gross; I needed to shower.”
Heaton’s abrupt exit is made all the more shocking by the fact that the new season of the buzzy HBO finance drama opened by spotlighting Jim, whose investigation into the tech firm Tender sets this season’s arc in motion. In the course of digging into the questionable actions of Tender co-founder Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella), Jim has also pushed a few ethical lines. We’ve seen him follow Whitney’s assistant, Hayley (Kiernan Shipka) to a club, then press her for information after an intoxicated hookup; he’s also been in communication with Harper (Myha’la) as she works to short Tender, based on information that he’s provided to her.
Those sins come back to haunt him in Sunday’s episode, “1000 Yoots, 1 Marilyn,” when he’s fired after Hayley accuses him of assault. “I need this,” he begs his editor (David Wilmot), to no avail. Jim then drowns his sorrows by doing coke at a gay bar, where he meets Rishi (Sagar Radia), who admits to previously breaking into Jim’s apartment. With a seemingly random guy from the club in tow, they head back to Rishi’s apartment to keep partying. When the third man steps out for a beer run, Jim opens a new bag of coke, just as Rishi steps away to the bathroom. He returns to find Jim dead and the police knocking on the door, and attempts to escape—or die; it’s not totally clear—by jumping off the balcony.
To mark the conclusion of Heaton’s latest role on a beloved series, we chatted with the 31-year-old actor about challenging himself with the “madness and chaos” of Industry.
GQ: We’re talking a week after Stranger Things ended, and here you are, already leaving another huge show.
Charlie Heaton: And they’re so different. One’s about bringing people together and the best in humanity, and the other’s about tearing people apart and the worst parts of humanity. But that was what was so great about joining Industry. I wrapped Stranger Things at the end of December [2024]; this came around very fast. I was on Stranger Things from the very beginning, and you’re used to the tone, and you have people coming onto the show, but the challenge with this was to be the person who’s coming onto a show that’s already established and growing in popularity, and then having to figure out what the tone is. And it was cool to do something British and be able to use my own voice.
There is this fast-paced rhythm to everything on Industry—especially the dialogue—that is unlike anything else on TV.
It’s almost like you’re learning a different language. Honestly, it was intimidating. I auditioned for it on a Wednesday, I spoke to [creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay] two days later on Zoom, and I was on a plane and filming a week later. So that stress of, I’ve gotta learn these big chunks of dialogue, it’s language I’m not familiar with, and you’ve gotta say it fast, but also not having a lot of time. And it all added to this melting pot of anxiety, which I think is kind of perfect for the show. And the way they shoot is really interesting; it felt documentary-style. They use these crazy long lenses, and it’s so fast-paced in the way they shoot, and it’s very freeing. It’s not as technical as Stranger Things, where it’s very rhythmic and you have to hit your mark. This was, just throw it at the wall and see what happens.
Coming off of Stranger Things, what jumped out about this opportunity?
Being on a show for 10 years, you’re saying goodbye to such a momentous part of your life, and it really did feel like graduating college. So an initiative for me was I got a new UK agent, which I hadn’t had since 2020, because I wanted to see about doing something in the UK, and then this came around and was just perfect. I’d heard of the show but I’d never seen it, and then I became a fan really quickly. And the challenge of it is what appealed to me so much. Playing a financial journalist was the last thing I would think of myself doing, and I was scared, but then you have to find a way in. I really didn’t know if I’d be able to pull this off, and it gave me the confidence to be like, whatever character you’re looking at, you can find a way in.
What were the early conversations with Mickey and Konrad about Jim? He definitely seems to carry a chip on his shoulder.
I did a tape, and it was the messy seduction scene on the couch with Hayley, and then it was the very end scene with Rishi. The last scene was so many pages of dense dialogue, and I didn’t have time to learn it all, and so I decided to just read it instead of coming off book with it. My first take, because I’d seen the show and I thought, Oh, it’s bankers and they’re in London, I did it in a pseudo-RP voice. And then the second scene, because I was just reading it and was a bit nervous about it, I just wanted the energy of the scene to come across because it’s so energetic, and what happened was my Northern accent came out. So when I spoke to Konrad, he was like, “Mate, you’re from the North, aren’t you? ” And he liked the idea. And it was lucky really because that’s not what I was thinking, but he was like, “I love that he’s come from the North and he’s the smartest guy in the room, but nobody thinks that.” That’s the stigma within England, with the class divide and the North. And Mickey and Konrad were both excited to see me do something different.
How do you view Jim as a person and journalist? On one hand, you can point out all these ethical journalistic lines that he’s ignoring, but you could also contend that he’s a good guy, trying to expose the crimes of the elite.
His own moral compass and ethics are super flawed. He’s really willing to kind of go beyond the wire with it. But he is trying to stand up for something that he believes in. We know that he’s been burnt before by this thing, and they’re all corrupt, so, in his mind, he feels like he’s ethically okay, even though he knows he’s toeing the line. And that’s an interesting thing to play, because, when he gets fired, that’s tragic, and even though he’s sometimes making these terrible choices, I do hope you somewhat pity him. Knowing that he’s kind of done, I felt sad for him.
It’s just a small scene at the start of the episode, but how important did you feel it was to show that Jim has a baby, and this seemingly dysfunctional relationship with the mother?
It does have that depth. You see that he’s still around and he’s still trying. As an actor, those small details give you a way in to relate to and add that extra layer to understand why he’s on the edge and pushing these boundaries.
Jim gives his idealistic spin on why he’s pursuing this Tender investigation, while others suggest financial motivations. Do you think that Jim is this obsessive with all of his stories, or was this one personal?
It’s a bit personal, because he’s been burnt before. I listened to podcasts about Sam Bankman-Fried, and the idea was that Jim lost a lot of money on that whole crypto scam. I think he’s someone who has an ego and feels he’s the smartest person in the room, and perhaps he is, but he operates from a place of wanting to be right and thinking that he’s right all the time. And even when he is, there’s that arrogance there. And I do think he feels like he should be doing these huge Guardian pieces, and we talked about him idolizing Patrick Radden Keefe. He thinks that he should be in a stage of his career that he’s not at, but he doesn’t realize that. So he’s desperate to prove himself, but the way he goes about that really does backfire. And I think he’s the kind of guy who runs on that adrenaline too, that idea of digging in, and we talked a lot about how he smokes, he’s caffeinated, he’s on drugs. He’s someone who’s just on that wire and desperate.
You talked about auditioning with the final scene of episode 4, where Jim dies after a night of partying with Rishi. How did you prepare for that, and what stands out from the shooting of it?
It was wild. We rehearsed in an office space, and we did some where we didn’t use the lines and just said what you think they’re saying. We knew it’s a lot of words, a lot of energy, and the director, Michelle [Savill], really guided us. They’re heightened and on drugs, but you do get an insight into the way he thinks and some of the truths that he’s saying. Even though he’s on this coke-demon binge, he’s got a point! Konrad and Mickey are really well at highlighting this dark societal time that we’re in.