Myha'la The star of TV’s Industry on fame, identity and ambition

‘I HAVE NO PATIENCE FOR IDIOTS’

The star of cult TV show Industry discusses identity, ambition and meeting her teenage heroes with Zing Tsjeng

Your first Met Gala is a huge deal for any rising talent. Hitting the red carpet last year in custom thigh-high Timberlands and a bespoke look from Luar designer Raul Lopez, Industry star Myha’la looked the very picture of a dynamite young actor confidently staking her claim to the limelight. That is, until the 29-year-old star spotted Robert Pattinson at the after-party. "I read all the Twilight books, I watched the movies a million times," she says, her eyes widening behind vintage Blumarine glasses. "I was like, ‘Don’t be weird. Don’t go straight up to him.’" As she casually walked past her former childhood crush, Pattinson’s partner, Suki Waterhouse, tapped her on the shoulder. “See, Rob, see?” Waterhouse exclaimed and then turned to Myha’la. “He was being shy and weird and didn’t want to say anything, but we’ve been watching Industry – we love you.” Today, Myha’la shakes her head in disbelief. “Don’t tell my man,” she laughs, “but my dreams were really coming true.”

PHOTOGRAPHS DANNY KASIRYE STYLING MOLLY HAYLOR Published on 19th January 2026

It’s no surprise that Industry has picked up some high-profile fans; not for nothing is it hailed as the British answer to Succession. Following the lives of overambitious high performers in the drug-fuelled, dog-eat-dog world of investment banking, the slick BBC/HBO drama has accrued a growing number of devotees and steamrollered into a bona fide pop culture phenomenon – the kind of IYKYK show that spreads through word of mouth, thanks to its consistently excellent writing and top-notch cast, which includes Kit Harington and Marisa Abela. “Mickey [Down] and Konrad [Kay] are not afraid to push boundaries,” Myha’la says of Industry’s creators and writers. “It’s everything prestige drama should be: sexy, intelligent and propulsively addictive.”

ANOTHER BLACK PERSON HAD TO GIVE ME PERMISSION TO ACKNOWLEDGE MY OWN BLACKNESS

Left: Jumper, £1,150, and skirt, £1,330, both Miu Miu; shoes, £930, Gucci Right: Jacket, £2,250, top, £1,650, and skirt, price on request, all Loewe; watch, £6,200, Omega; tights (worn throughout), £30, Falke

MYHA'LA

creative director: carolyn roberts; Shoot Producer: Anna Dewhurst; Make-up: Bea Sweet at The Wall Group; Hair: Phoenix Holgate; NAILS: Robbie Tomkins at LMC; Makeup Assistant: Vivi Melo; Photographer’s Assistant: Jem Rigby, Jamie Sinclair; Photographer’s Digi Tech: John Munro; Fashion Assistants: Amber Backhouse, Sheraz Zingraff Editor-in-chief: HATTIE BRETT; Deputy editor: HANNA WOODSIDE

Shirt, £120, With Nothing Underneath, dress, £3,405, Givenchy by Sarah Burton

Skirt, £150, Ashley Williams; shoes, £695, Christian Louboutin; shirt ( just seen), £1,250, Gucci

MYHA'LA:

Shirt, McQueen, and shoes, Gucci, as before

Dress, £11,000, Hermès; watch, £6,200, Omega; boots, £765, Malone Souliers

Myha’la – who goes by her first name only – plays the gifted but ruthless Harper Stern, an American college dropout who is more than happy bending the truth to get what she wants – regardless of the lives and relationships she blows up along the way. “Girl bosses on the internet would be terrified of Harper,” Myha’la declares. When we meet, she’s just wrapped her Grazia cover shoot at an atmospherically near-empty office perched some 15 storeys above Waterloo station. In a grey Aritzia tracksuit and nurse-chic Dansko clogs, Myha’la looks like an especially stylish university student pulling an all-nighter. Her 6ft 5in husband Armando Rivera skulks around the edge of the set. “He’s always around – he’s my lovely shadow. Love you!” she calls out to Rivera, who is also an actor. Myha’la’s warmth and sweetness is undergirded by a lightly worn self-assurance; there’s a sense of conviction to everything she does. “I have no patience for idiots,” she tells me. “I have no patience for sleazeballs.” That confidence is mirrored in her choice of projects, including scene-stealing turns as the rageful Jordan in A24’s slasher flick Bodies Bodies Bodies and goth coder Tisha in last year’s Whitney Wolfe Herd biopic Swiped. “I’m not a big genre girly,” she muses. “I love drama. I look for authenticity and truth, whoever the writer is.”

Born in San Jose, California, Myha’la was raised by her mother in what she describes as an all-white neighbourhood. She grew up without knowing her father’s side of the family. “I have never felt like I fit in the boxes of any stereotype as a mixed person with a white mom,” she says. “I grew up with white parents of my friends telling me, ‘You’re not really Black.’ I was like, what the fuck does that mean?” She grew up questioning her identity, asking herself, "Should I push this side of myself away?" At her Catholic private school, the self-confessed musical-loving theatre kid felt alienated from her peers. “People think California is super-duper progressive, but I don’t know if I think that’s true,” she says. “It was definitely rough.” Moving to New York for a musical studies degree at Carnegie Mellon University proved life-changing. “It was the first community of Black artists that I’d ever been a part of,” Myha’la recalls. Every month, the Black students on her course got together for a potluck dinner where everyone hung out, danced and drank. “The first couple of times, I felt kind of uncomfortable being there. I was like, I don’t know how to play [the card game] spades. I didn’t cook these certain foods. I didn’t know the slang.” Despite her awkwardness, a friend told her in no uncertain terms that she belonged there. “Whether you like it or not, you a n***a and that’s it,” she recalls him saying. Even today, Myha’la is grateful for his intervention. “Another Black person had to give me permission to acknowledge my own Blackness, and that my Blackness can be whatever I want it to look like.”

GIRL BOSSES ON THE INTERNET WOULD BE TERRIFIED OF HARPER

MYHA'LA

Myha’la is already plenty busy making the big jump from prestige television to the big screen. She attended the Venice Film Festival for the first time for the premiere of Dead Man’s Wire, her latest movie with indie auteur Gus Van Sant. They Will Kill You, her upcoming thriller-horror with Atlanta’s Zazie Beetz, is out in March. And who knows where Harper might end up on Industry? (My money’s on launching a FTSE 100 company.) Either way, Myha’la is on the move. She recently played the Rose, Thorn, Bud game while out for dinner with some girlfriends – for those unaware, it entails picking out one positive in your life, one negative, and ending on something that has the potential to grow and blossom. “Well, I said something insane,” she says, before pausing. “Do I want you to write this or are people going to think that I’m arrogant and weird?” Myha’la considers, then plunges ahead nonetheless. “What I said was, ‘I’m looking forward to accepting my Emmy…’ I’m really proud of my work. I’m really proud of the show. And that’s the bud!” Watch Industry on BBC One and iPlayer

Now she feels "honoured" to play Harper – a flawed antihero who is, to put it mildly, a strong flavour. “I connected to her just because she didn’t feel like a stereotype,” Myha’la explains. (There’s a reason why the question of whether Harper is a sociopath keeps coming up among fans.) “She didn’t feel like an idealistic version of a Black woman. She does what white men do all the time in that business – she’s a shark. Incredibly, Industry was Myha’la’s first big role after graduating; seven years on, her love of the show remains undimmed. Playing Harper has also provided a good blueprint for her own learning curve as an adult. “As I age, the thing I’ve admired the most about Harper – and the thing that I feel like I’m starting to take with me – is that she’s not afraid. She does it in a fucked up way, but she has boundaries!” Myha’la is trying to practise some modest boundary-setting in her own life. Take, for instance, rescheduling a recent creative meeting when she woke up feeling exhausted. “Before, I would have been like, ‘It’s your fault that you didn’t sleep good. You can’t cancel.’ But if we have a meeting and I’m shit company, then what’s the point?”

Shirt, £990, McQueen

“Before, I would have been like, ‘It’s your fault that you didn’t sleep good. You can’t cancel.’ But if we have a meeting and I’m shit company, then what’s the point?” There’s another good reason for Myha’la’s affection for Industry – it’s how she met her husband. Rivera slid into her DMs to ask her for an interview for his university acting class. “He was like, ‘I had nothing to lose!’ I had to respect the game,” she laughs. A 10-minute Zoom call turned into a flirty 45-minute conversation. The pair wed in secret last year. “I can’t wait to have his baby,” she smiles, “but we both have careers – his is just budding, I’m stepping into the next level.” Also, she adds sensibly, “We rent a one-bedroom and we have two cats. It’s tight in there. Once I get those other life things figured out and I feel stable enough, then… yeah.”

Coat, £399, AllSaints; shirt, £99, Whistles; jeans, £108, Free People; earrings (worn throughout), £145, Missoma

The outspoken British star talks to Laura Craik about burnout, beauty standards and female anger

PHOTOGRAPHS JASON HETHERINGTON STYLING MARTHA WARD Published on 5th January 2026

You could say that Minnie Driver is having a moment right now, but if you grew up a fan of Circle Of Friends, Grosse Point Blank and Good Will Hunting, you’ll know her ‘moment’ has really lasted 30 years. Still, the past 12 months have been something of a Minn-aissance. As well as rave reviews for her sold-out run of West End play Every Brilliant Thing, she recently starred in the new season of Emily In Paris, with a comedic turn as Princess Jane. And now, she’s starting 2026 on a different, deadly serious foot as Ingrid, the mother of a missing child in Run Away, the latest hit Harlan Coben thriller on Netflix. Surprisingly, for an actor who’s been working since 1991, it’s the first time Driver, 55, has worked on a crime thriller. ‘I’d never done anything like it before. I’m not usually a big murder-sleuthing TV programme person, but everyone I know is and loves Harlan Coben, so it had a lot of appeal to a lot of people,’ she says. ‘It’s such a good story – so many twists.’ She enjoyed the step change after working on Emily In Paris, which she describes as ‘an amazing, fast-moving train’, admitting it was hard to join a show that’s now in its fifth season. ‘It takes confidence to insert yourself into that landscape – you’re walking into a brand and you’re the guest.’ It helped that its creator and writer, Darren Starr, is an old friend, as is Lily Collins. ‘I’ve known Lily since she was 11 – her dad [musician Phil Collins] did the title song to Tarzan [the 1999 film in which Driver voiced Jane] and we all went to the Oscars and the Golden Globes together.’ She also became great friends with Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, who plays the inimitable Sylvie. ‘She’s so beautiful she’s like staring into the sun.’

Left: Jumper (around shoulders), £295, Sunspel; grey jumper, £310, Navygray; jeans, £100, Levi’s Right: Top, £90, Calvin Klein; jeans, £210, 7 For All Mankind

Left: Skirt, £150, Ashley Williams; shoes, £695, Christian Louboutin; shirt ( just seen), £1,250, Gucci Right: Shirt, £120, With Nothing Underneath, dress, £3,405, Givenchy by Sarah Burton

Jacket, £260, 7 For All Mankind; jeans, £450, Giorgio Armani; necklace, £149, Missoma

Shirt, £990, McQueen

Playing Harper has also provided a good blueprint for her own learning curve as an adult. “As I age, the thing I’ve admired the most about Harper – and the thing that I feel like I’m starting to take with me – is that she’s not afraid. She does it in a fucked up way, but she has boundaries!” Myha’la is trying to practise some modest boundary-setting in her own life. Take, for instance, rescheduling a recent creative meeting when she woke up feeling exhausted. “Before, I would have been like, ‘It’s your fault that you didn’t sleep good. You can’t cancel.’ But if we have a meeting and I’m shit company, then what’s the point?”