When Industry stormed our screens during the second lockdown last year, the eyes of the nation were glued to the TV. Stocks, shares, sex and demonstrative drug use were the four key ingredients to the addictive BBC finance drama that followed the lives of a group of graduates while they navigated their early days at a terrifyingly cut-throat City investment bank called Pier Point.
After a two-year hiatus, the second season has finally hit iPlayer and there’s one person everybody is talking about: 21-year-old Indy Lewis who plays the no-nonsense new hire Venetia Berens. ‘I auditioned for Industry series one when I was still in sixth form,’ she tells Grazia ‘It was a very tiny role and [after filming] my agents said, “We’ve had all these nice things said about you”.' Yet, when Indy received an email saying, ‘They might bring you back’ she humbly assumed it would be for a ‘little cameo’. In fact, her character had a fully-fledged narrative arc.
‘At first she seemed a bit – I don’t want to say obnoxious,’ Indy hesitates as she tries to describe Venetia’s personality. ‘The things that she speaks out against are definitely worthy and she has a lot of boldness and confidence. But she’s definitely there to shake things up,’ she reveals. ‘This girl knows what she wants and she’s going to take what she needs to take.’
Ruthlessness is a reoccurring theme at Pier Point and the second season is no different: ‘You can really track how the industry has corrupted people and what they’re willing to do to stay in it,’ says Indy. ‘There’s a lot less sisterhood… The characters have gained experience and they’re more seasoned. And, for Venetia, she’s a few years younger than [the series one leads] and the generational divide is very stark. There are all these millennials and then this Gen Z girl comes in and is very clearly a “woke” character who will speak up and knows the right protocols.
‘With the younger generation and the divide, you can see this cycle of abuse and trauma where the shit things the younger grads had to deal with in season one, they took it, and now that they’re in a higher position they’re spitting it back out…Nothing’s really changing.’
Set just after Covid, Industry’s second season explores everything from Zoom burnouts to post-pandemic office hierarchy. But, in the fictional timeline, social distancing has clearly ended as the show’s notoriously intense sex scenes have returned, too. ‘The sex is never gratuitous,’ Indy clarifies. ‘[The show is] about young people making mistakes and having these very toxic relationships with one another and sex is always going to be something that factors into that.
‘You have two strong women [Marisa Abela and Myha’la Herrold] as leads so there was a lot of talk about the necessity of things and how they were shot,’ she adds. ‘They make [the sex scenes] more of a development in their character’s story as opposed to “now it’s a sex scene because we have to have one every five minutes.”’
Indy tells of how she had a good relationship with Marisa on set after the pair met numerous times ahead of filming to do character exercises and prepare for the shoot. ‘The first few scenes were us just being horrible to each other,’ she says. ‘So, Marie put me at ease a lot and kind of tempered that horrible dialogue with just being very nice.’
Her first major role, alongside the series La Fortuna starring Stanley Tucci, Industry has acted as something of an unconventional grad scheme for Indy as a young actress. ‘For any actor coming into their first or second job, you’re going to feel that slight imposter syndrome effect,’ she says. ‘Coming into this very fast paced, bustling workplace where everyone’s established, there was definitely something that resonated [with the show].’
Indy had planned to study at Durham University before taking a ‘panic gap year’ and applying to drama school. In another life, she may well have found herself on a graduate scheme of some kind. ‘It looks very tempting,’ she says of the corporate structure. ‘But I’d probably quit quite quickly. I don’t think I could handle all the stress,' she admits. 'Working at Pier Point [would be] horrible. I would hate to.’
Sitting in her bedroom at the flat she shares with her sister in Hackney, with postcards from her recent holiday to Spain blue tacked to the wall behind her, Indy slowly reflects on the lesson she hopes audiences will take from Industry: ‘Don’t lose sight of who you are,’ she concludes. ‘If you’re somewhere it’s because you’re meant to be there, and you don’t have to change yourself too drastically…It’s definitely advice I would like to take.' And after getting to know the young actress who is so talented and warm I hope she doesn't change too drastically, too.