Kit Harington and Max Minghella break down 'Industry's NSFW glory hole scene

Industry has never been afraid to shy away from frank depictions of sex and kink.

In Season 1, Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela) made Rob Spearing (Harry Lawtey) eat his own ejaculate off a mirror. In Season 3, Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington) asked Yasmin to urinate on him. Each scene was about sex, yes, but also about the power dynamics at play: Who was willing to give up control, and who relished it.

The same goes for a new sex scene in Season 4, episode 6, titled "Dear Henry." The episode sees Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella) manipulating Henry before leaving him implicated in Tender's illegal activities. Among his manipulative tactics? Plying Henry and Tender's auditor with expensive alcohol at dinner, thereby breaking Henry's sobriety. Afterwards, Henry and Whitney go to a gay club, where Henry receives oral sex at a glory hole while Whitney urges him on.

"When you see that on paper, you're like, 'Bloody hell, this is going to be intense,' and you kind of laugh about it," Harington told Mashable in a video interview alongside Minghella. "Then you get to the actual scene, and it's so much more than just a glory hole scene. There's so much more going on than the fetish and slightly giggly nature of it. It's about these two characters, and it's about manipulation, and it's about intensity and falling down some rabbit hole."

The roles here are fairly clear-cut: Whitney is the manipulator luring Henry further into his web, while Henry is swept up in the ride. It's been that way since Whitney brought Henry on as CEO, but Whitney's guidance of Henry throughout the scene lays their dynamic even more starkly bare.

Minghella, tasked with playing the season's slippery puppetmaster, found his own mind changing about the sequence.

"I had ideas on the day of what was authentic about that moment or inauthentic about it, and I have slightly different feelings now that I've seen the episode cut together and in the context of the season as a whole," Minghella said.

These different feelings stem from Industry's process of pinning down the "mercurial" Whitney in the show's edit.

"We changed quite a lot of things quite drastically in post, not specifically around this [glory hole] scene, but for me, large components of the character were shifted as we worked on the edit and ADR and all these things," Minghella explained. "We're constantly finding Whitney and where the truth of Whitney lies."

In the final edit, Henry and Whitney's trip to the club is accompanied by voiceover from Whitney, as he reads from one of the many drafts of the letter Henry will receive by the episode's end, when he learns he's been implicated.

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"Dear Henry," Whitney says in voiceover. "You have to be the person that makes the other feel safe in the fullest expression of who they really are."

Voiceover Whitney is laying out his seduction plan of Henry as it's nearing its completion. Between the alcohol and the stroking of Henry's ego, Whitney has made him feel "safe" enough to let his guard totally down, leading to the glory hole scene.

Henry's giving in here marks a far cry from his earlier argument with Yasmin about Whitney's attraction to him. When she reminded Henry that he gave one of his male classmates a blowjob, he defensively shuts it down, saying, "you can be a homo at school."

(Later, Henry hooks up with two women, perhaps another defensive mechanism to affirm his straightness.)

For Harington, that all of these layers of backstory and power are swirling during the scene is "typical" Industry.

"It spoke to what Industry really is about," Harington said. "So much of the time you're reading a scene, and it's never really about the banking or financial jargon. It's the same with this. It's never really about that glory hole. It's about everything else that's around. It's about these two characters delving into the most intense and seductive thing they can find in life."

New episodes of Industry Season 4 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.