The first time Myha’la Herrold read the script for Industry, she thought, This is so damn good. Even if she didn’t get cast in the HBO series about the lives of bankers at a top London investment firm, she’d already vowed to watch it. Thankfully, the now 26-year-old actor ended up landing the role of Harper Stern, the competitive, fearless, and arrogant (deservedly so) young woman from New York trying to make it in the, well, industry. It was the first Black role Herrold ever read that surprised her. “She didn’t do anything I thought she would do,” the actor recalls. “She doesn’t fit into any of the archetypes. She is breaking down any stereotype that you thought a Black character should fall under. That is how you do representation.”

The San Jose native knew she wanted to perform from the age of six, and spent her entire life preparing on stage. After studying at Carnegie-Mellon and moving to New York in 2018, she started to get more attention for film and TV. Herrold, who appeared in the A24 horror-comedy and social satire Bodies Bodies Bodies last year alongside Rachel Sennott, Amandla Stenberg, Pete Davidson, and Lee Pace, can still recall the critiques from college: her performances were “not big enough for the back of the house to see, feel, or hear.” But the camera, which is up-close and catches everything, calls for a more subdued and focused presence. “It feels more real to me,” she says. It was a realization that came to Herrold immediately after stepping onto the Industry set—but it was not an ultimatum: “It’s not to say that I don’t want to return to the stage, because I really do hope to at some point. It’ll just have to be right story, right time, and right place.”

Makeup by Sara Tagaloa
Hair by Tiago Goya
Nails by Blue Arios
Photography Assistance by Maya Guice
Fashion Assistance by Tallula Bell Madden, Molly Novack, and Tom Grimsdell
Makeup Assistance by Hannah Jaclyn
Hair Assistance by Sadaf Azimi