‘Industry’ Star Charlie Heaton Breaks Down Jim’s Episode 4 Crashout With Rishi: ‘They’re Ticking Time Bombs’

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Industry” Season 4, Episode 4.

Charlie Heaton’s time on HBO’s “Industry” could not have been a more polar opposite from his last gig — nearly a decade fighting monsters in Netflix’s “Stranger Things.”

Viewers’ first introduction to Heaton’s journalist character Jim was him sleeping with a woman he originally wanted to interview as a source — not exactly the most ethical decision. From there, Jim went on a tear gunning to put a spotlight on the sketchy company Tender. He reached out to Harper (Myha’la) and published an exposé which put a target on his back. All this was quite a bit different than Heaton’s time in the PG-13 world of Hawkins, IN.

“It was really exciting,” Heaton told TheWrap. “You couldn’t get more polar opposites thematically. It was British as well, which was really cool. I got to use my own voice. I had that early conversation with Konrad and they were so excited to be like, ‘Oh, mate, it’s going to be so exciting for people to see you in this light.'”

He added: “Just the chance to play something completely different in a world that’s so different. That’s a great, great opportunity to get and be able to play this.”

Episode 4 followed as Jim called out Henry (Kit Harington) and Whitney (Max Minghella) at a Tender press conference, which painted a target on his back large enough for him to lose his job. From there, Jim ran into Rishi (Sagar Radia) and the pair shared a drug and booze-fueled crashout night that ended poorly for both.

Jim went too far and ended up dead in an apartment just as the police were called to the room. That led to Rishi jumping from the balcony and breaking both of his legs before being arrested.

Below, Heaton unpacked whether Jim’s fate was inevitable, moving from “Stranger Things” to the more explicit world of “Industry,” and more. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How much of a gap did you have between your year shooting the final season of “Stranger Things” and jumping into “Industry?”

It was not long at all, I finished ‘Stranger Things’ literally at the end of the year. So December, I had Christmas off, and then I think I started in March. But what was crazy was I auditioned for the role, and then did like a Zoom with Kon and Mickey. I think I auditioned on a Wednesday, spoke to them on a Friday, was on a plane by Sunday, and was filming the following week. So from like auditioning to actually being on set was like literally less – maybe just over a week which was kind of insane.

Season 4 opens with Jim sleeping with Haley when he was trying to turn her into a source for a story, which is wildly unethical for a journalist. He’s very apologetic but then the way he’s talking at the end of Episode 4 makes him seem quite worse. Are his final moments recontextualizing him as a worse person?

You’ve got to find that line, and they are the conversations that you have to ask. When he goes to meet Haley, I don’t think that he’s necessarily planning on ending up back with her or anything in that ilk. He literally wants to turn up at the bar and have a conversation with her, but then those ethics do slide, and I think he finds himself in a position where he obviously wasn’t expecting to be, but he also didn’t stop himself. So that tells you something about him. But does that make him a bad guy? In the morning he stays, and then he just tries to say that he’s a journalist and that’s why he’s there, and he still wants information. It’s these bad choices that he’s making, and what’s the morality of those things?

And he has his own moral ethics. It’s funny, because he’s looking into a company who he believes is ethically flawed, but also here’s where he’s willing to go to get the answers for that. I think that also comes from a place of desperation, of wanting to get the story out and kind of progress himself.

Even when it gets to the end of it, and he’s divulging all that information to Rishi about everyone’s desensitized, and we’re all just numbers on the screen. But these things that he believes, they’re glaringly there, and I think sometimes even his beliefs are — even though they’re dark there is some truth in them.

Why does Jim press Henry and Whitney so hard after the press conference? Does he realize how much harder they’ll come after him — resulting in the loss of his job — if he calls them out in public face-to-face?

He feels like he’s got something here. He’s got the fish on the hook. And it comes out in the episode, he’s talking about the fact that all of his friends are richer than him. But I feel like he feels in a lot of ways, he’s the smartest person in the room, He wants to be working high-end, you know, Guardian. I think he wants to be relevant for his intelligence, but that is also a fatal flaw.

I knew Jim was screwed when Rishi showed up in that bar bathroom. They’re both ticking time bombs and together that just becomes worse. Does Jim feel an initial kindred spirit toward Rishi?

I think there is that kindred spirit there, but it’s also sometimes maybe two people recognizing that, like you just said there, they’re ticking time bombs. I think what’s fascinating is that they need each other, and they’re both aware of each other, and they’re both aware Jim’s asking him those really dark questions about what it’s like to see his wife die. The way I looked at that was these two people, they’re both exercising where they are in that moment and they’re both going to go along for that ride. I think they’re both using each other. You are the company you keep, and I think in that moment, they’re both kind of the company that they keep even though they probably both don’t like each other.

What were those scenes in the apartment with Rishi like to shoot? The scene may fade in and out but Jim is going on one long drug-fueled rant for quite a while.

That was my audition scene, and I didn’t have context. So when I auditioned, I was really angry. I was like, ‘So what the f–k is this?’ I was so angry as well because it’s so much dialogue, and I did not want to read it off book, but I guess I did an OK job enough for them to see something in it.

I was in Cardiff for about three months, and I had a lot of time to prep. Initially, that was mechanically learning it, even if I didn’t understand it — just reading it and reading it because I just needed to know that. I knew that it would be the way that it needs to come across — this is coming out faster than you can think it. So I just need to mechanically know these words and then as I got closer to the timeframe it’s breaking it down and understanding each thought.

The great thing about the way they shoot, and I think this adds to the intensity of the show, is it’s not traditional. You are encouraged to move in that space wherever you want. So I could get up, I could move around, I could pour myself a drink, I could come back to the couch, I could stand up, I could do all these things while I was ranting. It was just about keeping the ball in the air with me and Sagar.

Coming off “Stranger Things,” where the intensity of the dialogue is never that level, I was scared. I think I really did come off that step, proving to myself, like, ‘OK, you can handle bigger, heavier dialogue.’ It just taught me to jump sometimes, facing those fears, and then when you don’t fall on your face and you actually kind of manage to get through it — it was very rewarding.

Along with all the other things Jim rambles at Rishi, he also confronts him about fatherhood. We learn earlier in the episode that Jim’s a dad with someone he had a one-night stand with — what kind of parent was Jim?

The only thing that’s telling really is that line ‘You don’t have jurisdiction in my sex life. We literally f–ked once.’ So obviously they were not a couple, right? But then, they’ve had this child and you also know that he is still taking the child on weekends. You kind of get a glimpse of what’s going on. But he’s living in a flat in Bethnal Green. It’s not great. You get some glimpse of what kind of father he is. Then I think he has that line, and it’s crazy line, ‘It’s like you’re in their life, out their life and damned either way.’ It’s a really twisted thing to think about.

For me, I get a very clear snapshot of roughly what father he is. But then, I don’t think it’s like one of total despair. He’s still got a child, and there’s a sense of him still turning up for that child.

Without something like his job to focus and anchor him, was Jim’s fate in this episode inevitable or did he just find himself in an extremely bad circumstance on this one night?

That’s an interesting question. He has that energy about him, even obviously when he’s not at the end, when he’s on those drugs, I still feel like he lives his life in that ball of adrenaline, like he runs off like caffeine and probably prescription drugs and cigarettes. I think some people of that nature like to sit on the wire, you know, and that’s where they kind of live. He is that kind of energy.

“Industry” airs Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.

The post ‘Industry’ Star Charlie Heaton Breaks Down Jim’s Episode 4 Crashout With Rishi: ‘They’re Ticking Time Bombs’ appeared first on TheWrap.