‘Industry’s Miriam Petche weighs in on Sweetpea’s big episode, including those devastating final moments

HBO Fans Industry know that Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche) has a detective side.

During Season 3, she leveraged her vast network of connections to realize that Pierpoint & Co. was on the verge of collapse, long before anyone else on the trading floor. Now, in Season 4, she and her colleagues at SternTao are pursuing a new lead: potential fraud at financial technology company Tender.

Sweetpea, in particular, is tenacious in her desire to bring down Tender. There’s a personal angle to this dynamic: Tender has served as a payment processor for adult sites like OnlyFans and the fictional Siren. Sweetpea’s anonymous account on these sites was leaked, making her the target of increased scrutiny and harassment in the financial world.

Since then, Industry presented sex work, particularly Sweetpea’s, in a new light. In season 3, they highlighted it as empowering. (“I like a woman who doesn’t leave money on the table,” Harper Stern (Myha’la) says in the Season 3 finale.) But in Season 4, Industry also questions the exploitative side of Sweetpea’s work, coinciding with her exposure and subsequent focus on Tender’s removal.

“She thinks it’s the most defining thing for her,” Petche told Mashable in a video interview. “[She thinks,] “As I understand it, how bad can it be? If I make myself indispensable at work, the worst situation cannot happen. She is driven by this desperate need to prove herself, to prove that she is good and good at what she does. »

This need to prove herself puts Sweetpea center stage in Season 4, Episode 5, “Eyes Without A Face”, which sees her and colleague Kwabena Bannerman (Toheeb Jimoh) travel to Accra to investigate Tender’s work in Ghana. In Sweetpea’s words, what they discover is “a feedback loop of tampering.” Tender, his money and his customers, are nothing, but he pretends to be something very valuable.

Sweetpea is on fire on the path to this discovery, embracing her inner Erin Brockovich as she identifies Tender’s fraud and even secures a potential whistleblower.

“The things that serve as her compass are her intelligence and her curiosity, and when her curiosity and intelligence are stimulated, it’s like a thread that pulls her and she can’t turn away from it,” Petche said.

Miriam Petche in “Industry”.
Credit: Simon Ridgway/HBO

Yet as rewarding as pulling this thread is, this episode also puts Sweetpea through hell. She was violently attacked in a bathroom, the attacker smashing her head against a mirror and breaking her nose in the hope of warning her against the investigation. It doesn’t work, and Sweetpea wears a bruised face throughout the rest of the episode, even taking off her sunglasses to show it off as a badge of honor.

For Petche, a big part of Sweetpea is how she uses her hyper-competent work personality. “She’s someone who has to show that she’s great all the time, and show that she’s productive and that she’s valuable,” Petche said.

However, in “Eyes Without A Face”, the audience sees Sweetpea’s armor slipping. Arriving home, Sweetpea sits silently alone before collapsing, all the events and adrenaline from the past episode catching up with her.

“He’s someone who believes he has to manage everything alone,” Petche explained. “When things are good, she takes care of herself, and when things are bad, I think she thinks it’s her fault. So that’s when everything fell apart.”

The scene is one of the few moments where the audience sees Sweetpea alone, and the effect is sobering. Gone is the usual clip of confident one-liners and financial savvy, replaced with heartbreaking sobs.

Sweetpea’s depression is made worse by the fact that just moments ago she refused Harper’s offer to comfort her. On top of that, she pushed Harper away even further, reminding him of the line between employer and employee before letting him know that she and Kwabena had met Kwabena in Ghana.

According to Petche, this decision comes from the fact that Sweetpea wants to protect himself, but it may not be the right decision in the long term.

“She only really feels safe when she’s alone,” Petche said. “She got an offer from someone else to come sit with her, and she said, ‘No, please don’t.’ Maybe that’s what she thinks she needs, but what she needs is to be held when she’s not playing. That really had an impact on me.”

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