MYHA'LA IS THINKING BIG

The Industry star is entering a new phase of life, determined to take up more space in her personal and professional endeavors. Showing off this season's bold, billowing silhouettes, she tells us all about it.

- JESSICA M. GOLDSTEIN

Miu Miu sweater, tops, and skirts

Myha’la was ready for a change: She wanted to cut off all her hair. But it was just before the actress was set to begin filming the new season of HBO’s Industry, so before picking up the scissors, she picked up the phone and called her bosses, showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay. Myha’la plays Harper Stern in the show, an intense, sexy drama set at a fictional London bank where everybody is cutthroat, conniving, and constantly on cocaine.

Harper started the series as the ultimate outsider: a self–made Black American woman elbowing her way into a world dominated by wealthy, white British men. She spends two seasons deploying Machiavellian moves to secure her position, at tremendous personal cost—in her wake: torched bridges, scorched earth— only to be outed as a fraud by her mentor, who has her fired in the second season finale.

When they spoke, Down and Kay told Myha’la she could do whatever she wanted with her hair. She pressed them: “Is it going to work for season three?” They assured her that it would. Now, Myha’la theorizes on what may have led Harper to her pixie cut. “She gets fired, and she’s having a complete mental breakdown and a crisis… So she’s drinking too much, partying too much, sleeping with strangers, going out and putting herself in precarious situations. And then she just, in a Britney moment, cuts all her hair off.”

"You don't want to ever give anybody the idea that you're not capable. As women, particularly, I feel like we have to come in there and bust balls or else nobody's going to listen to us."