Industry star Marisa Abela has criticised the BBC’s decision to cut an image of an erect penis from its broadcast of the show.
The drama, a co-production by HBO and the BBC, follows a group of young graduates competing in the dog-eat-dog world of London’s investment banking world, and stars Abela as Yasmin Kara-Hanani, the privileged daughter of a publishing billionaire.
The show debuted to critical acclaim in 2020, and has this month returned to UK screens for its third season, with all eight episodes landing on BBC iPlayer on October 1. The season has already been broadcast in the US.
The first episode contains a fleeting image of the erect penis of Yasmin’s father Charles Hanani (Adam Levy) amid a sexual encounter with a pregnant member of his staff, but for its BBC broadcast, that image has been cut.
Speaking to The Times, Abela has questioned the corporation’s decision. “What are they going to do, put something else over the top of it?” she asked. “Are they going to blur it out? It is quite shocking, to be fair. But that’s not the point.”
When asked about her own explicit sex scenes in the show, Abela added: “I don’t necessarily push back on the sex. I understand that it’s part of the show. I think I’m just more careful now about what it is that’s being seen.”
“The nudity aspect is not something that I minded in season one or two – it was like, ‘If it’s in my contract, I’ll do it.’ It was part of Yasmin and part of the fact that she was so comfortable with herself and she’s very free. And it didn’t have a lot of emotional weight for me.”
“But I think now I’m more aware of the implications of doing it over and over again,” she added. “And I’m more aware that I have the ability to say, ‘Do you mind staying on my back rather than coming round the front? You get the idea from my back that I’m not wearing anything.’”
Marisa Abela in ‘Industry’. CREDIT: BBC/HBO
Abela recently starred as Amy Winehouse in the biopic Back To Black, while her Industry co-star Myha’la Herrold has gone on to take key roles in Bodies Bodies Bodies and Leave The World Behind and Harry Lawtey is currently playing Harvey Dent in the Joker: Folie à Deux.
Since its return, UK fans of Industry have been hailing it as one of the “best dramas in years”, while US fans praised the final episode as “one of the greatest season finales I’ve ever watched”.
Game of Thrones star Kit Harington also joined the cast of this third season, taking on the role of the British aristocrat Lord Henry Muck, described by a press release as “the embodiment of ‘old money’ privilege”.
A controversial death scene in the new season was reportedly nearly cut by HBO, who were nervous about the show taking a darker turn. The broadcaster was eventually won over, however, when they saw the whole episode.
A fourth season of the hit show was confirmed by HBO last month.
English (US) · 