Kiernan Shipka Talks Filming Wild ‘Industry’ Opening Scenes With Charlie Heaton

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Industry Season 4 premiere.]

Industry reinvents itself every season, but that’s never been truer than with Season 4’s premiere. The episode opened with two brand new characters, played by Mad Men‘s Kiernan Shipka and Stranger Things‘s Charlie Heaton, in a long scene that sets the stage for the conflict this season. Shipka discussed this opening scene with TV Insider, sharing her early experiences on set with Heaton.

In Industry Season 4, Harper (Myha’la) and Yasmin (Marisa Abela) are at the top of their game and living the lives they set out to have as Pierpoint grads. They’re drawn into a high-stakes, globetrotting cat-and-mouse game when a splashy fintech darling bursts onto the London scene. As Yasmin navigates her relationship with tech founder Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington) and Harper is pulled into the orbit of enigmatic executive Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella), their twisted friendship begins to warp and ignite under the pressure of money, power, and the desire to be on top.

Shipka plays a character named Hayley, who has ties to Minghella’s Whitney. Heaton plays a financial journalist named Jim Dycker. The Industry Season 4 premiere began with a time jump. The first scene showed Shipka’s character at a bar and then a club. Heaton’s Jim caught Hayley’s eye in both places, and they ended up going home together and hooking up. The morning after revealed his true identity, namely that he was the journalist who had been trying to get in touch with Hayley’s boss. She panicked and kicked him out. Jim will be a recurring presence this season as he tries to unveil truths about the secret goings-on of this high-stakes finance world.

Shipka tells TV Insider that she and Heaton talked about their surprise that their characters were opening Season 4.

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“That was really fun, too, to do it together because we were both new to the show, and we formed a bond over that,” Shipka says.

“I didn’t know him before, and now he’s such a buddy. He’s so great,” she continues. “He came in a little bit later than I did. And it was funny, I remember him getting it, and someone had texted me that it was going to be him. And then I saw him walking in a park, and I ran up to him, and I think he thought I was a fan of Stranger Things. I was like, ‘No, no, no, no! It’s Kiernan! We’re going to do the show together.’ But I mean, we had so much fun. I look back on those days so fondly because we had a lot of stuff to do in a short amount of time.”

“We had a lot of different vibes, a lot of him being sort of creepy and me being apprehensive,” she says. “And then obviously there was the club stuff, which is much more loose and wild and sexy hookup moment. And then, next day, it all kind of goes to s**t again, and is this super bonkers, super fun scene,” recalls Shipka. “So, yeah, I mean, I guess we sort of dove right in. We didn’t even really have time to talk about it too much, but we had so much fun.”

Shipka describes the scene, and her and Heaton’s storylines at large, as “Buckle up. This is Industry, but these are people you don’t know.” She adds, “It will make sense in a little bit, I promise.”

Industry, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO