If there’s one thing the creators of Industry know how to do, it’s write a difficult woman. Enter: Sweetpea Golightly. Like most of Industry's female characters, she's not difficult in the way a misogynist might label a female colleague – you know, bossy and unwilling to pander. Over the course of the show’s four seasons, we’ve seen the show’s women plot elaborate takeovers of multinational corporations, dominate men on the trading room floor and in the bedroom, and commit betrayals so cold they make Judas look tame.
It’s plotlines like this that made stars out of Marisa Abela and Myha'la Herrold, thanks to their respective portrayals of Yasmin and Harper. And it's Sweetpea Golightly, played with precision by Miriam Petche, who is quietly becoming the next star. The character first joined the show’s line-up of powerful women in series three, where she was the Gen Z new hire at the now-defunct bank Pierpoint. She vlogged day-in-the-life videos for her 50,000 TikTok followers and posted more NSFW content on the show’s version of OnlyFans, Siren. It’s like the show’s writers were daring us to underestimate her. And obviously, most of the male characters did just that – along with some of the women.
Big mistake. Although Sweetpea wasn’t a main character in the last series, it was she who spotted the financial pressure point that ultimately led to Pierpoint's demise. Now, she’s being rewarded in series four with a full and robust storyline that gives us deeper insight into her character. Five episodes in, it’s become clear that Sweetpea is the emotional anchor of the season, an unexpected MVP that tackles the complications of sharing everything online with nuance.
To recap: in season three, the character had a healthy side hustle as an online sex worker. She also had an affair with her older colleague Rishi, who we know also subscribed to her page. When, at the start of series four, it’s revealed that the nudes from her page have been leaked, he’s the prime suspect. This, of course, has serious career ramifications. No one in the industry takes her seriously anymore, and we can be fairly confident that every man in the room has seen her naked. The only person in Sweetpea’s corner is Harper, who’s convinced her to take a job at her new company SternTao, co-founded with fellow ex-Pierpoint shark, Eric. In episode six, we see Eric scrolling through Sweetpea’s nudes.
If that all sounds a little soul-crushing, Sweetpea won’t show it. This is a character who gets visibly high from sniffing out money-making opportunities, artfully depicted by Petche as she gets closer to the heart of a business scandal that stands to make SternTao a roaring success. “I don’t want to say that she was the inspiration for the character, but people like Molly-Mae Hague, who have like a really, really intense work ethic and drive, almost to a Thatcherite-level of shamelessness about wanting to make money,” Industry co-creator Mickey Down told Decider when the character was first introduced in 2024. “It’s a thing that Gen Z has over Millennials. They’re not ashamed to say that they want to be successful.”
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But although Sweetpea is clearly one of the show’s brightest characters, with proven razor-sharp instincts, she’s in trouble. Thanks to the Siren leak, she’s now viewed by everyone but Harper as a toxic hire – a “City Tart”, as the subject line for the email nude leak put it. If SternTao can’t pull off the high-stakes short they’re pursuing, there’s a real chance that she might never work in the industry again. Sweetpea’s hunger for success in this series isn’t only driven by ambition – it’s born out of fear.
It’s a revealing switch in dynamic from the character we were first introduced to. The plucky grad who was once so self-assured and sexually liberated has been made vulnerable by the world around her. She’s no longer safe to be herself, figuratively and literally. A shocking moment in episode six sees Sweetpea be violently assaulted while on a business trip to Accra, Ghana, orchestrated by the company she’s investigating. She’s physically attacked for being skilled at her job, just as she was penalised for posting adult content online.
Sweetpea is a character who, in all her blonde beauty, represents a stereotypical feminine ideal. Perhaps that’s why she’s punished so harshly when she steps too far into masculine territory, whether she’s standing her ground at work or freely expressing her sexuality. At her core, she’s a character that shows how society punishes women who step too far across the threshold of respectability – and the sheer strength it takes to push through and succeed regardless.
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