Dress, Rabanne. Headpiece, Rabanne bag turned into a headpiece.
Myha’la would like to make something clear: When she made the choice to drop her surname, she was not trying to be Cher. Not yet. “There was somebody online who was like, ‘She can’t just give herself a single name!’” the actress, known onscreen as Industry’s infamous Harper Stern, says. “‘She can’t just be a mononym because she chooses to! Do you think Cher just woke up one day and decided to be Cher?’ And I was like, ‘Damn! I’m not trying to put myself in the same category as Cher. How do I earn it?’”
The professional switch from Myha’la Herrold to Myha’la, which became official as of last year, was more a byproduct of the actress’s personality than a ploy to become the next Zendaya. (Not that she’d object.) Her full name, Myha’la Jael Herrold-Morgan, is not only “long as hell,” she says, but “Herrold,” in particular, never felt true to her: singular, eclectic, self-assured. These traits—in addition to her “very unique” first name—are, in her estimation, antithetical to “the most white, fucking-are-you-60-plus-years-old name I’ve ever heard in my life,” she says. She adds a quick disclaimer: “No shade to my family.”
She’d planned to abandon “Herrold” years ago, she claims, but the way her acting jobs and accompanying paperwork lined up, the change took longer than she’d anticipated. Now, however, the Industry season 3 credits read Myha’la, and she’s proud to be her—even if not everyone understands what she signifies. “I was like, ‘Oh, no,’” she says. “Are people going to think that I think I’m Madonna?’ Not yet. I’ll get there.”
Jacket, Sportmax. Shirt, tie, Moschino.
Myha’la, 28, is sitting cross-legged on the floor of her waterfront rental in Cape Town, South Africa, where she’s staying as production begins on her next project, a “Pulp Fiction-y cult-slasher-sister film”—her description—called They Will Kill You, starring Zazie Beetz. The apartment makes for quite the Zoom background: Even through a screen, I can make out the city skyline beyond her floor-to-ceiling glass walls. She pans her laptop camera around the living room, clearly still processing the space herself. When she first saw pictures of the accommodations, “I was like, ‘This one’s too much. This is too much,’” she says. “And my fiancé was like, ‘Get it!’”
That attitude is something Myha’la hopes to hone into an instinct, especially as a spiking Industry audience and an equally intrigued Hollywood scene start to pay her more attention. She recently wrapped filming on the Whitney Wolfe Herd biopic Swiped, starring Lily James, and she’s in Cape Town—and in Africa itself—for the first time. Before she started working on the London-based HBO finance drama that’d, yes, earn her the mononym, Myha’la had never set a toe of her five-foot-one frame outside the U.S. Now, she’s so familiar with living abroad that she accidentally refers to Uber Eats as Deliveroo—the British food delivery service—while we chat. Cementing herself in England felt as important to Myha’la as it did to her character, Harper, who grew up in New York but had considered (until very recently) the world of London finance her only home.
Harper’s schemes to build or maintain her real estate—including, but not limited to, lying, backstabbing, and borderline-compulsive insider trading—have earned her both the ardor and ire of Industry fans. Every time a new episode drops, Harper gets tagged with plenty of descriptors: “sociopath,” “deliciously chaotic,” “Machiavellian.” But Myha’la refuses to see Harper as “a bad person,” no matter what her former boss, Eric Tao (played by a magnificent Ken Leung), might believe.
Shirt, shorts, tie, Gucci. Shoes, Magda Butrym.
“The morality question—how people are so focused on whether or not this Black woman in finance is evil or good—is not the right question,” Myha’la says. “We’re talking about money. There’s no such thing as good or bad money. It’s just money. And then what you do with it, it’s the question we’re asking in [season 3] as well: Is ethical investing even a thing? No, it’s really not. If you’re talking about morality, you can’t also be talking about money. They don’t go together like that. You could try, but that’s a ruse. I agree with Harper in saying that shit’s just not real.”
She continues: “Would I behave the way she does? Absolutely not. I just couldn’t do it, because I don’t want to hurt nobody’s feelings.”
And besides, the character most bullish about Harper’s supposed wickedness seems to have relaxed his position after the Industry season 3 finale, which aired last night. After losing his job at Pierpoint thanks to corporate restructuring—it comes for us all!—Eric gets a call from his old protégé, who’s still in his phone under the nickname “Harpsichord.” She thanks him for the backhanded compliment he paid her in Forbes, calling her “a brilliant dropout whose ambition is boundless.” But, really, she’s calling to forge an uneasy truce. It’s “a nod of respect,” Myha’la says of the scene. “On some level, maybe she’s apologizing, like, ‘I’m sorry that you are collateral in this, and you’re no longer at the age where you can pull yourself up out of it.’ There’s so much subtext going on there.”
Filming this last scene was unexpectedly emotional for the actress, who wasn’t yet certain their characters would return onscreen. At the time the finale was shot, “it felt very finite,” she says. “I was like, This is the end of this…And I was ending it in the place that I started with Ken. We have such a close relationship, and I have learned and gleaned and extracted so much out of him. I mean, the man is a legend; he’s one of the best people I know and one of the best people to work with. Doing that scene meant a lot more to me as a human being than I imagined that it would.”
Jacket, Sportmax. Shoes, Gianvito Rossi.
But, of course, it wasn’t the end: On September 19, HBO renewed Industry for a fourth season, something for which Industry’s co-creators, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, had quietly been preparing. In an email, Down told ELLE.com, “We always start working on the next season as soon as possible in order to will it into existence. So we had some initial thoughts and ideas about the direction we wanted to go in.” But he was in an Uber on the way to a party when he finally got the official green-light from HBO. “I muted the call, and shouted ‘YES’ and punched the air. The Uber driver laughed.”
Myha’la, who had “known for a minute that [Down and Kay] wanted to go again, and known for years that they want to do five seasons [total],” got the thumbs-up via text from her creative team, linking to a Deadline article that announced the renewal. Her response? “Oh, shit! Great news.” Behind the scenes, she’d had little doubt the series would continue as its small-but-mighty audience ballooned from season 2 to season 3. Myha’la admits to telling people—me included—that “you never know,” because “that’s, like, the humble thing to say.” But in her opinion? Industry’s got the juice. “I’m always like, We’re going to fucking go again.”
“Anyone want to put [Myha’la] in a movie musical? [She’s] very available” might be the actress’s preferred headline for this story. She cups her hands around her mouth and pretend-shouts these words into the ether as we move into territory that casts a dreamy look over her face: Broadway. It was Broadway that first brought the California native to New York, where she’s now in the process of buying a home with her fiancé, Armando Rivera. (Together, they form “Brooklyn’s hottest engaged couple,” per her Instagram comments section.) When she was a child—as early as 6 years old, she suspects—she told her mother, Susan, she was headed to the Big Apple. “From the moment I understood that Broadway was not in San Jose, I was like, ‘Where is it?’” she says. “‘Because that’s where I’m going.’”
Dress, shorts, shoes, Prada.
A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, Myha’la had been out of her musical-theater program for less than a year when she started working on Industry—and then she was shuttled away to Europe, miles from the Great White Way. More recently, she auditioned for a Broadway revival but didn’t make the cut. “I don’t remember the last time I cried that hard over not getting a job,” she says. “In fact, I don’t remember the last time I cried over not getting a job.” It’s still her hope to make her Broadway debut someday, though she’s open (casting agents, read: very open) to singing for film and TV as well. She’d likely indulge in some Harper-level scheming (minus the illegality) to make her dream project, an “all-Black film version of Spring Awakening,” happen.
But what’s kept her in New York isn’t merely the clarion call of the Theater District. It’s the way the city absorbs her into its one-of-one ecosystem. She’s always enjoyed changing her look—particularly when it comes to trying new hairstyles, encouraged by her hairstylist mother—but at Carnegie Mellon, her shaved head and “crazy makeup” tended to prompt a lot of stares. In San Jose, “I was weird-looking,” she says. But when she moved to New York, “the first thing I noticed was that I was not the freakiest thing on the street.”
Dress, Stella McCartney. Shoes, Fendi.
It didn’t take long for people in and around the New York fashion scene to appreciate her experimental approach. Now, she’s beloved by Miu Miu—the feeling is mutual—but she’s equally as likely to step out in Loewe, Prada, Valentino, or any other slew of “It” designer brands. Of course, that’s when she’s not in her current outfit of choice, which vacillates between “baggy, oversized, and layers” and a “bodycon, micro-mini vibe.” She jokes, “It’s either body-body all the way, or nobody knows what gender I am.” She promises, under the big lavender sweater and matching bandana she’s sporting for our call, “The booty is booty-ing, the waist is waist-ing, honey.”
Up until “relatively recently,” she says, social media had felt like a casual place to celebrate what makes her distinctive. But with her role on Industry, and her role in the A24 hit Bodies Bodies Bodies, and every role that’s followed, she’s realized that, “No matter which way I spun it, my online presence was always going to be about networking.” In other words: Her online presence would be a part of her business, whether she’d prefer it that way or not. She won’t complain about the brand deals her platform might beget—“it’s a thing most people in my position choose to monetize, and it’s definitely lucrative and something I’m not opposed to,” she says—but she’s still not sure how to square her increasingly public face with her identity.
Case in point: Over the past year, she’s posted multiple images to her Instagram calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. (Two are still pinned to the top of her profile, one of which declares: “None of us are free until we are all free.”) The decision caught the attention not only of her fans and critics, but also of several media outlets, some of which interviewed Myha’la about the choice to speak out. As she admitted to Marie Claire in August, she’s faced some trepidation over whether the posts might have cost her a job opportunity. But, she tells me, she’s not acting out of “obligation.” Instead, “I feel a responsibility to my own self as a justice-driven human being to say, speak, and act in a way that makes me feel like I’ve done my due diligence as a loving citizen of the world. That sounds extra, but that’s what I feel called to do as a person, not as an actor or as a public figure.”
Jacket, Sportmax. Shoes, Gianvito Rossi.
Besides, she doesn’t feel she has the power behind her yet to “really move shit around” when she speaks out. She doesn’t have an army of super-fans eager to do her bidding. (Although, if she did, she might call them the “Harper apologists.”) “I saw Billie Eilish and Finneas made a Kamala Harris endorsement video, and Taylor Swift has [endorsed Harris] now, and I’m like, ‘Damn, that’s serious,’” she says. “They have to have a whole meeting with their PR and whatever! I be on the internet doing my thing. They had to write a script, and I’m on here being like, ‘I just want everyone to love each other.’”
Myha’la does her best not to sweat critical comments online, if and when they appear. She’s learned there’s a strong correlation between her own visibility and audiences expecting more of it. She can handle that, she thinks. But make a dig at her fiancé, and she makes no promises of civility. “Stuff about me, I’m like, whatever,” she says. “But they’re like, ‘He’s weird’? I’m like, ‘You don’t even know him. Say that shit to my face. I dare you. On the street, no earrings, let’s fight.’”
Jumpsuit, Chanel.
As friends and fans of the couple will already know, Myha’la met Rivera over Instagram in November 2020, when Rivera—then a college student in California—reached out to tell her congratulations on an excellent first season of Industry. They exchanged pleasantries but little more. Soon after, he reached out again to ask if he could interview the actress for his journalism class. Myha’la agreed to a Zoom call. As she told W Magazine, “I thought, it’ll be five, 10 minutes, whatever. And immediately was like, ‘Whoa, you’re so hot and nice!’ We talked much longer than we expected.” (Added Rivera: “She was asking me questions about myself. I was like, ‘Is she [interested?]…Nah.’ I thought she was just being nice.”)
After a few weeks of trading DMs, they agreed to start chatting over FaceTime. From there, they arranged a meeting in San Francisco, and by the time Myha’la left the U.S. to shoot season 2 of Industry, Rivera was keen to visit her for weeks at a time. In 2022, he officially moved to New York to live with her. Finally, this summer, they announced their engagement news on—where else?—Instagram, in a post for which Rivera wore a graphic tee photoshopped with images of the actress’s face.
When Myha’la speaks of her relationship, she does so with the intensity of an artist. But no one with eyes needs to be convinced she’s down bad. “When we met, I was like, ‘I don’t need you,’” she says. “‘I don’t need you, and you don’t need me, but I want you and you want me.’ We choose each other; we enrich each other’s lives. Being individually independent then makes us more available for the other person, which is extra shit that I didn’t know I wanted—and now I feel like I can’t go without being loved in this way.”
As we speak, Rivera steps into the Zoom frame to deliver her a tray of tea. Later, she adjusts the camera so I can see him sitting in the dining room, mere feet away from her, where he’s been poring over a script. When she forgets the name of an actor she’s referencing, she calls out to him: “Who’s that other guy, babe?” Rivera is himself an actor; Myha’la’s manager helped connect him with an agent, and he’s recently appeared in a few shorts as well as the indie film Any Day Now. “He writes as well,” Myha’la adds. As she moves from one room to another, her laptop camera still on her face, I can watch her watching him, and she has a hard time not grinning.
Jacket, Sportmax. Tights, Falke. Shoes, Jimmy Choo. Underwear, her own.
Marriage wasn’t always Myha’la’s plan, but once she was with Rivera, she realized how much it meant to him. Since those initial conversations, she’s developed the same belief about their pending nuptials. What was important to him became essential to her. “Thinking about being married, getting to pledge my life to him, pledge my commitment, and say that my love is now overwhelmed so much that I want to make a new life with you, and then I want to bring new life into this world with you?” she says. “What a beautiful thing. Feeling the way that I feel now in partnership with him, there is nothing I want more than to officially be able to say, ‘You’ve changed my life, and now I’m ready to change mine for us together.’”
Most of the time, she’s thankful her relationship with Rivera is one neither of them feels compelled to keep offline. They’re clear with each other about what’s fair game to share, and what’s best kept between them. “We know each other well enough that it’s just understood, the stuff that nobody needs to know,” she says. There’s a line between “being available and willing and excited to share your relationship that you love and are proud of, and being, like, Nara and Lucky Blue Smith.” But especially after a recent interview resulted in a racist online comment about their romance, Myha’la’s aware her and Rivera’s candor might need to adjust with the scope of their fame. She points to a pair of Hollywood peers as a prime example: “I know Zendaya and Tom Holland be in a cave somewhere happy as hell, and that might be [us] one day.”
As for the future, she’s open about her desire for children—she wants to be “a set mom,” with “my baby on one hip and a script in the other”—but she has no intentions of slowing her career now, especially with Industry finally getting the audience it deserves. And with Harper supposedly heading back to New York in season 4, as she suggests in the season 3 finale, Myha’la is eager for the challenge of unpacking the character’s extensive familial baggage. “I think her saying [she’s ready to go back to New York], whether or not it’s true, is just indicative of her confidence now,” she says. “She’s like, ‘I’ve built the most profitable relationships. I know how to use them to my advantage, and even if I’m in the actual shitter, like all the way in the shitter, I know how to get myself out. So the only thing left to come for, now, is my fear of home.’”
Jacket, Sportmax. Tights, Falke. Shoes, Jimmy Choo. Underwear, her own.
She’s hopeful, too, for a “Harper-and-Yasmin-girlboss-Powerpuff–Girls season,” if only so she can work more with actress Marisa Abela, who plays Harper’s former colleague, Yasmin. Abela’s “one of my best friends, so I’m biased, obviously,” Myha’la says. And though she “literally can’t” tease any spoilers—there aren’t scripts available to her yet—she knows whatever Down and Kay “put in front of me is fucking gold every time.” She’s particularly excited to play Harper “on a sort of front foot, which we’ve gotten a great taste of in [season 3]. I love playing her on the offense.”
As she reaches what seems like a watershed moment in her career, Myha’la wants to stay true to the love she feels—for her partner, for the world, for the name her mother gave her. The name epitomizes what she wants to protect, and what she needs to claim for herself. The rest—the jobs, the clothes, the hairstyles, the platform—she can change as she sees fit. As she prepares to film They Will Kill You, she’s considering another dramatic hair transformation, a metamorphosis she considers as symbolically resonant as it is physically. “Whenever I’m in a moment where I’m like, ‘Oh, this hair is not feeling [right],’ I’m like, ‘Ah. We’re transitioning!’” she says. “The next one is on deck. We’ve just got to figure out what it is.”
Shop Pieces Inspired by Myha’la’s Shoot
Gucci Tweed Blend Polo Cardigan
Gucci Tweed Blend Shorts
Magda Butrym Crystal Mesh Pumps
Guzosjo Skinny Scarf Necktie
Stella McCartney Faux Leather Dress
Ben Amun Ryan Resin Bangles
Fendi 55MM Leather Boot
Astrid & Miyu Wave Piercing Stud
Sportmax Aversa Blazer
Polo Ralph Lauren Striped Club Tie
Jimmy Choo Romy Pump
Moschino Jeans Button Up Shirt
Prada Floral-Embroidered Dress
Mateo 14kt Gold Earrings
Prada Leather Moto Boots
Prada Embroidered Bermudas
Sportmax Belted Leather Shirt
Falke Pure Matte 50 Tights
Jimmy Choo Love 100 Pump
Calvin Klein x Nensi Dojaka Thong
Hair by Dre Demry-Sanders for Bumble and Bumble; makeup by Shyanna Lundi; set design by Selena Liu at JONESMGMT.
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a staff culture writer at ELLE, where she primarily covers film, television and books. She was previously an associate editor at ELLE.