Why Harry Lawtey Left HBO's Industry

After the third season of HBO's critically acclaimed series "Industry" wrapped up at the end of September 2024, Harry Lawtey's character Robert Spearing was in a sort of bleak place (though, on a series like "Industry," the same could be said of most of the main cast, if not every single one of them). We now know that Robert — and, obviously by extension, Lawtey — won't be returning for the show's fourth season, which just recently began filming in the United Kingdom. Aside from "Industry," you may have seen Lawtey as Harvey Dent in the underwhelming 2024 sequel "Joker: Folie á Deux."

So why? In an interview with The Telegraph, "scheduling conflicts" were mentioned, but Lawtey seems at peace with it all. "Ultimately I feel like I'm in a place where I've said everything I had to say with a character, and I think both me and the writers felt mutually happy with where we left him," Lawtey said. "There was actually a stage direction after my final line, in my final scene of the show, which literally read: 'On Robert – transformation complete.' And that sat really well with me. Now, I feel unmoored, but in a really good way. And ready for the next chapter."

Lawtey exits the cast just as newcomers Kiernan Shipka, Jack Farthing, Toheeb Jimoh, Amy James-Kelly, and Max Minghella join the cast of the series, which focuses on a group of young, troubled, and hard-partying investment bankers fighting tooth and nail to survive at various firms in London. (Series regulars Myha'la, Marisa Abela, Ken Leung, and season 3 addition Kit Harington are all set to reprise their roles.) Creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, as it happens, also opened up about Lawtey's exit ... and made it clear that the door isn't fully closed as far as Robert Spearing is concerned.

In an interview with The Wrap after Harry Lawtey's exit was announced, Konrad Kay and Mickey Down said that things just didn't work out, but that luckily, Robert's story came to a satisfying end in the season 3 finale. "We love Robert as a character. We love Harry as an actor. We think he's going to go into massive things — he already has done," Down told interviewer Missy Schwartz. "And it was, I think, a sort of mutual decision that we couldn't make it work for the time that we had, but also that we had reached the conclusion of the character. And I think Harry reached his own conclusion."

"When the character feels like they've had some sort of redemption, or they've found the light at the end of the tunnel, there is sort of no more to say," Down continued. "I'm sad we couldn't make it work. But Harry had an amazing ending at the end of episode 8 of Season 3. And we gave him the redemption that I think a lot of the audience was craving because we put him through the wringer in season 3."

Not only that, but Kay made it quite clear that should Lawtey have the time and desire to come back to "Industry" for a guest spot or cameo, he'll be welcomed back with open arms. "Creatively, we both felt like his story was done, but also, we were very much of the mind that we should leave the door open for him to come back," Kay clarified. "He didn't die of an aneurysm. He's just doing his own thing over here while the relentless world continues. And, you know, we'll see what happens with this story going forward."

Ultimately, both Kay and Down only had phenomenal things to say about one of their young stars. "We're hugely grateful for Harry for his work on the show," Down gushed. "He's a fantastic actor and I can't imagine he's gonna have trouble finding a huge role and then having a massive, massive career."

Okay, so where did we leave Harry Lawtey's Robert Spearing at the end of season 3 of "Industry?" For most of the series, Robert has been quietly carrying on an affair with the wealthy Nicole Craig (Sarah Parrish), and in the season 3 premiere "Il Mattino ha L'Oro in Bocca," he wakes up at her house to discover she's died beside him in her sleep. Obviously, this puts Robert, a guy from humble beginnings who managed to get into Oxford and then investment banking at Pierpoint (the main company where the series is set), in a bad spot right at the very beginning of the show's third installment.

Robert also starts working with the eccentric and seemingly less-than-stable Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington), the CEO of a company called Lumi that's a client of Pierpoint, and throughout season 3, he also keeps lusting after the deeply troubled girl of his dreams Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela). By the time season 3 comes to a close, Yasmin and Robert have finally consummated their long-simmering attraction, only for Robert to learn, shortly thereafter, that Yasmin — whose family name has fallen into disgrace after the death of her vile father and needs a lifeline — is set to marry Henry. We last see Robert in Silicon Valley pitching Little Labs, a start-up that makes psilocybin pills, after he's used as a scapegoat at Pierpoint and dismissed from the company, so Mickey Down and Konrad Kay — as well as Lawtey — are right that it feels like a solid and natural endpoint for the character. Still, it would definitely be nice to see Robert (and Lawtey) pop up again down the line.

"Industry" is streaming on Max now.