How Max Minghella Became a Captain of ‘Industry’

When new material comes his way, Max Minghella’s first instinct is resistance. “Normally the way it goes for me is, I get sent a script and immediately think, ‘I don’t want to see myself in this,’ ” he says. “And then I go on this journey of having to admit there is some part of myself there, as much as I don’t want to make the connection.”

That reflex served him well for eight seasons on The Handmaid’s Tale, where he played Nick Blaine, the broody Gilead commander whose loyalties were as compromised as the morally corrupt regime he served. But Industry season four offered him something else entirely. As tech founder Whitney Halberstram, he’s not morally ambiguous so much as openly predatory: a financial criminal who uses an escort service to blackmail his competitors, a man fluent in rapid-fire finance-speak and allergic to shame.

Minghella waited…