Joel Kim Booster Hopes People Write Fanfiction About His Nude Sauna Scene on ‘The Industry’
Joel Kim Enhanced very much understands that showing skin is part of his personal brand. In his 2022 Netflix comedy special, Sexual psychology, Booster joked about how easily his nudes were found on the internet, joking that he still sends out nudes of himself “recklessly”. However, Spoils of War And Fire Island The star had no idea that her daredevil act would lead to a sizzling cameo in the third episode of the third season of HBO’s groundbreaking series Industry, created by Konrad Kay And Mickey down.
“This has never happened to me, but they came to me with this role,” Booster said. In episode three, “It,” Booster guest-stars as Frank Wade, a Pierpoint employee in the equity research department who must issue a buy or sell recommendation on Lumi, the green energy company founded by Kit HaringtonHenry Muck, the company just IPO’d.
A fan of Industry Since its debut in 2021, Booster told me he’s “never had an easier time” landing a role than on this series. “The guys are obviously fans,” Booster says of Kay and Down. “They wrote the part and they came to me and said, ‘There’s a jerk in the sauna and we thought of you.’ I guess the brand is strong.”
The steam room eventually became a sauna, where Pierpoint banker Rob, played by Harry Lawtey, flirts with Frank in hopes of influencing his buy-out offer. Their giggling chemistry is reminiscent of the sauna scene in The Challengers between Mike Faist And Josh O’Connor except for one big difference—Booster has absolutely nothing. “They said very early on that this was going to be a requirement,” he says. “It was included in the offer, like, ‘Are you okay with that?’”
In fact, he was so comfortable with it, Booster says it wasn’t even the most nerve-wracking part of filming. “I was more nervous about stepping into a high-profile HBO show than I was about the nudity, because nudity is pretty normal for me in my everyday life,” Booster says. “Professionally, it was a big deal for me to be taken seriously as an actor and have people believe that I could play a pretty realistic, dramatic, serious role without being too comedic. I’m really grateful for that opportunity.”
Over the phone, Booster chats about the struggle of looking hot while sitting, working with Lawtey, and what he believes really works in the sauna.
Vanity Fair:So, let’s talk about your big scene, which takes place in a sauna while you’re naked.
Joel Kim Supporter: You know what’s funny to me? This isn’t the first interview I’ve done about my brief appearance on Industryand you’re the only one who’s been asked specifically about this scene, explicitly. Like, ‘Guys, I’m a guest on an episode. I have a part in an episode on this show where I appear in like three scenes and you’re not going to ask me why you actually want to interview me about this episode?’ The reason it’s a big deal is because this is my first time having sex face-to-face at all. Let’s be real.
Do you have to think about whether to say “yes”?
I didn’t think about it at all when I initially said yes. It was an exciting opportunity to do something really different. And as I said in my Netflix special, my nudes were out there. If you wanted to see me naked, you could easily find them if you knew the right search terms and the right porn sites to go to. And to this day, I still send nudes of myself to random strangers on a regular basis. So at first it didn’t seem like a big deal, I would say.
Take me to an actual moment when you’re on set, and it’s time, and the cameras are about to roll. How does that feel?
It’s crazy because I didn’t really realize it until right before we shot it. All the nudes of me that have been leaked online before, it’s my erect penis, okay? With a flaccid penis, there are so many variables going on. It can look so different. Stress is a big factor in that. I wake up and I’m like, ‘I can’t think about this because the more I think about this, the more I’m going to collapse.’ And then you lose control of what’s going on there. I would say Harry Lawtey, who plays Robert on the show, is the person I shot the majority of my scenes with. [He was] It was great, it was warm, it made me feel really part of the team at Industry. He also played me, the frontal scene, and I couldn’t have had a better co-star than him, someone who made me comfortable and really helped me focus on that scene without having to think about what was going on downstairs.
