Fuelling more Industry
Industry star Myha’la joins showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay to reflect on four seasons of the financial drama, how S4 marks a new beginning, and how cast and crew have grown up together on the set of the HBO and BBC series.
From meeting at Oxford University to briefly working on the trading floor in London’s business district, Industry creators and showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay didn’t have an extensive list of TV and film credits before they started work on the HBO and BBC financial drama.
Similarly, the show’s mononymous star Myha’la had just a handful of screen appearances to her name when she landed the role of Harper Stern, the forthright, ambitious and impulsive American trader who begins the series among the new graduates starting their career at fictional investment firm Pierpoint & Co.
Now as the compelling, high-pressure, high-stakes series returns for its fourth season, both creators and cast find themselves in very different places from when the show debuted in 2020.
“I feel like we’ve really grown up together,” Myha’la tells DQ, speaking at the launch of S4 at an HBO Max event in Berlin. “I personally came onto the show and, unbeknownst to me, I was completely out of my depth. I had no idea what I was doing, and I was so afraid that I was getting everything wrong. I didn’t have any time to address that. I just had to go for it.
“I feel like getting picked up [for season two] was a good indication that something was going right. Getting picked up a third time was a good indication that something was going right. And of course, in between, we’ve all gone off and done other things. And time really benefits you. We’re all just literally growing up.”
S4, which debuted this month on both sides of the Atlantic, picks up with Harper and Yasmin (Bafta winner Marisa Abela) at the top of their games and living the lives they hoped for when they set out as Pierpoint grads. But they are soon drawn into a globetrotting cat-and-mouse game when a splashy fintech darling bursts onto the London scene.
As Yasmin navigates her relationship with tech company founder Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington) and Harper is pulled into the orbit of enigmatic executive Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella), their twisted friendship begins to warp under the pressure of money, power and the desire to be on top.
The returning cast also features Ken Leung (Eric), Miriam Petche (Sweetpea) and Sagar Radia (Rishi), while new additions include Minghella, Toheeb Jimoh (Kwabena Bannerman), Charlie Heaton (James Dycker), Amy James-Kelly (Jennifer Bevan), Kiernan Shipka (Hayley Clay) and Kal Penn (Jay Jonah Atterbury).
S4 serves as somewhat of a reset for Industry, with the staff and operations of Pierpoint no longer the drama’s central focus. The season begins with Harper running a short-only fund for Mostyn Asset Management, though a reunion with former boss and mentor Eric might be on the cards. Meanwhile, Whitney is the CFO of payment processing startup Tender, which is under pressure to cut ties with pornography and gambling clients as it makes a move into banking, against the backdrop of the UK government’s new Online Safety Bill.
Kay admits he and Down thought S3 was going to be the end of Industry, “so putting the dust sheets over the Pierpoint trading floor felt like the right way to go.” Then when the series was renewed for another round of eight episodes, they found they had the opportunity to take the story in a new direction that explores the intersection of finance, politics and the media.
“We had a bit of a task of getting everybody back in the first hour, getting everybody into a position that would set up the next eight hours, which I think we did fairly elegantly,” Kay says. “But then it was just like, well, we can actually just go into any spaces we want to go. Therefore, there was no guardrail about the way we wanted to write. So in a way, it was incredibly freeing.”
In particular, they wanted to investigate how every aspect of society has become financial and transactional, and how this is creeping into relationships.
“We’ve done the work practically to get the characters to the position where they’re able to actually move through those rooms [of power] and not feel like we’ve jumped the shark, hopefully, because in season one, if they were suddenly going to these big castles in Austria and discussing neofascism, they wouldn’t be allowed in. Whereas they have got powerful enough that they’re actually able to sit in those worlds and not feel incongruous.”
Myha’la was most excited to be reunited on screen with Leung, after Harper and Eric spent much of S3 apart but now find themselves working together with their own firm, SternTau. “I just love Ken a lot. We’re very close as human beings. Working with him is magic,” she says. “I’m always excited to work with everyone, but working with him was something I was really looking forward to, and also exploring what that relationship looked like after all they’d been through.
“The person I was surprised the most by was Miriam, who plays Sweetpea, who I didn’t work with that much on S3 until the end, but we spent hours together in SternTau and she is one of the most brilliant young actors. I’m so excited for her. She handles this language with so much grace, and she never complains. I complain every day about how hard this writing is, but she’s just so bright and so strong in everything she does. I admire her and I also feel like I want to protect her, and I’m really excited for people to see what she brings to the show.”
Coming back for S4, with Myha’la now the show’s co-lead alongside Abela, the actor found she had a confidence that wasn’t there previously.
“Also Mickey and Konrad are so great at writing for us. All these seven years that we’ve been working together, we really know each other very well, and we’re also very lucky to have a deep care and respect for one another creatively and personally,” she says. “We’ve created a shorthand so that working together is just pretty symbiotic and easy, which also creates a kind of confidence. It also makes it really fun. We hang out for fun outside of work, we really do like each other, and for me that’s born out of an intense respect and love for what they do creatively and for what they’ve given me creatively.”
“We caught up to their talent,” Down says. “They started brilliant. They’ve got even more brilliant.”
When they first started Industry, Down continues, he and Kay were “very inexperienced,” but the showrunners have learned on the job with the backing of HBO, the BBC and series producers Bad Wolf.
“We’ve got better. We’ve improved – it’s something you can get better at. It is a craft,” he says. “We’ve had the experience of being in writers rooms or running writers rooms for four seasons now, and we know what works for the show. And it’s funny. Story construction, the jigsaw of storytelling, just gets easier as you do more of it, once you understand what to lean into and what you think works.”
Along the way, they’ve also harnessed the different speeds of the show, from the “very fast-paced, frenetic” nature of episodes such as S3’s Rishi-focused White Mischief to Industry’s somewhat rarer calm moments. “There’s also a romance and quietness sometimes to the writing we do now. Some of my favourite stuff is just two-handers between Marisa and Myha’la, where they are allowed to just perform.”
It’s not just writing and showrunning where Kay and Down lead on Industry. They are also increasingly adding directing credits to their CVs, helming the final two episodes of S3 and picking up the first and last two episodes of S4.
“I love directing big operatic stuff, like club scenes with hundreds of extras, but it’s also really fun to just sit in a room and see different performances in different takes, and know that when we get into the edit, ‘Well, that’s gonna be really interesting there. And actually that is totally different to how I imagined the interpretation of that line,’” Down notes.
“It’s been a journey. I’ve seen Konrad grow up as a writer and director as well, and hopefully he feels the same way, but we’ve just improved, and we support each other and we collaborate in a way that actually brings the best out of each other. I feel that’s quite difficult in a partnership. Partnerships either break up or they become better, and hopefully ours has become better.”
“I do think we have a talent for maybe characterisation and dialogue,” Kay says. “The actual construction of story over eight hours is really scientific, and neither of us are scientifically brained so we had to almost learn the equation of doing something like that well.
“S4, I’m really proud of it, purely on that basis, because I can tell you that, 10 years ago, we could have never written this version of S4. We didn’t have it in us, whereas we’ve learned over time that the more you do it, you internalise the structure of setup and payoff and it’s really satisfying to be, ‘Oh, this is going to be here. So this is going to be here. It’s going to give you this character moment six hours later.’”
“I’m really proud of the season, because it was super ambitious and, for the most part, lands,” Kay adds. “Just having someone like Max come into the show and play such a heightened character, but still seamlessly fit into the world, hour on hour I don’t think anyone knows what they’re gonna get from the character.
“I’m so glad the show comes out week to week and all not in one go. Because there’s no IP and because there’s no precedent, I don’t think anyone can ever tune in and say, ‘I know what the next hour of Industry is gonna look like.’ And that’s kinda cool.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Billions: A ruthless US attorney and a charismatic hedge-fund king wage psychological and financial warfare in a world where every trade, favour and friendship has a price.
Bad Banks: A brilliant young investment banker in Frankfurt discovers her powerful mentor is secretly pulling the strings, forcing her to choose between her conscience and a metoric rise in high finance.
Succession: The dysfunctional heirs to a global media conglomerate weaponise loyalty, love and corporate law in a vicious battle to replace their tyrannical father as king of the empire.
RELATED CONTENT
Titans of Industry
Industry showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay reflect on the unique journey behind making the HBO financial drama, reveal how they evolved from students to showrunners, and offer their advice to aspiring creatives.
Script secrets
How are writers currently navigating the troubled British drama industry, and what were the unique storytelling methods used in making Baby Reindeer, One Day and Industry? The BAFTA-nominated writers of these shows take DQ inside their acclaimed works and explain why it’s still worth taking risks.
Trading in rough diamonds
Investing in start-up potential is risky, but Bad Wolf’s Jane Tranter helped Industry duo Mickey Down and Konrad Kay become valuable market assets. They recall their journey together and talk about why TV should be backing new talent.
tagged in: BBC, HBO, Industry, Konrad Kay, Mickey Down, Myha’la