When Kyle Traynor (The White Lotus, House of Cards) was first asked to come aboard HBO’s Industry as an editor for season 2, he confided in me that he “…didn’t even know the show existed.” Like so many viewers, Industry was a well-reviewed but best-kept secret. Kyle quickly binged season 1 to get up to speed before taking on the challenge of cutting the final two episodes of season 2.
I related to Kyle’s experience. When Industry first debuted back in 2020, I was intrigued, but initially found the show’s dense finance jargon, dizzying pace, and (mostly) unfamiliar faces to be a heavy lift. Still, I admired the craft of the first three episodes and intended to stick with it. I didn’t. It took another five years for me to return to Industry’s tale of U.K.-based stock traders, and I only did so because of the holiday television lull. Able to give the show my full attention, I soon discovered I was addicted to this story centered around two young traders, Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and Harper (Myhal’la), from opposite ends of the wealth spectrum, trying to claw their way into the cutthroat trade of, well, trading.
Kyle shared with me that my experience with the show was “…like a lot of people’s.” Industry does not provide the easiest entry point for viewers, but if one sticks with it, it can become an obsession. As Kyle put it, “I wasn’t even sure what the show was, but I could tell it was on the pulse of something very special.” Created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, Industry demands focused attention, an ability to accept that you’re not going to understand all the financial minutiae, and, quite frankly, an acceptance of a fair amount of prurient sex.
In our modern day, film and TV have moved away from overt sexuality, but Industry has become an outlier in that regard. As Kyle noted, “Gen Z is supposedly not that interested in sex and drugs, but this show has been really successful with that age group.” The characters on the show are constantly on edge. Their worth is based on their most recent quarter, and a hatchet seems to hang over their heads every day.
Having worked in the financial sector previously (although not at the level of the characters on Industry), I can attest, to a degree, what it’s like working with people who are constantly chasing revenue, or, to put it more simply, money. The most successful banker I knew was a fellow who was driven and focused during the day, but once that day closed, if you were out at the bar with him, he was the wildest guy in the building.
The characters on Industry are like my former co-worker, only with the dial turned all the way up. When they let off steam, they blow a gasket. The intensity of their daily lives almost demands it. That intensity also impacts their morality. Yasmin and Harper could be called “frenemies,” but that term seems soft when considering their relationship. As Kyle pointed out, “They are consistently put at odds for various reasons, yet they seem to always find their way back to one another. It’s both comforting and extremely toxic to see these two women grow up both loving and hating each other.”
At its heart, Industry is a show about desperation, and what happens to a person, to their values, when “the bottomless pit of money,” as Kyle called it, takes over your life, and defines your self-worth. “This isn’t a show about anti-heroes,” Kyle stated. “These people aren’t heroes at all. They are extremists living in a world that only rewards the extreme, until it doesn’t.” Kyle finds it amusing when people tell him they were inspired to get into the financial sector by the series. He wondered aloud, “…if people are watching the show in the way they intended.”
There’s a long history of misinterpretation of the arts. Whether it’s high school seniors in the ‘80s choosing The Police’s stalker tune Every Breath You Take for their prom theme, or (mostly male) moviegoers thinking Fight Club’s Tyler Durden is a leader they’d like to follow. Similarly, Industry is not a show about good people doing a hard job. It’s about very questionable people (or worse) attempting to get over in search of the almighty dollar. The characters in Industry aren’t role models; they are cautionary tales.
Take Rishi (Sagar Radia), a market maker at Pierpoint who, as Kyle put it, is “Always dialed up to 11,” resulting in tragic consequences for his family and his physical well-being. Rishi may be the most self-destructive character on the show, but only by a half-measure. Everyone on Industry is out for themselves in ways that are doomed to hurt themselves. “There are no arcs of redemption. Some TV series feel the need to restore your faith in a questionable character as you spend more time with them. Industry leans into the grey of characters being widely complex but ultimately extremely self-serving.”
Industry saw viewership take off in its third season. The stakes were raised for all of its characters as their base of operation, their very job, Pierpoint fell apart. Kyle and the Industry team approached season 4 as a sort of a reboot. In the first episode, new characters played by Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things), Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men), Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar), and Max Minghella (The Handmaid’s Tale) are all introduced so early on that you might almost wonder if you were watching a spin-off, if not a new show entirely. Now an Associate Producer, Kyle and the show creators were aware of the risk, but believed in the plan. Kyle likened episode 1 of season 4 to a “pilot” episode, in which every character is new. “We had a lot to do in the first episode of this season. New character introductions, new locations, and bringing the viewer up to speed with the characters we know. It was a really delicate dance to make sure we are expanding the world of the series without leaving people behind.”
Eventually, the show does pivot back to the Yasmin/Harper through-line, but it’s fair to say that this Industry is not the Industry you once knew. The show’s editing (often handheld) and energy have always been kinetic, but season 4’s shift in dynamic, with so many new characters and no centralized base of operations, created an opportunity for experimentation.
Aside from the juggling and balancing of old and new characters, the creative team pushed the show’s style in new directions. Kyle, who edited episodes 1 & 2 as well as 7 & 8 (while also overseeing the middle episodes for flow and continuity), took one of the biggest risks at the end of episode 2. In an extended one-shot during a decadent costume party, Yasmin and husband Henry (Kit Harrington) have a lengthy argument that mixes marital dissatisfaction and business dissatisfaction and just about every type of toxic dissatisfaction you can imagine into a show-stopping sequence of push-and-pull enmity and ambition. Abela and Harrington ran through the sequence six or seven times, according to Kyle, before the scene was printed, leaving them exhausted by the final take. However, that weariness played well for the characters’ sense of exasperation with one another. “We had the coverage to cut that as a traditional scene, but running it as a oner is telling the viewer something very different. The veil gets pulled back a little, and we get to see a very raw glimpse into just how terrible this marriage is. Kit and Marissa really poured everything into that performance, and while it took some additional VFX work, I think letting those performances stand alone was the strongest way to tell their story.”
In a show full of complex characters, Abela’s Yasmin may be the most conflicted. She comes from great wealth, but also has a desire to make it on her own. But once that wealth was in jeopardy, Yasmin’s ambitions led her to marry Henry, a magnetic, but mentally ill, mover and shaker of great means, but questionable success. Unlike Harper, who has no choice but to make her way on grit and moral flexibility, Yasmin avoids grit, although the moral flexibility is certainly an asset (of a sort) for her as well.
Harper and Yasmin’s sometime mentor/sometime adversary, Eric Tao (the brilliant Ken Leung), is a veteran trader whose life has fallen apart (divorce, custody battles, alimony, etc.), who is the third leg of the stool, along with Yasmin and Harper. His arc and possible permanent exit are key to showcasing a truth about the people of Industry: no one leaves this business intact.
In discussing the performances of Abela, Myha’la, and Leung, Kyle was effusive. We spoke about the insecurity and guilt that Abela can express without a single word. Kyle noted that her ability to produce a single tear on command (a move perfected by Denzel Washington) is so unique that they have to be careful not to overuse that ability. Myha’la’s capacity to be fierce, driven, and ferocious is belied by a sense of fear behind the eyes. Tao’s whisper-to-scream range was also praised by Kyle. In a show that moves as fast as Industry does, the actor’s ability to convey vulnerability, duplicity, and cunning requires exceedingly expressive faces, and Industry is full of them. “Getting to see these actors grow up on the show has been exceptional. Each season, the writing challenges them to go to new and often uncomfortable places, and every time the dailies come in, I am so impressed.”
In the casting of Heaton and Shipka, the actors discussed with the producers that their roles in Industry would subvert their images. “They both took some huge risks by taking on some of the subject matter we cover in this show. It’s one thing to want to change your image, but I think they both deserve a ton of credit for taking on some really challenging acting work as well,” Kyle shared. But of all the new characters introduced in season 4, Max Minghella’s Whitney Halberstam is most dominant. Best known for his work as one of the jilted partners of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network and the driver/love interest turned Commander in The Handmaid’s Tale, Minghella shines like never before in Industry. Halberstam’s benignly confident exterior papers over his pathological and hedonistic tendencies. In a way, “He does a great job of presenting this well-thought-out image of a man, but the reality is, there’s nothing there,” as Kyle put it. There’s certainly nothing to Halberstam that you can grasp. He is a man who lies so easily and fluidly, it’s uncertain if he even knows when he’s lying or not.
Whitney Halberstam is a remarkable creation. He’s a confidence man, and quite likely a sociopath. But he’s also brazen and brilliant enough that he might be able to escape the house of cards, fraudulent payment app/bank (cleverly called Tender) that he’s fronting to a perilously high stock price. Halberstam is all about leverage. When he loses it with one person, he quickly finds it with another. In season 4, poor Henry is his mark. As the two men sit across from each other on a plane in the season’s final episode, it’s clear that Henry has only two choices: go with Whitney or open the cabin door at 30,000 feet and jump.
Every season of Industry thus far has had one thing in common: endings are beginnings, and beginnings are endings. As Kyle stated, creators Down and Kay “write themselves into a corner, and it’s fascinating to see how they will get out.” I asked Kyle how it is that a show about people with so few redeeming qualities can continue to succeed and grow its audience.
His answer was simple and on the money:
“Because it’s entertaining.”
He’s exactly right.
Just after our interview, HBO renewed Industry for a fifth and final season. The network continues to show faith in a series that was once a hidden gem, but is now a dark star, out in the world for all to see, and with one sure-to-be riveting round-up to come.
All episodes of Industry, seasons 1-4, are available to stream now on HBOMAX
