Industrys creators know how the Establishment can crush their characters.
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Spoilers forIndustrys season-two finale, Jerusalem, below.
The moral ofIndustrymay as well be Good luck trying to self-actualize at a bank.
Then it made it harder for Harper to get rid of Eric at the end of that season.
It also felt like something Eric needed to do to her.
Its open to interpretation why.
It feels a bit tawdry, to be honest.
So this is a full stop if youve been watching the show for Eric and Harper.
It felt like the only logical next step in Erics journey.
Yes, its expedient to get rid of her, but it also comes from a place of care.
Theres Eric revealing he paid her hotel bill because he can only express it through money.
- Its the light before the darkness, you know?
And then its a huge climax but also anticlimactic.
We had a list of threads we didnt want to leave behind because it would make us look amateurish.
What else was on that list?M.D.
Theyre not jargon-heavy, slang-heavy people being shitty to each other.
Its not something we have experienced.
The list goes on.
We love talking about old characters.
We brought Daria back!
I love that Greg is now a successful novelist and has a book that Rishi does coke off.
Thats not exactly traumatic twin stuff, but it is something.
Episode seven felt very influenced by theMad Menseason-three finale,Shut the Door.
Have a Seat.,where they organize their own mutiny from the ad agency.
ButIndustrygets right to the fallout in episode eight.
The institution grinds the characters back into place.K.K.
The jeopardy of it was slightly fake.
- We hate mid-season slumps.
I always like it when the penultimate episode feels the most electric.Game of Thronesalways did that really well.
- Whether its a twist or a conclusion.
Or a needle drop!
- Was that an intentional shift?M.D.
We show the consequences a bit more.
Then he has to sit in that self-hatred for the entire pandemic.
- But its Yasmin whos pushing Robert to get the coke, and its Yasmin whos really using him.
Especially in your 20s, your relationship to those things is evolving.
It would feel like a TV trope if Robert was still always partying and Yasmin was always a wallflower.
Fundamentally, ensemble dramas are often about how people change and then revert to a mean.
You meet Don Draper and then how much does he change by the end ofMad Men?
Theres always an underlying insecurity.
To that point, Yasmin decides to stand up to her father and become her own person.
As soon as shes cut off, she reverts back to making Robert help her.M.D.
Shes using the crutch of drugs and the crutch of this guy.
It feels very human and very youthful to have regret and think youve made a mistake.
These characters are in their early 20s.
Theyre still figuring out who they want to be in this place that doesnt reward altruism.
They can just get away with stuff.
And if she were caught, she could probably talk her way out of it.
Someone like Robert would capitulate.
How did you decide to keep him involved in this season?M.D.
It felt like a comment on how our country works.
Youre unable to break the cycle.
Bringing him back to Jesse is him reverting to the norm.
Theres a lot of that in the conversation with Aurore.
Shes like, I see what you did.
Obviously I have to let you go.M.D.
:Shes just better at it than him.
Shes him ten years down the line.
You could read the scenes where she brings up the inquiry, even before that, as manipulative.
I also wanted to tell a story of Black representation that we had never seen before on British TV.
There are some really harsh truthsthat his sister tells him.
That is how families like that operate sometimes, and it felt authentic.
Aside from actual families, there are a lot of daddy and mommy dynamics at play in season two.
Were you thinking about those generational tensions in building season two?K.K.
- Mickey and I are obviously not Gen Z, but nor are we quite geriatric millennials.
Were bang in the middle.
The relationships healthy, but obviously its about succession and the usurpation of power.
Theres this parental sort of love triangle between Jesse and Eric over Harper.
But casting Jay Duplass gave him an affability and empathy.
We found it interesting to think about what motivates someone who has already had all this material gain.
Shes going to, eventually, lead him to the point where he starts using again.
- Of course hes going to go on CNN and use it to his advantage.
Theres a bit of ambiguity about her plan too.
Eric picks up on that.
But Eric thinks she intentionally led him to water and he drank.
Harper, as Myhala plays it, does a very good game of saying she did not know.
But Eric doesnt quite believe her at that moment.
:That hug Jay gives her in episode eight was not scripted.
Its fucked them up.
Eric tries to have a mentor-mentee relationship until she turns into a threat.
Thats why, as DVD says, its difficult for Venetias complaint to go anywhere.
Its not a peer-to-peer issue; this is a client that actually gives us money.
- Poor guy is just too bland to make it through.M.D.
People on Twitter were like, Is he a wolf in sheeps clothing?
And to us, hes just the archetypal finance bro.
He makes jokes aboutHarry Potter!
Bill Adler feels like the Sauron, the true big bad, of the show.
- We have some good ideas for Erics relationship to him.
Hes the most senior person weve seen on the show.
What has he had to do to get to that level?
How has he had to be dehumanized?
- And what is he willing to do to stay there?
Harper says to DVD in episode seven that its his loyalty that cost him.
When we wrote that, we were laughing.
There are references that slip through.
You meet her and shes immediately talking to Harper about how Roxane Gays great at writing the other.
- Shes the most unobvious and yet obvious person for Rishi to marry.
I could watch aFleabagon steroids about her character.
How do you write the chatter that pops up in the background of scenes on the trading floor?
- A lot of it comes from Rishi about her absurd family.M.D.
Its me and Konrad at our most unfiltered.
Theres no gatekeeping of what goes there because theres so much pressure to finish the episodes.
Rishis lines get chronologically weirder and more perverse.
By the time were on his ADR for episode eight, hes saying some unhinged shit.
