Ambition is a curse in the arena of high finance. At the prestigious London investment bank Pierpoint, which doubles as the backdrop for the Gen Z banking drama Industry, a cohort of university graduates vie for money and power. Harper (Myha’la), Yasmin (Marisa Abela), and Rob (Harry Lawtey) are desperate to prove they belong, that they’ve got the mettle to survive the battleground of the trading floor, but Pierpoint is a special kind of hell: Ambition is only as useful as your will to lie, cheat, and outmaneuver your way to the top. As easily as it opens doors, it just as easily gets you stabbed in the back.
“When you go down the laundry list of what they’ve done and what they did to get there,” cocreator Mickey Down says of his beloved characters, “they can be considered pretty heinous individuals.” But their savory deceit is why we watch. It’s why Industry has become The Show of the Season, the internet’s new meme-machine, drawing expected-but-flawed comparisons to Succession, another HBO supernova. Industry is a beast all its own.
Now in its third season, its most audacious and anxiety-riddled, Industry occupies the esteemed Sunday night 9 pm slot that Games of Thrones and The Sopornos made famous. The show is still the show many of us fell in love with when it debuted in 2020: all ego and heart and reckless ambition. Only, Down and cocreator Konrad Kay have upped the stakes even more this time around, illustrating how sinister and deep relationships run across media, politics, and finance for London’s privileged class.
This week’s upcoming episode—deliciously-titled “White Mischief”; fans of Uncut Gems rejoice, this one’s just for you—marks the season’s halfway point. Over Zoom from their respective residences in London, Down and Kay spoke with me about where the show has been and where it’s possibly headed next.
JASON PARHAM: I read that the initial pitch for this season was “coke and boats.” What was HBO’s response?
MICKEY DOWN: We had a 30,000-foot view of what the season was going to be in terms of the business story. And then we thought, look, we shouldn’t be scared to have a slight genre element to the show. We were already talking about Yasmin’s father, which we thought was one of the most interesting parts of the second season. We had the idea that her dad’s gone missing, and she’s been bearing the brunt of that in the media. We had all of that. We just hadn’t decided how to show it yet. So we said, what if we have a secondary timeline that has a bit of a mystery element to it? And what if we start the show from there? So we sent an email to HBO with the header “coke and boats” and said this is where we want to start the show.
Incredible.
MD: We told them that we want to dip back into this timeline when we feel like it’s good punctuation. We wanted to have this slow drip feel of what actually happened on the boat. And their response was very positive.
The show is continually testing its limits. Erect penises. Cum scenes. Crazy yacht parties. All kinds of drugs. Did HBO ever ask you to reel it in?