‘Industry’ Season 4 Finale With Creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down

Chris and Andy talk about the ‘Industry’ Season 4 finale and how it sets up the final season (1:23). Then they are joined by series creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down to discuss Yas’s dark heel turn, Harper’s soft evolution, the espionage thriller elements of the season, whether or not it’s a sentimental show, and so much more (31:12). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Email us! [email protected] Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guests: Konrad Kay and Mickey Down Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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  Stand up and walk now.

• 2:11Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me in the studio, the world is showing him what it is, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:23Andy Greenwald?

  Happy Sunday night.

• 2:24Chris Ryan?

  Greenwald, a little bit of a frog in my throat. I promise it's just because it's CR month, not because I'm radioactive with any kind of disease. We come to the end of another season of industry. What we find out is now the second to last season of industry. Season five will be the final season. You and I are here to talk about the season finale of season four, and we're going to be joined shortly by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the creators of the show, to talk to us about this season and this pretty stunning season finale. We could start in so many different places. We've got a time jump. We've got a giant swan dive into the international criminal underworld. We've got my guys in Russia just reaching, stirring some pots. Where do you want to start, man?

• 3:08Andy Greenwald?

  I love the way you talk about them like they're your rivals in Football Manager.

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but they're also like, you know what, I look across the table and I'm like, I see you, old friend.

• 3:16Andy Greenwald?

  I respect the way you play the game.

• 3:17Chris Ryan?

  My cozy bear out there, yeah.

• 3:20Andy Greenwald?

  Like our old friend Clovis once said as he went out the third story window.

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  So what did you think of the finale?

• 3:25Andy Greenwald?

  This was a remarkable hour plus, extraordinary hour plus of television. I remember back in the glory days of Mad Men, when we were podding about it and talking about it, and I was writing about it, I kind of reached this point where I said, it's not only that this is the best written show on TV, it's the most written show on TV. And I did not mean that as a negative. I just meant that everything was labored over and constructed and crafted in such a skillful way that it drew attention to itself and it earned it. And I feel like in 2026, I'm not saying industry is the best show on TV, but it is without a doubt the most show on TV. It is giving us so, so much abundance. Shout out

• 4:08Andy Greenwald?

  your guy Ezra Klein. And doing so in ways that touch all the genres that we love, are completely alive and awake to recent television history. And then also pushing the envelope in terms of a specific, quite bleak vision of the world that we all share and inhabit. And I was most impressed by that. Unafraid walk towards darkness in this episode.

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you can see some paths that they could take for the last season. I think they introduced in the last episode here very much. Two sides of a political debate that could rage through the final season. If you wanted to take Stefanowitz and Bevan and talk about some kind of.

• 4:53Chris Ryan?

  Whether it's a campaign or whether it's just like an ideological battle that they have. Or they could go in a hundred different directions. They could do another short of the season with Harper.

• 5:03Chris Ryan?

  It definitely feels like the end for some characters. And when those characters are given their their last grace notes on this season. You know, like a lot of seasons of industry, you're just like, I don't really, what's the show now? Like, what happens now?

• 5:19Andy Greenwald?

  Who do you think is on the?

• 5:19Chris Ryan?

  I mean, specifically Yasmin, which we can do the headline now, which is.

• 5:22Andy Greenwald?

  You think she's off the show after the season?

• 5:25Chris Ryan?

  I think that she will have a much different relationship to the show after this season.

• 5:30Andy Greenwald?

  I think she will remain the co-star of the show, but I think that her. Her heroic arc seems to have taken a turn.

• 5:36Chris Ryan?

  And I think like. Yasmin and Harper are endgame. This show has always been about Yasmin and Harper, two hearts intertwined. Yes, they have very, they have some similarities and they have some shared history.

• 5:48Andy Greenwald?

  One way to find out your differences, though, is to seat one of them next to Nazis. Like, that's, you know, it's like a black light in a little bit.

• 5:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:56Andy Greenwald?

  A white light in the sense of like, oh, we're not all the same here.

• 6:00Chris Ryan?

  So this episode opens with the fallout from the previous episode with. The collapse, the full collapse of Tender and the full collapse of of Henry and Whitney's Great Lie.

• 6:11Andy Greenwald?

  Although tellingly, and we could talk to the guys about this, it begins with a political talk show.

• 6:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 6:16Andy Greenwald?

  It begins with a political fallout.

• 6:18Chris Ryan?

  Basically where I'm I'm going with that.

• 6:20Andy Greenwald?

  Which is interesting.

• 6:21Chris Ryan?

  So we get a little bit of. Yasmin asks for a divorce. Henry crestfallen, I guess acquiesces. Henry is also. Seriously considers absconding from the United Kingdom with Whitney. Uh, with a fake passport in one of the best scenes of the season, if not the series. Is he is convinced by Whitney to come to an airport where they're gonna exit the UK and, according to Whitney, kind of re-strategize and regroup, but essentially defect to Russia. And, uh, it's the fake passport that Whitney hands Henry, a Lithuanian passport, that turns him. He finds it like an appalling, shoddy piece of work, kind of.

• 7:05Chris Ryan?

  And it is the class monster comes out one last time for one last great fight.

• 7:09Andy Greenwald?

  Could I, could I use this opportunity to use Henry's words to describe the passport?

• 7:14Chris Ryan?

  Please.

• 7:14Andy Greenwald?

  Your fucking poor boy civilian document.

• 7:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:17Andy Greenwald?

  That's right before he says, eat my shit, you peasant.

• 7:21Chris Ryan?

  They've had some real great standoffs on a plane. I think last time.

• 7:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Chris Ryan?

  When they were flying back to England from New York after the Pier Point.

• 7:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 7:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, speech, uh, meeting. Whitney's like, you know, you can't control your emotions because you're a fucking child. And now we've got the shoe on the other foot and the shoe is a hunting boot. And he is saying, uh, I would never stoop to being, uh, an international con man with no, with no name and no background. Cause even in prison, Henry still feels like he's worth more than somebody like Whitney, who's a complete and total fabrication and fiction.

• 8:00Andy Greenwald?

  You were born a disgusting fucking mooch and you will die a disgusting fucking mooch.

• 8:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 8:04Andy Greenwald?

  I believe is what he says. Uh, tough love.

• 8:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Andy Greenwald?

  I think what, one of the remarkable things about this opening, and then we can get to that private jet scene is, I, I don't know if this is a sign of maturity or just the nature of narrative serialized television, but the boys who will be talking to you shortly, I think are starting to excel at and or prefer writing The Hangover more than The Night Out. Well, this was

• 8:31Chris Ryan?

  This is 40, you know.

• 8:32Andy Greenwald?

  Honestly, this was the Hangover episode. It took me a minute to kind of remember how much time had passed since the previous episode. It wasn't until Quabena was like, you smell like the club H. And she's like, well, that that tracks that I realized that

• 8:46Chris Ryan?

  The club with a K for ketamine. Yes.

• 8:48Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yes. Well, I think you meant the club with the three K's that Yasmin joins at the end of the episode. The that Yasmin's like, good morning, I would like a divorce comes on the heels of like one of the epic benders to end all epic benders.

• 9:02Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 9:03Andy Greenwald?

  But just the kind of harsh light of morning stuff where people are who they are. And that does lead into, I mean, Henry is

• 9:12Andy Greenwald?

  in an amazing season for the character and in an amazing season for Kit Harrington. Is he the most alive and most in control of himself in the moment when when he fully reclaims his landed gentry dick headed niche?

• 9:26Chris Ryan?

  It's it's one last great fight before death because his effective sentence, you know, he obviously doesn't go to prison, but his sentence is to be a lobotomized

• 9:38Chris Ryan?

  middle aged fart on a boat.

• 9:39Andy Greenwald?

  Being being assisted.

• 9:41Chris Ryan?

  By two lords who are just like, just take your lithium and shut up.

• 9:45Andy Greenwald?

  Take your lithium with your ankle bracelet and we'll help you catch fish that we stock the pond with.

• 9:51Chris Ryan?

  The more significant, I think, development of this show, obviously, is there is a six month, I think, a six month flash forward.

• 9:57Andy Greenwald?

  It is weirdly, it is only, I believe, six weeks. I know I noted it because it what happens is we have that we have this big scene on the plane. And then, yeah, and then there's the Interpol notice.

• 10:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:09Andy Greenwald?

  On the screen.

• 10:10Chris Ryan?

  For Whitney.

• 10:11Andy Greenwald?

  That suggests that Whitney has been gone for six weeks.

• 10:13Chris Ryan?

  Well, there's this great smash cut because Henry is sort of decimated. And I can't remember what the last shot is of Henry before we cut to this. I think it's when he's got arrested.

• 10:22Andy Greenwald?

  It's the Turnstile needle drop. One way, by the way, I'm not trying to spoil your enjoyment of the upcoming last season of Industry. But if you do want a sense of what needle drops will be getting, just follow Konrad on Instagram and see what concerts he's been to because we got Turnstile and Geese in. Months leading up to this episode. So the last scene is he comes home from that. He says, I love you. I can change. And then he hears that the police are there.

• 10:47Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 10:47Andy Greenwald?

  But importantly, he is not arrested. The last thing he does is he offers.

• 10:51Chris Ryan?

  And they're like, that's not necessary. You're not even that dangerous. The thing I noted, and we haven't really spoken much about the editing and the pacing of the season in terms of the technical stuff. Is there's essentially a smash cut to the sculpted, beautiful face of of the actor Edward Holcroft, and he plays the character Sebastian Stefanowitz, who's been kind of in the background for a bit.

• 11:10Andy Greenwald?

  He's a reform.

• 11:11Chris Ryan?

  And is a reform MP who is very much cut from the JD Vance, Peter Thiel. Technologist, post-liberal democracy, I believe, both in working people and artificial intelligence.

• 11:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Chris Ryan?

  And fascism. And.

• 11:28Andy Greenwald?

  He tells Harper he'd like her help in designing a new OS, presumably for.

• 11:32Chris Ryan?

  For society. Yes. There is a smash cut to his sculpted, beautiful face. And it's almost as if another character has been reborn. Henry died. And now this chrysalis opens and Stefanowitz takes. It's like, there's always going to be another one. That's the thing in this, in this world.

• 11:52Andy Greenwald?

  Figurehead.

• 11:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's always going to be another bank and another politician and another. They just continue to produce these people. To take these roles and to pull the world in the direction that they want them to.

• 12:05Andy Greenwald?

  Shout out Edward Holcroft, great actor. We enjoyed him recently in The Agency, the first season on Paramount Plus Network. This, we could talk about what the character is, what he does and what he pretends for the future of the show, but I think that the scene you're describing is really important and really artful in underscoring something we've been kind of talking about and teasing a little bit in our conversations about the show. We'll bring it up with the guys, that I think the comp, the HBO comp, certainly not in terms of quality or longevity or anything, but I just mean in terms of construction and intent. The comp for the show is not succession, as I think some people have made in the past because it's UK and there's some.

• 12:43Chris Ryan?

  Money.

• 12:43Andy Greenwald?

  Some witty barbs on PJs.

• 12:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:45Andy Greenwald?

  It, it actually is aspirational towards being The Wire. And the rise of Stefanowitz in this episode reminded me of the incredible Bunny Colvin.

• 12:56Andy Greenwald?

  Appearance in the season finale of season two of The Wire. Where we're introduced to the, I mean, Robert Wisdom, the actor is a semi-familiar face even then. And then we're like, well, why are we following this guy? And it's that swagger of like, he's gonna matter. Because all the pieces matter.

• 13:09Chris Ryan?

  There's a world in which Holcroft is, you know, Stepanowicz is one of the main characters.

• 13:13Andy Greenwald?

  I assume that he is. And I, and I'm increasingly excited about the fact that what the guys seem compelled by, sure, is Russian spy craft and Michael Clayton, who among us? But also the way that modern capitalist society is built on these corroded systems that are desperately intertwined and metastasized onto each other. And you cannot tell the story about one great stock hit without also talking about the larger repercussions for society.

• 13:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and Stepanowicz is meeting with Yasmin and Alexander. Alexander has a kind of neocon suspicion of him. I guess he's a little bit skeptical of.

• 13:54Andy Greenwald?

  You won the Orwell Scholarship, then you became everything he warned us about.

• 13:57Chris Ryan?

  Yes, but when he leaves, you see a glimmer in Yasmin's eye that recognizes the future and recognizes that Alexander maybe is fading. And this is the guy who's gonna step into the breach.

• 14:08Andy Greenwald?

  Rome falls, Byzantium rises. What does Alexander say? He refers to Sebastian's voters as young murderous, under-sexed men.

• 14:19Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:19Andy Greenwald?

  And Yasmin looks absolutely turned on at the possibility.

• 14:22Chris Ryan?

  And I think Stepanowicz calls them working class people across racial and yeah.

• 14:28Andy Greenwald?

  There is something that is so potent and so fissile here in what they're doing with Yasmin, because she is actively turned on by narrative. Like she was trying to sell a television show in Hollywood in 2018.

• 14:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:41Andy Greenwald?

  Like all, everything is zipless, everything is meaningless. Nothing actually has stakes, it's just words. And we saw this, this path was paved earlier in the season when she greased the wheels for the Nazi banker to write his think pieces.

• 14:57Chris Ryan?

  Much to Henry's shock. Where he was like, how could you have him writing a, you know, he's just an old racist. And Yasmin's like, who cares, it'll be yesterday, tomorrow's chip wrapper is like this guy's column.

• 15:08Andy Greenwald?

  It's fun to see the show interact with, and obviously it's interacting with history and European history, but more specifically for the purview of this podcast, with the types of entertainment that we grew up seeing and that your dad gave four stars to in The Inquirer, because this made me think of Remains of the Day. Which is an incredible movie. Have we done that yet for rewatchables?

• 15:28Chris Ryan?

  CR month is a long one.

• 15:30Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe we get like an AG long weekend.

• 15:32Chris Ryan?

  I would love to have Bill do that.

• 15:35Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just saying, I'm avail for that version of the show.

• 15:38Chris Ryan?

  Hopkins top seven butler?

• 15:41Andy Greenwald?

  We got, I think the, in that, in that episode, sorry, in that film, there's like a, like a muck like estate, like a rich, posh, old money family, and the way that the essentially bored steward of the family flirts with Nazism. And it both shocks people, but then it also just kind of happens.

• 16:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, look at the world today.

• 16:05Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. And so the way that it's playing with that same awareness.

• 16:10Chris Ryan?

  Yasmin is a character in this show.

• 16:15Chris Ryan?

  In terms of being a creative, like as a fictional creation for Mickey and Konrad, I've often found very interesting because Marisa Bell is obviously an amazing performer. She's an interesting character. But she's been the odd one out of all, you know, Harper has found her calling in life, which is to be a world killer. She's had people around her. She's studied under Eric. Henry obviously felt like he had some sort of destiny, probably to become prime minister or do something really significant with his life and to have the world tell him, you did something significant with your life. Even Whitney, you know, whoever, like had these kind of directions that they were going with. Yasmin's flirted with finance. She's flirted with client relations.

• 16:59Chris Ryan?

  She flirted with aristocracy. She flirted with comms. And Reader, she found a role. So we move on to a political fundraiser essentially in Paris.

• 17:15Andy Greenwald?

  A law skirting fundraiser because the UK, it's weird. They have these things with like laws.

• 17:20Chris Ryan?

  You're not supposed to take donations from outside of the country.

• 17:23Andy Greenwald?

  You can't.

• 17:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:24Andy Greenwald?

  Although there are shell companies that allow it to be.

• 17:27Chris Ryan?

  Well, I say him for a reason. Yasmin has, you know, brought together a group of right wing luminaries from across Europe to hang out with Stefanowicz in Paris. She has also brought a group of young women, including Haley, including Dolly, who was Eric's partner in the video.

• 17:49Andy Greenwald?

  Who we learn, I believe, although narrative is fluid, is not underage?

• 17:56Chris Ryan?

  I think it depends on how you read what Yasmin said.

• 17:59Andy Greenwald?

  Right, we can get into that.

• 18:00Chris Ryan?

  Men want her to be underage because it is illicit. Girls lie about their age. But girls also discover their womanhood when they want.

• 18:07Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think it's all fluid. I think my takeaway was that it's possible that she was not, but that they fake documentation to scare Eric.

• 18:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:16Andy Greenwald?

  And that the story that Haley and Vladimir Putin told Yasmin is an inversion of that.

• 18:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:24Andy Greenwald?

  That she was always over age or of age, and that Eric asked her to pretend to be otherwise.

• 18:30Chris Ryan?

  Also, I believe present at the Paris party is the barmaid from Henry's town, the estate's town.

• 18:38Andy Greenwald?

  I think from who we met earlier in the season, that seemed familiar. She's the one who thanked her and didn't speak French.

• 18:43Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 18:43Andy Greenwald?

  I also just wanted to note, one of the cool things about the episode was this off to Paris, where Haley's like, remember, when they say, remember, babe, it's Paris, anything could happen. This is the halfway point in the episode.

• 18:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Andy Greenwald?

  This is, these guys have always been elite at playing with our expectations in terms of runtime.

• 19:00Chris Ryan?

  Isn't this supposed to be the end?

• 19:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Chris Ryan?

  So Yasmin, after this dinner is concluded, it's time to retire for drinks and smokes. And young women who sit on these guys' laps, and it becomes apparent that Yasmin is essentially running these women. And it becomes apparent to Harper, who is sitting there with her, and it's just like, what the fuck is going on?

• 19:22Andy Greenwald?

  In Yasmin's defense.

• 19:25Andy Greenwald?

  She's right when she says cock-heavy parties are always dead.

• 19:28Chris Ryan?

  True, true.

• 19:30Andy Greenwald?

  Anyone else want to comment on that? No, okay.

• 19:32Chris Ryan?

  I think, is your camera right on you?

• 19:37Andy Greenwald?

  Where's my light?

• 19:39Chris Ryan?

  And it becomes apparent that Yasmin is assuming the role of a Hailey Maxwell. And that Harper is appalled. And if you think she's appalled at one moment, Yasmin shows her the video of Eric

• 19:53Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 19:54Chris Ryan?

  receiving favors from Dolly. And it's a great scene, just because Harper is, Mahala is just kind of like working through like, what the fuck is happening? And she's like, why are you showing me this? But then the more important question is like, why do you have this?

• 20:12Andy Greenwald?

  What are these voices coming out of your mouth? Who are you? What have you become? This isn't you. Take my hand, and then...

• 20:17Chris Ryan?

  And she says, if you've ever cared about me right now, take my hand and let's go. And Yasmin takes her hand, because she has cared about her and does care about her.

• 20:25Andy Greenwald?

  And does a godfather kiss.

• 20:26Chris Ryan?

  But gives her a kiss and is just like...

• 20:28Andy Greenwald?

  The Fredo kiss.

• 20:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. You can bounce.

• 20:32Andy Greenwald?

  So, it's horrifying.

• 20:34Chris Ryan?

  It's horrifying also considering her family history, which I think fictionally represents or follows loosely some of Hailey Maxwell's background.

• 20:46Andy Greenwald?

  I think it says Ghislaine, isn't it? The G, I think you say?

• 20:48Chris Ryan?

  I don't think so, man. I think it goes Ghislaine, isn't it?

• 20:50Andy Greenwald?

  Kaya, what do you think? As our FD next verse.

• 20:53Speaker 08

  Great, thank you. I always thought it was Shalane. Ghislaine Maxwell.

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  That's just, I don't trust that.

• 21:00Andy Greenwald?

  Ghislaine.

• 21:00Chris Ryan?

  All right.

• 21:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's okay.

• 21:02Chris Ryan?

  Maybe in France they say Hailey.

• 21:03Andy Greenwald?

  You don't know her as well as I do. Clearly.

• 21:06Chris Ryan?

  My point being, I think this is gonna come as a shock to some people. Even though if you look at the breadcrumbs, they may be...

• 21:13Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, there's no sentimentality here. And that is something to be, that I respect, in the way Mickey and Konrad work. And I think it might be a bridge too far for some viewers of television. I think that's okay. We knew from the beginning, even when we and they didn't know this would be a five-season epic spanning genres and eras, that this was... An origin story show because it's about kids starting on the ground floor of a business.

• 21:39Chris Ryan?

  It's a really good point.

• 21:39Andy Greenwald?

  We didn't know it was the origin story of a supervillain and they probably didn't either. But it's fascinating that they've chosen to lean into it. And I would push back on one thing when you were saying that we know what some characters want, but not necessarily Yasmin. I would argue it's the opposite. I think that of all the characters the show has introduced, Yasmin has had the cleanest, not the straightest path, but the cleanest relationship to what she wants and needs. It's constantly said.

• 22:03Chris Ryan?

  She wants to feel necessary.

• 22:04Andy Greenwald?

  She wants to be wanted and she wants to be necessary. And she wants to have people do what she wants. I mean, she says it this season as well about when she was younger.

• 22:13Chris Ryan?

  But it's not, it's outside of romance. I think that that's the thing is because like.

• 22:17Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 22:18Chris Ryan?

  The Rob relationship gave her that in some ways.

• 22:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it was.

• 22:22Chris Ryan?

  It was, let's just jump in this car and go on, go on a road trip and get out of this place.

• 22:27Andy Greenwald?

  She could never actually.

• 22:28Chris Ryan?

  And it wasn't enough.

• 22:29Andy Greenwald?

  It's not, the actual love isn't enough. And that echoed in the very haunting scene where she plays the last voicemail from her father, where written into that, every word of that, that monologue is basically, it's commodity trading. Bring a friend, be you, you're desirable. I've named a rich boat after you. Don't bring boys, be sexy, be have that, there's your value.

• 22:52Chris Ryan?

  I couldn't help but wonder.

• 22:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Chris Ryan?

  Carrie Bradshaw's voice, what our dad voicemails would be. Andy?

• 22:59Andy Greenwald?

  Do it.

• 23:01Chris Ryan?

  Recently saw Hamnet.

• 23:02Andy Greenwald?

  No, the voicemail. I recently received eight voicemails from my father and I called him back and he said,

• 23:11Andy Greenwald?

  article in New York Times about Tokyo style pizza. Have you, have you heard of this?

• 23:16Chris Ryan?

  Call me to discuss.

• 23:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. So, you know, I definitely played it five times lying on the floor in a bathrobe. And we could talk about it. But so.

• 23:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Andy Greenwald?

  The, the interesting thing to me is the Harper of all of this scene. Quabena says something and I think we don't need to delve too deeply into this because it's something I want to talk about with the guys directly when we have them on the line. But he says, are you an NPC? And.

• 23:46Andy Greenwald?

  She's kind of been an NPC this season.

• 23:48Chris Ryan?

  Harper.

• 23:48Andy Greenwald?

  Harper.

• 23:50Andy Greenwald?

  There was a, you and I were joking offline the other day and I was saying like the real twist is that Harper's been a ghost all along, like Henry's father.

• 24:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:01Andy Greenwald?

  There's a version of the season where that's true. She profits from everything. She sets some things in motion.

• 24:07Chris Ryan?

  She doesn't go to Africa, she doesn't.

• 24:09Andy Greenwald?

  She floats above.

• 24:10Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 24:10Andy Greenwald?

  And her own journey is really opaque and off screen, literally and figuratively. She tells Quabene, oh, my mother died the other, you know, it's all internal for her. I actually don't know what she wants. And I think the potential excitement for season five is this character stepping into what she wants. She's not finished, she's not done, but more specifically fueled by what happens at the end of the episode. Because I think one of the defining things of the character is that she is post-class, post-racial, post-American, post-anything. She is just pure id and capitalism. Like, this is the system. I will win this game. And it is all a game on some level.

• 24:51Andy Greenwald?

  When she sits down at that dinner, it's Paris, babe, wear a beautiful dress. And there are Nazis there.

• 24:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Andy Greenwald?

  And they're like, you're not like the other ones. And then her friend is sex trafficking potentially underage girls.

• 25:02Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 25:03Andy Greenwald?

  And the actual reality of the people who she does business with, who she associates with, who she becomes close friends with, hits her in a way. I don't think it's any coincidence that the next scene is kind of her, one of her few real emotionally vulnerable moments of the season with Quabene, where she says, is it just because you're the only other black person I interact with? Like, the show steers away from things in ways that can be interesting, counterintuitive. And it ran towards who she is at her core as a woman in the world, as a black woman in this world, in ways that I found really compelling and interesting in what it might mean for a more moral line going forward.

• 25:43Chris Ryan?

  I think that. This is really, this isn't really a criticism. I would like to see Harper do something other than short a company next season.

• 25:51Andy Greenwald?

  Right, yeah.

• 25:52Chris Ryan?

  I, another note, just on the Asman stuff, which I think is going to be discussed ad nauseam over the next couple of weeks, because it's a major turn for a major character and a really significant show, albeit somewhat of a cult one, but still a very significant show. And it's done quite well this season.

• 26:10Chris Ryan?

  I think it's worth noting the scene with her and Haley, when she asks Haley if she has footage of her and Henry, which I was reminded, takes place in a room, I believe, with Hitler paintings. So, there's a couple of different elements of embarrassment there. But the idea that this is like-

• 26:29Andy Greenwald?

  Not the good paintings, is what you're saying.

• 26:31Chris Ryan?

  Not those great landscapes.

• 26:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the watercolors.

• 26:34Chris Ryan?

  The, the idea that there is compromat on everybody, and that rather than anyone being in control, we're all part of this sort of ever-changing, ever-corrupting organism that is the world.

• 26:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:49Chris Ryan?

  And that even someone who is positioning herself as the architect of a blackmail ring for, you know, rich and powerful men, that she will then shove the way of the world that she wants, technically it looks like towards Stefan Fitts's way of thinking.

• 27:09Chris Ryan?

  She herself is still under Haley's thumb. I mean Haley does not say like, oh yeah, you're totally in the clear and I destroyed the tapes and you're all good, you know?

• 27:17Andy Greenwald?

  I believe she says, and I wish you took the opportunity to quote the show directly more, just for the purposes of compromat that Kaia and Kai now have, but I believe she says that she masturbates to the game tape.

• 27:26Chris Ryan?

  That's right. And it reminded me of-

• 27:29Andy Greenwald?

  I tried to say that with gravitas.

• 27:31Chris Ryan?

  A different kind of way of the way like Whitney responded to Henry's question about the same thing, where he was like, do you think I'm capable of that? And he said, yes. And he was like, there's your answer. That was essentially Haley is- Being provocative about like, I find it stimulating, but it's like, it still exists.

• 27:47Andy Greenwald?

  The show is achieving rare air and incredibly successful air for this season, which I've struggled with at times, when it steers towards this jaw-droppingly chilling realization on the part of many people, including maybe even the show itself, that we are all trapped in this morally bankrupt panopticon of contemporary existence. And I really liked the construction of the episode that gave space for Bevan's speech at the beginning, which assails the world the way it is from a institutionalist, left-leaning,

• 28:24Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know, aspirational perspective, where she says, "It's become my job to be seduced and lobbied and falsely loved so that neoliberalism can continue its decades-long project of gutting the moral architecture of how we govern," said as Bill and Hillary Clinton appear before a House committee. And then in this same episode, Stefanowicz and the Nazis are like, "Yeah, this is over. This doesn't work, so we're gonna build a new OS based on racial purity and incels."

• 28:55Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 28:57Andy Greenwald?

  That is the world that we live in, and those are-

• 29:00Chris Ryan?

  Maybe if Sauron brought those guys to Helm's Deep, we'd have a different outcome. You know what I mean?

• 29:05Andy Greenwald?

  That's the most-

• 29:07Chris Ryan?

  Actually, I think Sauron was looking for that.

• 29:08Andy Greenwald?

  I was gonna say, that's the most ringer-pilled way to explain our contemporary political moments. I think shows are generally, television shows, even the most forward-thinking ones, are generally conservative, small-c in ways of like, institutions will win out, the goodness of people will win out. You know, on Thursday, we were talking about The Pit, and we're talking about how like, the show is essentially about human dignity and how that matters. Like, I think that it is not a small thing that this younger generation, the ones who, as someone says in the opening political thing, are the ones left- Having to foot the bill for everything.

• 29:44Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 29:44Andy Greenwald?

  Are making a television show that's calling bullshit on everyone and not feeling the need to suggest a quick fix, but seeing how people sort of squirm and seek solace and profit in the aftermath.

• 29:58Chris Ryan?

  It's interesting, I think, that like this idea of whether or not Yasmin continues as a character, which I suppose we can ask Mickey and Konrad about in a second.

• 30:04Andy Greenwald?

  She's continuing as a character. I find this an interesting take by you.

• 30:07Chris Ryan?

  There's not that much of a significant difference between what happens to Yasmin at the end of this show and what happens to Eric a couple of weeks ago. It is a place you can't really come back from morally, I think, or.

• 30:19Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, but they can come back.

• 30:20Chris Ryan?

  Sure, yeah.

• 30:21Andy Greenwald?

  And I think everyone can and will. I think that's what they've proven by having, you know, by having people just be on call to show up and you don't actually, it keeps you on your toes. Like, I didn't know Jenny Bevan was going to be a crucial character.

• 30:34Chris Ryan?

  Me neither.

• 30:34Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't know Stefanowicz was going to potentially emerge as the biggest person in season five. I didn't know that that there was more Mastin to play.

• 30:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 30:43Andy Greenwald?

  Including that absolutely stunning scene that we didn't even mention.

• 30:47Chris Ryan?

  Oh, the shopping mall scene?

• 30:48Andy Greenwald?

  Where he basically relays what Russians do and you get the sense that these, these tricky cold fingers of death have touched everyone.

• 30:55Chris Ryan?

  I loved the PM, the chief of staff of the PM and Mastin just being like, stop talking about this.

• 31:02Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm. And, and, and, and the return of the echo of suicide, which is how Henry began the season. And then you end in a place where it's like, it's very plausible.

• 31:10Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 31:10Andy Greenwald?

  For people to commit suicide.

• 31:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I thought it was, it was a funny, uh, end for Henry's character to be on a boat, much like Yasmin's father.

• 31:19Andy Greenwald?

  Great call. When we can, but we can talk about it with them, but I'm curious how you feel, because the setup for the next season, as you said, could be almost anything. Is the show now going to be about, is it gonna?

• 31:30Chris Ryan?

  I have Patrick Raden-Cueff right over here. We can just ask him.

• 31:32Andy Greenwald?

  I would love to talk to him about the state of play vis a vis the Russians in London.

• 31:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:37Andy Greenwald?

  Is it about?

• 31:38Chris Ryan?

  He shows up at the end of this episode, yes.

• 31:39Andy Greenwald?

  To?

• 31:41Chris Ryan?

  Talk to Harper.

• 31:43Andy Greenwald?

  The.

• 31:45Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, who would you think was the bigger get? Patrick Raddenkeef or the Chicken Shop Date?

• 31:51Chris Ryan?

  I think it was probably Amelia.

• 31:53Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think, I think Amelia was probably harder to book.

• 31:55Chris Ryan?

  With all due respect to the writer of Say Nothing.

• 31:57Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm just saying.

• 32:00Andy Greenwald?

  Is, is the last season going to follow a more traditional narrative where Harper is now a hero who's going to burn down?

• 32:06Chris Ryan?

  I don't think so. I don't think that's the worldview of this show.

• 32:09Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's the conventional version.

• 32:10Chris Ryan?

  How could you make a show about Harper taking down Yasmin? We're watching it play out in real time.

• 32:15Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 32:15Chris Ryan?

  The show doesn't lie. It, it, it may be fabulous in places. It may embellish, it may emphasize, but it's, it's fairly straightforward and, and it, I, I, yeah.

• 32:27Andy Greenwald?

  We'll talk to the guys about it, but I think the triumph of the season, which, you know, I'm not, I'm not backtracking my criticisms of the week to week and some of the episodes in the, in the mushier middle of the season. But the triumph of the season to me is the successful argument that it made, that it is a show about a worldview. It is a show about a, um, a moment and a context that I think we will be poorer for when it goes off the air.

• 32:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:52Andy Greenwald?

  They did it. They walked it from one thing to another thing. And, and, you know, maybe when we, we do a post, postmortem, we can talk about how I feel about those twists and turns.

• 33:00Chris Ryan?

  We're doing this on Sunday night. I think one thing we could do is, is return to our mailbag and have people send in questions.

• 33:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Chris Ryan?

  So it's the watch at Spotify.com. But without any further ado, let's get into our interview with Mickey Down and Konrad Kay.

• 33:56Speaker 09

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• 35:39Speaker 09

  We are honored to be joined by Conrad K. and Mickey Down again on this pod. I think this has got to be five or six times that they've, they've joined us, including their legendary GameStop episode on the watch. They've just concluded season four of Industry. The show will return season five and it's the final season. Guys, congratulations on this incredible season of television. Andy, why don't you, why don't you take it away?

• 36:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, congratulations, guys. I think the GameStop episode was legendary. I wasn't a part of it. So for me, the legendary episode, Mickey, is the episode you did from the delivery room as your first child was coming into the world. I feel like that showed a really, really healthy balance of work, life, and I respect it and appreciate it.

• 36:16Speaker 11

  Thanks, guys, and dedication to the watch, obviously. Yes.

• 36:19Andy Greenwald?

  Above all else, and it is noted. Season four was at once the most ambitious season of the show. I think everyone watching and everyone making it would agree. There was a change in setting and tone, sometimes in genre, and it was also the most compressed in terms of getting your order for the series, writing it, producing it, delivering it. So both and. Can you talk us through, Konrad, you want to get us started about how you approached each of those challenges and how one affected the other?

• 36:44Speaker 12

  Part of the thrill for me and Mickey, the way she has credit, what they've allowed us to do with the show is to continuously get in there and come with a very fresh mindset of like, almost how much, how much load can these eight hours bear in terms of our ambition for it without moving the price point of the show that much. The ambition has just grown because our, as writers and as filmmakers, just year on year, we've become more ambitious about what we think the story can be, you know? Like if, the thing we would say to each other is like, if we weren't doing industry now, if there wasn't a fourth season of industry, what would we be, what would we be interested to write it? So like, when we got into the room, we were talking about all our, you know, favorite conspiracy thrillers. We were talking about Pacula, we were talking about Michael Manzi, insider, talking about conspiracy thrillers generally. We were like, well, why can't we Trojan horse that sort of idea into the,

• 37:28Speaker 12

  what we've already done with the characters? And what we thought was kind of interesting to us was the level of reality and versatility we brought to the first couple of seasons meant you had incredible buy-in with these characters already. You were connected to them. They were three-dimensional, hopefully. They were played beautifully by the actors. There was almost, the stakes of the story were kind of exciting for us then because they felt so human, so real, but bolting them into something that felt more propulsive, where the, where genuine threat actually existed at the edge of the world and then in the center of the world. It's kind of all like, that was thrilling. I mean, and the compression is, you know, the compression is just the nature of TV, like.

• 38:05Speaker 11

  We knew we were up against it, but in a way that kind of that focused the mind and made us more determined to succeed and sort of like, you know, pull it off. And I'm sure that we go through, you know, there are imperfections in the season, but in terms of like what we set out to do, and you know, we've cited May times quite boldly before the season started that we were influenced by like Michael Clayton and obviously Gilroy is a big influence to our writing. I think in terms of what we set out to do, I think we we sort of landed in a ballpark of it.

• 38:33Chris Ryan?

  Mickey, Konrad's alluding to like how, what, what kind of load bearing show this is and how it can support all these different ideas and all these different genres. But what's the line of what has to remain core industry DNA? And obviously, like there are central characters who we are stuck with, not stuck with, but we are traveling along with throughout this season. Well, I mean, the thing is, is that it's not a sentimental show.

• 38:58Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. Drop your anti Yaz takes now.

• 39:00Chris Ryan?

  It's not.

• 39:00Andy Greenwald?

  This is a safe space.

• 39:01Chris Ryan?

  I wasn't, it's not anti Yaz. It's just like putting characters in a position where it's hard to see paths forward for them morally.

• 39:08Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know what you mean. I saw the finale and I'm rooting for her more than ever. But please, Mickey, you take the floor.

• 39:12Chris Ryan?

  What is, what is the DNA of industry that has to stay steady so that you can, guys can then freestyle with other things like genre?

• 39:19Speaker 11

  Firstly, I will say, I think it is a sentimental show in some ways. I think the sentimentality of it is at the edges of it, as Konrad said, there is romance at the edges of it as well. And when it does reveal itself, I think it's all the more powerful, given how cynical the rest of the, the kind of the, the exploration of the world is. And the core DNA of industry, there's a few different things. There's kind of like intellectual DNA of mining Konrad's voice and the way that we look at the world and the way that we are quite cynical in our take on, on, on this world. And then there's a kind of like, we always talked about this thing being like operatic and being this huge backdrop that we've painted in the, in the, in this season. And in a sort of Shakespearean way, without being too grandiose, it still needs to have, you know, the, the sort of

• 40:02Speaker 11

  the core sort of intimate relationships that you, that as Konrad said, who built for three seasons prior. Coming to the show so cold in season four and getting this kind of like sort of corporate conspiracy thriller. Would have felt received version of something else. I think it's because we had the Harper, the Yasmin relationship, but we had the Harper Eric relationship with the core of it. I I was interested to see how those relationships would work in this sort of new landscape. And, you know, another sort of very practical thing is the show has to be about finance in some way. We've talked about the fact that we wanted to widen the aperture between seasons. We, you know, we went for a trading floor. We then went to a trading floor dealing with a telly health company and then we were suddenly in an actual company in the E S G season.

• 40:46Speaker 11

  And now we weren't like writing about, you know, the intersection between politics and media and finance. But it has to really be about finance. It has to have something to say about finance and how finance sits within that ecosystem. So like, we're always talking about what's the trade, like, what is the trade that harvest bid on? And in some ways, this season was pretty simple in that regard. Because the first three seasons, I mean, the first season in particular was a kind of like, you know, it's been said that the finance speak in that season was kind of techno babble. And as we continue to produce the show, we tried to make the finance speak actually story speak as well. And in season four, we kind of tried to present the the easiest version of a trading success story, which is Harper is on one side of it.

• 41:29Speaker 11

  Yeah, and I know it with Eric and the Yasmin's on the other side with Henry and Whitney. And she wants the thing to go down and they want the thing to go up. And we thought people would finally have an intelligible finance story to follow. And obviously that didn't happen because as always, the industry, we think you've written something really intelligible. And it's ended up being incredibly unintelligible. But that's really important to us. Like going for going forward. You know, I love writing about politics. I love writing about, you know, upper classes. I love writing about this sort of entrenched class system. But the show is a finance show. And even though we've like removed pinpoint, removed the trading floor, removed what the sort of, in some ways, the sort of like anecdotal authenticity of the first season, we're still interested in how finance is driving the story.

• 42:11Chris Ryan?

  I still have time for any financial techno babble. When Harper's like peel that off into the puke or whatever, when she's like selling. I was like, that's really good.

• 42:19Speaker 11

  One of my favorite ones.

• 42:21Andy Greenwald?

  Did you have a moment though, when you thought when Kenny picked up and he said, who is this? And I thought all of a sudden that's what the season was doing.

• 42:28Andy Greenwald?

  When he like literally was gonna say just ghost like he didn't know who they were. And I was like, but I guess it's a testament to you guys that I was like, well, they'll probably find a way out of this. We do want to talk specifically about some of the decisions in the finale, but I did want to bring it all the way back to the premiere of the season. There was a lot of labor necessary. No, not labor party, labor in the other sense to, there was also, what was the tin can head party?

• 42:49Speaker 11

  Count Binface.

• 42:50Andy Greenwald?

  How's he doing in the by-election today, by the way? I haven't.

• 42:53Speaker 11

  I don't know if he's standing, actually. We gave him an extra, we gave him one more vote than he actually had received in real life.

• 42:59Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my God. That was really kind of you. See, it is a sentimental show. You started it in a very interesting place with Tender in the Tender 1.0 with the Whitney and Jonas storyline, while you are also reintroducing Yasmin and Henry status, while you are also reintroducing Harper and Eric. Could you talk a little bit, Konrad, about why you started there? And then how challenging it was to bring us from that point all the way to where Whitney ends up?

• 43:25Speaker 12

  From inception, we were obsessed with an idea of a cold open, which threw you, it threw you in with characters that you'd never seen before. And there was this really curious balance to strike where, especially when we're doing iterations of the first few drafts of the episode, and even in the cut, because basically we had this constant push with ourselves, push-pull about how quickly, how many minutes of screen time could we have where we didn't have one of, you know, where we didn't situate a viewer in the universe they already knew. Then there were versions where we had like, you know, maybe 12, 13 minutes even of screen time without Harper or Yasmin or anyone being on the screen. To us, that was just thrilling. Like, I mean, I think the idea of, the idea of a new company, new voices, for it to be so front-footed in some ways was just, to us, just felt like the boldest thing to do. And like, given what we did to the show in

• 44:10Speaker 12

  season three, it felt very natural for the next choice after blowing the precinct up to be the boldest choice we could possibly make. So that kind of like really energized us. And we were just, to be honest with you, we were really excited to get Max Mengele's character, Whitney, sort of stood up and up and on his feet because he's a really, he's such a different flavour for the show. And I think in introducing him to the show, you know, Andy, I've been listening to your season talk about the show and very fairly critiquing it on some of the, you know, you're very balanced in the way you talk about it. But some of the, some of the things you've found slightly challenging with this season, I totally agree. And I've been thinking about it quite a lot, your perspective on it. I think a lot of it boils down to, a lot of your, the kind of the core of your

• 44:53Speaker 12

  critique, actually boils down to the simple one for one replacement of Rob with Whitney in terms of screen time. Because you take a character who, in a way, with Harry Lauty, by design was this, in some ways, such a soulful character, such an anchor in the character, and you replace him with effectively a kind of cipher, avatar of capitalism, maybe the closest thing to an out and out villain or sociopath the show has ever done. And so that, in a way, and you marry that to the fact that the show doesn't really have much time to slow down because of the necessitations of a genre plot. And like, that valence, I think, has really changed the way the show almost presents itself. And I think the pilot was a huge barrier to entry in that regard. But it was the thing that we felt, you know, me and Mickey are so gut led and we're so instinctively gut led. And obviously HBO

• 45:37Speaker 12

  help us do the show. But when we're in a room together, we really just, we drive towards we think instinctively feels like the best and boldest third of the show. And then because I think by our nature of being a creative duo, we just push each other a little bit over that line. There's very little fear in what we do. And I think that's just a function of the fact that we egg each other on, I would say.

• 45:59Andy Greenwald?

  The way you framed it is so interesting. It reminded me of the moment in the finale when Alexander is talking to Sebastian, and he's presenting this very old world conservatism, and it suddenly sounds liberal compared to what, you've moved the window of acceptability. You take out Rob and you put in Whitney, and then suddenly everyone shifts slightly.

• 46:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, and it's also like Whitney introduces a new level of like reality to the show because if Whitney can do what he's doing. Right. There are certain things that seem then more plausible. Mickey, I wanted to ask you about Yasmin in relationship to Whitney, actually. Because when I have been going back through the episodes from this season, knowing what I know about Whitney now, the performance takes on a completely different tenor and I will do so with Yasmin. Even though, you know, the point where she obviously becomes what she winds up being happens somewhat off screen.

• 46:53Chris Ryan?

  In that kind of time gap or whenever that happens. When did you guys start thinking about where Yasmin would end up? Does it predate writing season four? Does it go back to the stuff with her father? And, and, and is this something that you had been charting for her for a long time?

• 47:09Speaker 11

  A little bit of sort of yes, yes, a little bit of both. I mean, in terms of Yasmin's character, both and exactly. When we first introduced Yasmin's father as a character and the first scene we wrote of it, which is after Yasmin's having sex with Max and she comes out into the living room and she sees her father and the first thing her father says to her is this kind of comment about her appearance. And we actually thought that was kind of just a sort of weird, slightly inappropriate thing that a father would say about a daughter. He hadn't seen it for a while. And really, the way that Adam Levy played it skewed towards more creepy than just awkward. And suddenly there was this kind of relationship there which felt like it had to be unearthed. And then obviously, you know, in season three, this sort of allusions to real life storytelling or real life events, as we should say,

• 47:54Speaker 11

  are kind of, they're kind of bold and they're kind of explicit. Like, you know, we've had to talk kind of at length in this kind of like round of exit interviews about Ghislaine Maxwell and the influence of her in the story. And we've been really clear to say that it is not a wonderful, uncompromising regard and that it's, you know, it's, we borrow from all parts of the sort of, you know, borrow from literature, we borrow from the news, we borrow from contemporary stuff. But we did find the kind of biography of Ghislaine Maxwell, kind of in her early years and her relationship with the Robert Maxwell, quite interesting. And we thought parts of that. Biography, actually like sort of always like Wikipedia entry stuff, like the idea about naming a boat after your daughter,

• 48:35Speaker 11

  the boat which you then die on is kind of just interesting and salacious and it felt like it was some stuff that we could shade in with the Yasmine's character. We've never been explicit even with Marisa or even quite honestly with each other about what the nature of their relationship was and why it felt, why it was so icky and you know, I think if we were to tell Yasmine and Marisa that, even as directors, she would not be able to play with the nuance and ambiguity that she plays it with. And so we keep alluding to it, but we never come down too hard on it. But I think even though those sort of biographical elements that we injected into the story in the sort of second and third season, uh, I do think there was a kind of like transactional relationship that Yasmine has with people, which has been there since season one.

• 49:19Speaker 11

  And there's a kind of attraction to vulnerable people and a need to exploit and manipulate them that's been there since season one. She's done it with Rob the entire time. There's a sort of a power dynamics in her sexual exploits. There's, there's the way she speaks to Venetia in season two. It's all there. And the sort of morass of her character just came together until it made us feel like this is a character and a person who is a survivor. Uh, is sort of an exercise in rationalization and that I can justify all my, my stuff because I've been a victim of abuse. And that me begetting my trauma from someone else is fine because it was beget upon me. The addition she wants to like ascend to power, would grab on to people who are in the ascendancy was also something that felt very congruent, congruent with that kind of behavior.

• 50:03Speaker 11

  So then we just thought like, what is the natural progression of this character? What is the natural progression with someone that is an opportunist? Who has experienced trauma, who really looks the other way in terms of the political ideology, ideology stuff. He really doesn't care about left or right. He thinks about power. And then also has a kind of backstory which she feels can feed that. And we honestly felt like push her towards the most heinous version of that character. The audience is not meant to empathize with the character. They're not meant to empathize with any of the characters in the industry. We write them and present them and the audience is allowed to make out of their mind. We've said previously, like they're all Rorschach tests for your own prejudice or for whatever, you know, how you feel.

• 50:39Speaker 09

  My affection for Whitney now is sort of telling.

• 50:44Speaker 11

  Exactly, exactly. Look, episode six was us trying to shade in a character, as Konrad said, became was an avatar of capitalism and ambition for the first five episodes. But with the Yasmin, no, Maurice's performance is empathetic. I think it's just, it's impossible for him to empathize with her in some respect. I think that's the reason we thought we could do this, by the way. I think like, if we had a very cold actress playing this part, we would never push her to this, to this place.

• 51:08Speaker 12

  Because it wouldn't feel human. The truth is also like, we, before the season came out, there was this very funny Twitter thing going around about how like, someone took one of our comments in bad faith and it was all over Twitter, like it said, industry writers make it up as they go along. And like, Mickey said to me very, very fondly, he was like, well, isn't that just the definition of writing, which obviously it is. But equally, the best thing, you know, you guys know this, because you're obsessed with long, long form returning TV. The best thing about long form TV is, you, you can write a season, diagnose it, and then the characters reveal themselves through the writing, right? So like, seasons one and two, we were kind of, you know, building this world, building the characters, trying to understand them via writing them and by watching the actors play them, because that

• 51:51Speaker 12

  would inform how we were writing them. And then by the time we got to the end of season three, you know, everything Mickey said holds. The one thing I'd like to really zero in on is like, we were getting into the room and we, we can't not write about authoritarianism and capitalism, because, because they're very coterminous and because that's been true throughout history, but feels very current to the time in which we're writing. We basically set ourselves a thing of like, in our world, the ascendant power is authoritarian power, right wing, you know, techno feudalism, Stefanovic coming from that world. Who is the most realistic character in, in the insecurities and the desires of the, of the whole, of the tapestry of people we've created, who would most likely start to drift like a moth

• 52:33Speaker 12

  to the flame of that thing? And it became very clear to us that there was an, almost an inevitability of Yasmin ending up.

• 52:40Speaker 11

  You know, being a comms director, which is kind of a skill set from almost season two in The Private Wealth Management, saw this right wing authoritarian. It was kind of like, and the best thing, the best thing about the story from my point of view, and I know I can speak for Mickey, is that there was no other story for us to tell. It wasn't like, it wasn't like, oh, we have a thousand, we have a thousand versions of what we can do with the as in it was like, the mo, that was the thing, that was the story that was the impul, the creative impulse in us had to follow to this logical conclusion.

• 53:05Andy Greenwald?

  One of the things that, that I know I love, that we love about the show, on screen in terms of what you, what you get out of the actors, and also off screen in terms of, you know, our interactions with you guys and seeing, you know, the viral dancing videos that some of you participated in, some of your cast participated in, is the closeness that you guys have with the cast. And when you bring them into the family and how they become part of it, it's resulted in like, you know, a career redefining performance from Kit Harrington, which has just been astonishing this season. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the conversations you have with, we could talk about it with Marisa, we could use Kit as an example, whichever of them loans itself more to it, in terms of building, building them a character ship pointed in the right direction, to get them

• 53:49Andy Greenwald?

  to the places that they end up over the course of a season, because you, the scripts are long, are dense, the scenes are heavy at times. And yet, these characters, these actors always seem to have a north star and a compass that I imagine you're providing them with. Specifically, a question is about like, what do they need? Did Marisa at some point say that she needed a club night with Harper? Do you have to have the conversation about why she needs that? How do you keep them on the track that you are designing for them as you go along?

• 54:13Speaker 11

  So, Marisa, it is a bit of a cop out answer, Andy, but we've been living with this character all as a, you know, as a team for the last, like, essentially the last seven years from inception to, to where we are now. And they have just both grown in the character, but also informed our writing of them. So, we lean into the attributes that an actress like Marisa has. And I spoke about, you know, the idea, this is a very empathetic performer. She's very funny. She has heart in her performance. She can make dialogue that feels kind of stiff at points or purple, feels completely naturalistic. Like, that is what we write towards. In terms of actual

• 54:55Speaker 11

  This sort of journey she goes on this, on this, on this season, I think in the same way that me and me and Colin approach all the characters, which is a place of love, she has to almost at least understand what is running or what is motivating, was motivating Yasmin. I feel like if we start in saying that Yasmin ends up sort of running this kind of quite controversial sex ring thing and that's like, and I feel like that's going straight to like Z there would really scare her. And I feel like it was a conversation that we had, which is an evolving conversation about why she's got there, which allowed her to get to, to, to, to play that with any kind of heart.

• 55:35Speaker 11

  And I feel like for Kit, we joked with Kit at the end of the shoot, which is like, which is that he had essentially just done everything by the end of the season. And again, like season three, Kit, we wrote him as this kind of, sort of NBA, sort of failing upwards avatar of a sort of entrenched class system where people from his kind of background could kind of just, this be on this hamster wheel or conveyor belt towards success. And he played it like that, but then he also played it with incredible empathy when, when he was doing stuff about his family life and his relationship with his father. And he played with a lot of humor. And then obviously, you know, our sort of mantra in the show is if someone's good, you just give them way more to do. So when

• 56:20Speaker 11

  we brought him back for season four, we would have said like, this is what we want you to do, which is kind of everything. This is the journey we want you to go on. We want you to weirdly be a character who is kind of quite rare in this universe in that you have good intentions. Whereas a lot of the characters here, they're kind of motivated by avarice or self advancement and they know that even, and they know they shouldn't be doing it. But like Kit's character, Henry, as is, is kind of, you know, he's novel in the fact that actually he wants to do better. He wants to, as he say, be a good person. He wants to democratize energy and then he wants to democratize Banking. Banking. Yeah. And, you know, he has this, as he's, as he's, someone says to him like, I'm very curious character or a term talks about noblest of the age and.

• 57:05Speaker 11

  He has a huge blind spot around that because he doesn't really understand the significance of someone from his background telling people what to do in this kind of pedantic way. But he wants to be better. And that's the thing we kept telling kids, which is like, you want to be a better person. That's the law starve you.

• 57:19Speaker 12

  And you've got soul, which like with Rob leaving our show, he actually weirdly became the guy who we started to, we always have to write a sort of Faustian struggle for someone's soul or their morality.

• 57:33Chris Ryan?

  And all his interactions with Whitney too, you can just see that soul dying a little bit. And he's just like, I can't believe I'm being confronted by Satan. Like I'm trying to do the right thing here.

• 57:42Speaker 12

  The other thing to say about the actors is they, I think they come to the show because, or at least in Kit's and Max's case, they're hungry for the material as well. Because, you know, you said that Kit got to redefine himself. Like they, they're so good, but they have, they almost had to turn up like athletes. Because, I mean, Max said that he was almost like blacking out, having to learn how much dialogue we were getting to do. But like they, it's their level of dedication to meet the material at the level that they think they need to meet it at. Which means that literally we like, especially in like Kit's case, I mean, for most of the actors, especially the women, the amount of actual direction we have to do to their performance is pretty, you'd be amazed at how low it was.

• 58:20Chris Ryan?

  As a fiend for mojitos, I just, I love the thriller aspect of this season. I know obviously there's parallels to the Wirecard story in Germany that you guys drew from. I was curious about whether or not getting into this kind of new territory for you in this show, this thriller, this corporate and international espionage story, whether it felt like going back to the beginning of the punk rock origins of the show in the first place. Because you're like, you're learning how to tell a spy story and how to tell an espionage story kind of like on the fly. What were the things that you were surprised to find challenging, things that you found surprisingly easy? Tell me a little bit about switching up the tone of the show.

• 59:00Speaker 12

  I'm haunted by a thing that Andy always said a couple of years ago, which is like, you guys have got Sunday nights on HBO, it's the arena. Like it doesn't matter how successful you are, you might never get this chance again. So like me and Mickey have sort of pinned that to our dialogue and said, well, that's the mantra for every hour. But we kind of treat each hour as an event. As we write it. So before we even film it or even begin to edit it where we rewrite it, we just, we set ourselves a target. We have 55 minutes. How do we make it as impactful as possible? And a lot of that really is zeroing in on what we want the tone of that hour to feel like. But like this season, we've had, you know, episode two is this sort of period drama neo Gothic marriage story thing. And we pinned that to the board

• 59:43Speaker 12

  and right, that's, that's going to be that episode. Episode six is going to have a voiceover the first time in the show and it's going to have to do all this, all these things. Sweepy is going to go to Ghana in five and it's going to be a bit of a riff on Michael Manzi insider. We start with that kind of like macro idea of that's what's going to make an event for an hour. And then we sort of whittle that down, obviously into breaking the story. I've got to be honest, we, I guess things operate from a place of no fear again. And maybe that's some, some shows in the, Mick, you can jump in because I'm waffling, but I know that sometimes shows in the excesses of what we're doing and some of the imperfections of the season. But yeah, I mean, I can speak for Mickey. I have no idea, but I, I, we sort of, our approach is always jumping in two footed.

• 1:00:23Speaker 11

  Definitely. And it's funny, I can't remember what exactly you said, Andy, in the last podcast, but you said something about feeling that we should have had the confidence, maybe that was the wrong wording, to basically leave all the sort of the more, I don't know, like espionage inflected stuff about Russia to season five. But then we're only, you know, we're working off your principle, which is like, we've got Saturday nights on HBO, like we've only got one chance to do this. We have no idea if we're ever going to get a season five. So we have to basically burn through all our best ideas. Mother Russia waits for nobody. Come on, man.

• 1:00:55Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, later I talked myself out of it. I, I think, and I, and I think I genuinely admire this, that like, everybody is a radical until they're actually in the firing line. You know what I mean? Like, like, what is it? No atheists at foxholes? Am I just getting my war metaphors mixed up? I'm tracking my own creeping conservatism as I watch you guys be braver and braver. And I, I, I'll cop to it. Speaking about going for it, this is as good a segue as any. The returns of Rishi and Eric were not guaranteed, considering where each character was left in season three. I think there was a good sense that we had a feeling they would return, both because, as we were saying, you guys are pretty fearless about painting yourselves out of corners you may have painted yourself into, but also

• 1:01:37Andy Greenwald?

  because Cigar and Ken have become such close collaborators and are brilliant in these roles. That said, their returns were. Shocking in sense of how aborted they felt, you know, that we, I think as in viewing them week to week, I was like, okay, well, this is the launchpad for something larger and there either wasn't room for it, or that my thinking was more conventional, that there would be some sort of redemption arc. So I wondered if you could talk about the ways you considered their returns and how you were able to deploy them with the limited real estate left for them in such a large season.

• 1:02:10Speaker 12

  The Rishi one was quite particular. I mean, we did something which we saw blow up the grammar of the show by having his wife executed at Poem Bank Range in the finale of season three. I think if we thought we were coming back, we might not have done something so bombastic. That said, when we got into the writers' room, we were talking about, oh, Rishi's second act, like, is it a prison drama, like, you know, like the Jacques Audiard movie, a prophet? Are we following him through some sort of netherworld where he has to repay some debts? And all of this started to feel like we were-

• 1:02:38Chris Ryan?

  Konrad, don't tease me with a good time, man. Come on. You can't just drop a prophet and then just be like, eh, we didn't do it.

• 1:02:45Speaker 12

  That does sound fucking good. But we just, the truth is, we didn't have the real estate to do something like that. And it also felt like a betrayal of the Rishi show to Mickey's earlier point about it being a purely, you know, a show that has to have a bedrock in finance and trading and all of those, all of the things that it started about. But equally, you know, and we wanted to, there's a weird inevitability when you start to break story in a writers' room where you, I think maybe this is what kind of happened with Eric and Rishi, where you start, you start to, like, it's not like we think, oh, they have to exit in episodes four and six, but there's a way that the story reveals itself as we're breaking it, which feels like, well, this is the, this is the organic endpoint for these characters. And for us, we thought like, we thought Rishi,

• 1:03:28Speaker 12

  I mean, I made this joke to Mickey, but like, how could we take Rishi to hell? Well, we, we put loads of coke in front of him and gas or drunk coaxed up Yorkshiremen to start monologuing about the, you know, late capitalism, the ills of late capitalism, you know, and anyone, a lot of people have been in that position probably at Afterparty and wanted to throw themselves out of a window.

• 1:03:49Andy Greenwald?

  That monologue sounded a little Konrad-esque after two pints, I gotta say.

• 1:03:53Speaker 12

  I think we're both running our collective subconscious a little bit too close to the bone on that one. Mick, what I mean, what, how do we conceive of Eric versus Rishi?

• 1:04:00Speaker 11

  I, I also think obviously with the Rishi thing, we wanted to just, I mean, we came on the watch after season three and intellectualized that execution of his wife. And, and you know, honestly, again, we didn't know we were going to come back and it was quite difficult to, to ride ourselves out of that particular hole. And as Konrad said, we tried to, you know, we kind of conceptualize all the versions that both kind of received, um, stuff about him being in prison. And we just thought, what actually happens to someone like that, that has been spat out by the system? What do they do? Someone that actually feels that they need money, they need adrenaline. I thought like, the only thing I can, you know, he's, he has a drug problem. There is very easy access to large amounts of narcotics now through the internet.

• 1:04:42Speaker 11

  How do you actually make money in a very short amount of time, um, using a computer and, you know, a kind of, uh, maybe a sort of pathological entrepreneurship and you end up being a drug dealer? I thought that's quite interesting. I mean, like he's, but then also we, we talked about redemption and it's funny you keep, you asked about redemption. Your son and my mother is constantly asking me when the, the character is going to be redeemed. And we thought a character like that, does he want to be redeemed? But is there ever any kind of redemption for him? And we talked about like, does he decide to, you know, go after Harper or does he decide to like get a backburn or does he decide to, you know, make restitution for his wife's murder? And we just thought, isn't it more interesting that this guy has just sort of returned to default,

• 1:05:28Speaker 11

  back in his transactional ecosystem and actually hasn't really thought about the fact that he met, you know, was basically the, the architect of his wife's death. Uh, because he just fucking, he just, he just blinkered to it and he's just, he's just flooded his, his, his mind about the stuff with dopamine and, you know, and his sex and getting head in a car. And like, I felt like that was the character we created. And I felt like it would have been a bit of a betrayal of him to give him a redemption arc. So we thought that's giving him the worst possible ending we could. And that's not, you know, Sager is a fucking phenomenal actor. And quite honestly, again, like it was kind of an exercise in, we love him, we want to bring him back. We

• 1:06:09Speaker 11

  could have easily just left him and said, oh, he went to jail or, you know, he's out of the world. And because of the, you know, the, the quality of Sager and, and why, and that we love him so much, we brought him back. Um, which is what we do quite often. Um, Eric? Again, we had a conversation with Ken at the end of, at the end of season three. One of the last days of shooting where he was essentially like, I think we're done with this character now. At that point, again, we didn't know we were coming back, but it really felt like his conclusion had happened. And then again, we love Ken. We think he's like kind of one of the sort of bedrocks of the show. He always joked about in season one, when we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. We just put the camera on Ken's face and it gave a prestige HBO quality. Um, and we thought we're gonna bring him back and then we thought, okay, what is, what is stuff we haven't seen before?

• 1:06:54Speaker 11

  What if, what if Ken, I made a conversation with Ken and he wanted to do something completely different. Um, he sent us that Samuel Johnson quote, which he uses in the, uh, which he uses in the crossword. And we just thought about a, so an arc where he is trying really, really hard to be a better person. He has, as he said, lived the life of leisure, lived the life of, um, you know, what's he saying? He's lived, I like, it's all leisure, all business and he hasn't been able to really square the two together. And we just, and practically we wanted to see him work at Harper. We wanted to see him kind of back on his feet. We wanted to see him successful in a professional capacity. But then again, like all these characters in some ways always revert to the norm.

• 1:07:38Speaker 11

  They always, when obstacles are put in front of them, they go back to what is easy. And we gave him a, you know, very kind of awful and operatic ending, which we were kind of scared. We were like, oh, is he gonna push back on this? Is he gonna think this is too much for the character? But I think he didn't, you know, he sends us lots of questions about the finances and stuff. He asked us lots of questions for the character, but that was one of the things he really didn't even, he didn't even question. Cause he thought it was a kind of fitting end to the character.

• 1:08:03Speaker 12

  He finds himself blackmailed, but what he, what he chooses to do with the blackmail, how he signs the fund over to. I mean, he doesn't know if the woman's underage or not when it happens. I, I, I always think of it as a kind of lost stand when he goes on CNN. I mean, Mickey joked about it being like the M and N eight mile beep.

• 1:08:20Speaker 11

  Well, he basically lays out everything that's wrong with him, but to me, it feels like an ownership of his sins.

• 1:08:25Andy Greenwald?

  You guys have been very generous with your time, and we know you got to get back to season five, so if you'll allow one last question that starts with a character, and then I'd like to leave you a little room to walk us into where you're thinking for season five without giving too much away. The character I wanted to focus on for the last question is Harper. I thought it was really fascinating that Quabena says, "You're like an NPC," because that was a lot of the role she played this season. I was joking with Chris earlier that there's a version of the show where she's also a ghost for episodes at a time, much like Henry's father was. And I thought it was really interesting in terms of your storytelling, decision-making process, and also what it might portend for the future of the show, that she is floating above it, she's profiting, she's opaque about her feelings, she's not being honest with

• 1:09:07Andy Greenwald?

  anyone, and then she sat next to two Nazis, and her best friend turns into a sex trafficker. And suddenly, the sort of high-minded prophet overall, she's post-racial, she's post-national, she's post-everything.

• 1:09:19Chris Ryan?

  World killer.

• 1:09:20Andy Greenwald?

  She's the world catches up with the world killer. And I found that to be a really interesting choice, especially for a character that often doesn't remark on her differences in the world that she's dominating. And I wondered if there's some insight there into where she might be going in the final season and where the show might be going as well.

• 1:09:36Speaker 11

  Harper has essentially been living in this sort of pinpoint kind of ecosystem for the last two seasons. She's out of it in the third season, and all she wants to do is get back into it. She gets into the season four, she has a huge amount of success. As you said, Andy, she's like basically moved through these rooms, hasn't really had any kind of conversation about her own identity, really only had a feeling that it accelerated the entire time, like leant into the transactional relationships she has, and hasn't really thought about the consequences or cost of it at all, until really bad things start happening to her, like her colleagues start getting assaulted for her in pursuit of what

• 1:10:21Speaker 11

  she's been doing. And then... She's rich, she's successful, the tender shores words, and suddenly she finds herself in a room with the people who are, she thought were her peers, and she realises they actually hold like really damaging and horrible views. And she first, it's like having a bucket called water pour, you know, actually these are the kind of people that the thing that you have invested your entire life in, that this is the thing that actually ends here, it ends with these kind of people, it ends with the Konrad set like sort of like a sort of co-ten minutes relationship between authoritarianism and capitalism. She has a conversation with Quabber, and I think it kind of unlocks to her that like she's been really focusing on the wrong thing. I'm not saying that since she's gonna have a complete one eighty of

• 1:11:04Speaker 11

  her character, she's gonna lead into every empathetic or connected relationship she has, but she's allowed to start thinking as actually a human being and starting to be, and she's allowed to now start to be honest about her own, you know, relationship with her own ambition, relationship with other people. It's unlocked something for us. It's unlocked like a new part of Harper. And we joked when we started writing season four, that the trick of the season would be to take Yasmin, who was this kind of ingenue salad girl, scared of her own shadow, and turn her into the thing that she's become, which we feel think is a sort of inevitable sort of conclusion of her. But also to take

• 1:11:44Speaker 11

  Harper, who was this kind of go-getter, obsessed of her own ambition, who believed that she lived in a meritocracy, realising that actually the thing, as I said, the thing that she's been pursuing might not be edifying. And actually, there is a world where actually a connected relationship is good for you.

• 1:12:01Speaker 12

  The problem with Harper's arc versus everybody else's arc this season is it's been much quieter. Mahal has played it much more quieter. I think actually just in a very bombastic, operatic, leave it all out there, slightly dense, literary, maybe even overwritten season on some of the characters' part. Her arc has been one of the quieter, more subtle ones, to Mickey's point. Like, I think the tent poles of all of the moments Mickey just laid out, like a treatment of like the first time she says pastoral care to Sweet Pea and gets it thrown back in her face, her having to learn how to be a boss, her losing Eric in the way she loses him, and then the earning to him in the same way. Those are, those are elements of the thing that Mickey's talking about, which is like her dark.

• 1:12:45Speaker 12

  Great white heart, great white shark heart, sort of opening and allowing the possibility of light into it at the same time as Yasmin, which was much more open, at least superficially, becoming a bit more like bitumen black. Like, those two, the characters are always in conversation with each other as a kind of yin and yang. While it would be too crude to say we wanted to leave them in diametrically opposed places, it did feel like, felt like good eight-hour serialized storytelling to take them to a place where things have profoundly changed for both of them. And I just think, I think because Yasmin is effectively so loud and so operatic and so tragic, Gis is so loud and, you know, Whitney's Whitney. I think Harper's is, and Eric obviously exists in a sort of spectacular, almost mob hit kind

• 1:13:29Speaker 12

  of way. I think the Harper story is quieter.

• 1:13:31Chris Ryan?

  It's still amazing, though, because she winds up with $2 million. You know what I mean?

• 1:13:36Andy Greenwald?

  Two million pounds, that's more valuable.

• 1:13:37Chris Ryan?

  Two million pounds. But like, it's, to your point, Cara, it's like, the win is almost less significant than the size of the losses that other people experience, so that almost feels less, it doesn't grab the headlines the way that the other characters will coming out of it.

• 1:13:51Speaker 12

  The morality of it is really important, because it's like, if we're doing the final season and we know we're going to write towards an ending, it'd be very weird for the characters, and especially the lead character. It's good TV for her to have a film that accelerates the whole time, you know, win or cost, hell be damned. But for her to not engage, once she's at the top of the mountain, with what that actually literally means to her day-to-day life, her feeling about herself, would be really weird. It would lack a kind of interiority that would be very strange. It would feel more like network television than an HBO show.

• 1:14:21Andy Greenwald?

  Is it fair to say that that awareness is leading you into season five? That that is, that is a window into where you're thinking? Or is it purely a profit prison drama?

• 1:14:29Speaker 11

  I think, if we were doing 10 seasons of this, I think we'd have to, like, maybe pause that character evolution. But I think the fact that we've left her where she is is just kind of telling about what we're going to do next.

• 1:14:41Chris Ryan?

  Thank you so much for the show. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. We hope we can have you guys on again, maybe to discuss more about season four, but good luck writing season five.

• 1:14:50Andy Greenwald?

  Or just your favorite French prison movies.

• 1:14:52Chris Ryan?

  And also a French prison movies festival.

• 1:14:54Andy Greenwald?

  This is, this is the safe space.

• 1:14:56Speaker 12

  Thank you, guys.

• 1:14:56Chris Ryan?

  You guys take care.

• 1:14:57Andy Greenwald?

  Great to see you guys.

• 1:14:57Speaker 11

  Anytime. Thank you, guys.

• 1:15:08Speaker 09

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• 1:15:35Speaker 05

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