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

Summary

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

Podcast: The Watch (The Ringer)
Date: March 2, 2026
Hosts: Chris Ryan & Andy Greenwald
Guests: Konrad Kay & Mickey Down (creators of Industry)

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Overview of the Episode

Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan dive into the climactic Season 4 finale of Industry, discussing its bold narrative pivots, standout character arcs, and the shocking new direction for the show's penultimate season. The episode features an in-depth interview with creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, exploring the genesis of Season 4's storytelling choices, the challenges of shifting genres, and what twists may lie ahead for the series’ core characters.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Season 4 Finale Impressions & Thematic Evolution

• Andy and Chris praise the finale’s ambition and genre-hopping bravura, comparing its complexity to Mad Men and The Wire. Andy calls Industry “the most” show on TV right now, providing an “abundance” and engaging darkness not often seen in prestige television.
  • “It is without a doubt the most show on TV. It is giving us so, so much abundance.” — Andy [02:52]
• The finale’s unflinching darkness is seen as a triumph, pushing characters to the edge of morality and opening wide narrative possibilities for the final season.
  • “I was most impressed by that unafraid walk towards darkness in this episode.” — Andy [03:54]

2. Time Jumps, Political Machinations, and Shifting Power

• The episode features a six-week (not six-month) time jump, propelling the narrative into a new era marked by public disgrace, political realignment, and new power players.
  • The rise of Sebastian Stefanowitz as a JD Vance/Peter Thiel-esque MP signals a world increasingly shaped by post-liberal, techno-authoritarian ideologies.
    • “There’s always gonna be another one…another bank, another politician…They just continue to produce these people to take these roles and to pull the world in the direction that they want them to…” — Chris [11:00]
• The power vacuum left by one character’s fall is quickly filled by another, echoing themes from The Wire about the cyclical nature of power and corruption.

3. Yasmin’s Shocking Transformation

• Yasmin’s arc is the finale’s most controversial. Having flirted with various spheres of power, she emerges as a morally compromised architect of a sex-and-blackmail ring serving European far-right elites—leaning on parallels to Ghislaine Maxwell, but with her own Industry twist.
  • “Yasmin is a character who is actively turned on by narrative...like she was trying to sell a television show in Hollywood in 2018...Everything is meaningless. Nothing actually has stakes. It’s just words.” — Andy [13:54]
• Her dynamic with Harper is foregrounded in a key confrontation when Harper pressures Yasmin to break free, but Yasmin instead takes on the role of powerful villain.
  • “What are these voices coming out of your mouth? Who are you? What have you become? This isn’t you. Take my hand.” — Andy [19:39]
  • “If you’ve ever cared about me, right now take my hand and let’s go.” — Harper (via Chris) [19:44]

4. Moral Rot and the Panopticon of Power

• The season systematically demonstrates that compromise and corruption are inescapable within contemporary capitalist frameworks, culminating in scenes of kompromat (blackmail material) leveraged by everyone against everyone else.
  • “There is kompromat on everybody and that rather than anyone being in control, we’re all part of this ever changing, ever corrupting organism that is the world.” — Chris [26:02]
• The episode juxtaposes left-wing institutional idealism with neofascist realpolitik, refusing to offer easy catharsis or sentimental resolution.

5. Character Focus: Harper’s Opaque Journey

• Harper is portrayed as an “NPC” (Non-Player Character), floating above the action, rarely sharing her inner world. Her only moment of real vulnerability comes in the aftermath of Yasmin’s betrayal and the exposure to the ugliness around her.
  • “She is post class, post racial, post American, post anything. She is just pure ID and capitalism...and it is all a game on some level.” — Andy [23:36]
• Creators tease that Season 5 will center on Harper discovering what she actually wants, as she comes to reckon with the true cost of amoral ambition.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “You were born a disgusting fucking mooch and you will die a disgusting fucking mooch, I believe is what he says. Tough love.” — Andy, quoting Henry [07:27]
• “Rome falls. Byzantium rises.” — Andy, on the changeover from Alexander to Stefanowitz [13:35]
• “This isn’t a sentimental show…even when we and they didn’t know this would be a five season epic…this was an origin story show because it’s about kids starting on the ground floor…” — Andy [20:40]
• “Everything is zipless. Everything is meaningless. Nothing actually has stakes. It’s just words.” — Andy [13:54]

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Timestamps for Key Discussion Segments

• [02:52] - Andy’s overview: Industry as the “most” show on TV and comparison to Mad Men
• [05:03] - Discussion on Yasmin and Harper as the endgame/“two hearts intertwined”
• [06:32] - Henry and Whitney’s arc and the private jet confrontation
• [10:55] - Introduction of Sebastian Stefanowitz and the metaphor of governmental OS for society
• [13:54] - Yasmin’s transformation and lust for narrative power
• [18:29] - Paris fundraiser: Yasmin’s role as a Ghislaine Maxwell-type fixer
• [19:39] - Harper’s plea to Yasmin as moral lines are crossed
• [23:34] - Harper's NPC status, journey, and increasing emotional distance
• [26:02] - Kompromat and the sense that everyone is both blackmailer and blackmailed
• [29:25] - The show’s refusal of redemption arcs and embrace of cyclical corruption
• [31:06] - Discussion of real-world cameos, including Patrick Radden Keefe
• [34:32] - Interview with Konrad Kay and Mickey Down begins
• [37:53] - Creators on the “DNA” of Industry and maintaining its core themes despite genre-swapping
• [42:19] - How bold cold opens and new settings energized the show’s writers
• [46:02] - Yasmin’s trajectory: seeded from her earliest scenes and rooted in trauma, power, and opportunism
• [53:06] - The process of working with actors, and how their strengths shape narrative
• [54:56] - Kit Harington’s Henry: Building a rare idealist in a den of villains
• [57:53] - Pushing the genre boundaries: aspiration to make every episode an “event”
• [61:03] - On Rishi and Eric’s returns and why Industry resists sentimental redemption
• [68:29] - Where Harper is headed: Season 5 as a reckoning with her own ambition and consequences

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Insights from the Creators (Konrad Kay & Mickey Down)

• Season 4 was a deliberate genre hybrid, inspired by ‘70s conspiracy thrillers and Michael Clayton—made possible by the deep investment viewers already have in these complex characters.
  • “If we weren’t doing Industry now, what would we be interested to write about? … Why can’t we Trojan horse that sort of idea into what we’ve already done with the characters?” — Konrad [35:37]
• DNA of Industry: The show must always be “about finance” as a lens on power and morality—even as it expands into politics, media, and international intrigue.
• Yasmin’s arc was both seeded from the beginning and shaped by performance: Early hints of a fraught, transactional father-daughter relationship (itself echoing figures like Ghislaine Maxwell) evolved into her present villainy, with Marisa Abel’s empathetic performance allowing the writers to push the character further.
• On casting and collaboration: The creators trust their actors’ strengths and keep them engaged by tailoring roles to their abilities and growth, resulting in major leaps for performers like Kit Harington.
• Pacing and “burning through ideas”: Aware that every HBO season could be their last, Kay and Down chose to run through ambitious twists and genre-moves, instead of saving material for later.
• No clean redemptions: Characters like Rishi and Eric revert to type or are destroyed by circumstance—neither can be easily rehabilitated; Industry resists the idea that TV needs “good” people or closure.
  • “...We thought, isn’t it more interesting that this guy has just sort of returned to default, back in his transactional ecosystem and actually hasn’t really thought about the fact that he was the architect of his wife’s death?” — Mickey [62:53]
• Setting up Season 5: The final season will see Harper grappling with the moral and emotional fallout of her climb, pushing her to confront the meaning (or void) at the top of the hierarchy.

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Conclusion

The Watch’s deep-dive into Industry’s Season 4 finale is an incisive and spirited exploration of one of TV’s most ambitious shows, dissecting its refusal to comfort, its moral ambiguities, and its relentless pace. The conversation with Konrad Kay and Mickey Down sheds rare light on the creative process of long-form antihero television, affirming Industry’s place as a sharp, unsparing look at 2020s capitalism—and priming fans for a final season where all bets are off.

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Transcript

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[Chris Ryan]

to you by the Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game or grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me, the Active Cash Credit card from Wells Fargo. Be a 2 percenter. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward/two active cash terms apply. I need support staff to clear the room.

[Andy Greenwald]

Stand up and walk now.

[Chris Ryan]

Hello and welcome to the Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an [e-mail] and joining me in the studio, the world is showing him what it is. It's Andy Greenwald. Happy Sunday night 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 Conrad K. 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, I Love the way you talk

[Andy Greenwald]

about them like they're your rivals in football. Manager like you kind of admire.

[Chris Ryan]

You know what? I look across the table and I'm like, I see you, old friend.

[Andy Greenwald]

I respect the way you play the game.

[Chris Ryan]

My cozy bear out there.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

So what did you think of the finale?

[Andy 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 potting 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. 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 your guy, Ezra Klein.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

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.

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

[Andy Greenwald]

Who do you think is on that?

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

think she's off the show.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

And I think, like Yasmin and Harper are endgame. This show has always been about Yasmin and Harper. Two hearts intertwined.

[Mickey Down]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

They have very. They have some similarities and they have some shared history.

[Andy 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, I guess a white light in the sense of like, oh, we're not all the same here.

[Chris 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.

[Andy Greenwald]

Although tellingly. And we could talk to the guys about this. It begins with a political talk show. Yes, it begins with a. That's political fallout.

[Chris Ryan]

That's basically where I'm. I'm. I'm going with that, which is interesting. 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 with a fake passport. And 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 going to exit the UK and. And according to Whitney kind of re. Strategize and regroup, but essentially defect to Russia. And 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.

[Conrad K]

And it is.

[Chris Ryan]

The class monster comes out one last time for one last great fight.

[Andy Greenwald]

Could I. Could I use this opportunity to use Henry's words to describe the passport, please? Your fucking poor boy. Civilian document. Yeah, that's right before he says, eat my shit, you peasant.

[Chris Ryan]

They've had some real great standoffs on a plane. I think the last time when they were flying back to England from New York after the Pierpoint speech 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, I would never stoop to being an international conman with no name and no background. Because even in prison, Henry still feels like he's worth more than somebody like Whitney, who's a complete and total fabrication and fiction.

[Andy Greenwald]

You were born a disgusting fucking mooch and you will die a disgusting fucking mooch, I believe is what he says. Tough love. I think one of the remarkable things about this opening. And then we can get to that private jet scene is. I don't know if this is a sign of maturity or just the nature of narrative serialized television, but the boys who we'll be talking to shortly, I think are starting to excel at and. Or prefer writing the Hangover more than the night out. Well, it's 40. You know, honestly, this was the Hangover episode. It took me a minute to kind of remember how much time had passed since the previous episode. And it wasn't until Quabina's like, you smell like the club H. And she's like, well, that tracks that.

[Chris Ryan]

I realized that the club with a K for ketamine. Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, yes. Well, I thought you meant the club with the 3Ks that Yasmin joins at the end of the episode. That Yasmine'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, sure, 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 in an amazing season for the character, in an amazing season for Kit Harington. Is he the most alive and most in control of himself in the moment when he fully reclaims his landed gentry dickheadedness? Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

fart on a boat being being assisted

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

Weirdly, it is only, I believe, six weeks. I noted it because what happens is we have this big scene on the plane and then. Yeah. And then there's the Interpol notice on the screen for Whitney that suggests that Whitney has been gone for six weeks.

[Chris 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.

[Andy 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 we'll be getting, just follow Conrad on Instagram and see what concerts he's been to because we got turnstile and geese in the 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, but importantly, he is not arrested. The last thing he does is he offers his chance.

[Chris 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 this 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. He's a reform 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 and fascism.

[Andy Greenwald]

And he tells Harper he'd like her help in designing a new os, presumably for society.

[Chris Ryan]

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 Christmas opens, and Stefanowitz takes. It's like, there's always gonna be another one. That's the thing in this world. Yeah, there's always gonna 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 shout out.

[Andy Greenwald]

Edward Holcroft, great actor. We enjoyed him recently in the Agency, the first season on the Paramount 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 witty barbs on PJs.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

I assume that he is. And I'm increasingly excited about the fact that what the guys seem compelled by, sure, is Russian spycraft 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. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

of, you won the Orwell scholarship. Then you became everything he warned us about. Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

But when he leaves, you see a glimmer in Yasmine'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.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

And Yasmin looks absolutely turned on.

[Chris Ryan]

And I think Stefanowitz calls them working class people.

[Andy Greenwald]

Across.

[Chris Ryan]

Across racial.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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 Rapper is like, this guy's column.

[Andy 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?

[Chris Ryan]

CR Month is a long one.

[Andy Greenwald]

Maybe we get like an ag long weekend.

[Chris Ryan]

I would love to have Bill do Howard's End.

[Andy Greenwald]

I'm just saying I'm a veiled for that version of the show. Hopkins top seven Butler we got, I think the. In that, in that episode. 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.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, look at the world today.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yasmin is a character in this show. In terms of being a creative, like as a fictional creation for Mickey and Conrad, I've often found very interesting because Marisa Abel is obviously an amazing performer. She is 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, 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, 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, a law skirting

[Andy Greenwald]

fundraiser, because the uk, it's weird, they have these things with like laws related to their elections.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

You can't.

[Mickey Down]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

Although there are shell companies that allow it to be. You think he looks nice?

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

we learn, I believe, although narrative is fluid, is not underage.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

Right. We can get into this.

[Chris 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.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Mickey Down]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

That she was always overage or of age. And that Eric asked her to pretend to be otherwise because that's what happened.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

These guys have always been elite at playing with our expectations in terms of runtime.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris 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 is just like, what the fuck is going on? Like, why are all these.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yasmin's defense, she's right when she says cock heavy parties are always dead.

[Chris Ryan]

True, true.

[Andy Greenwald]

Anyone else want to comment on that? No?

[Chris Ryan]

Okay, I think. Is your camera right on you?

[Andy Greenwald]

Where's my. Where's my light?

[Chris Ryan]

And it becomes apparent that Yasmine is assuming the role of a Helamet Maxwell and that Harper is appalled. And if you think she's appalled at one moment, Yasmine shows her the video of Eric receiving favors from Dolly. And it's a great scene. Just because Harper is. And Mahala is just kind of 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?

[Andy 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.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

about her and does a Godfather kiss,

[Chris Ryan]

but gives her a kiss and is

[Andy Greenwald]

just like, Alfredo kiss.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, you can bounce.

[Andy Greenwald]

So it's horrifying.

[Chris Ryan]

It's horrifying. Also considering her family history, which I think fictionally represents or follows loosely. Some of Ghilaine Maxwell's background in terms of.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

What? Kai, what do you think as our Epstein expert?

[Mickey Down]

Great.

[Andy Greenwald]

Thank you. I always thought it was Ghislaine.

[Chris Ryan]

Ghislaine Maxwell. That's just.

[Andy Greenwald]

I don't trust that Ghislaine. All right, that's okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Maybe in France you don't know her

[Andy Greenwald]

as well as I do, clearly.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

I mean, there's no sentimentality here. And that is something to be that I respect in the way Mickey and Conrad 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.

[Chris Ryan]

That's a really good point.

[Andy 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, Yasmine has had the cleanest, not the straightest path, but the cleanest relationship to what she wants and needs. It's constantly said she wants to feel necessary, 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.

[Chris Ryan]

That's what she wanted outside of romance. I think that that's the thing is because like the Robb relationship gave her that in some ways it was, let's just jump in this car and go on, go on a road trip and get out of this place.

[Andy Greenwald]

She could never actually.

[Chris Ryan]

And it wasn't enough.

[Andy Greenwald]

The actual love isn't enough. And that's echoed in the very haunting scene where she plays the last voicemail from her father where written into that every word of 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.

[Chris Ryan]

I couldn't help but wonder. Yeah, Carrie Bradshaw voice what our dad voicemails would be. Andy, do it recently saw Hamnet?

[Andy Greenwald]

No, the voicemail. I recently received eight voicemails from my father. And I called him back and he said, an article in the New York Times about Tokyo style pizza. Have you heard of this?

[Chris Ryan]

Call me to discuss.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, so, you know, I definitely played it five times lying on the floor in a bathrobe. And we can talk about it, but. So the interesting thing to me is the Harper of all of this scene. Quabina 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 him on the line. But he says, are you an npc? And she's kind of been an NPC this season. Harper, 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.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

She doesn't go to Africa.

[Andy Greenwald]

She floats above. And her own journey is really opaque and off screen, literally and figuratively. She tells Kwabin, oh, my mother died the other day. 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. When she sits down at that dinner, it's Paris, babe wear a beautiful dress, and there are Nazis there, and they're like, you're not like the other ones. And then her friend is sex trafficking potentially underage girls, right? 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 one of her few real emotionally vulnerable moments of the season with Kwabina, 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.

[Chris 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.

[Andy Greenwald]

Right. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Another note just on the Asmon stuff, which I think is gonna 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. 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.

[Andy Greenwald]

But not the good paintings, not the lesser one.

[Mickey Down]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

The watercolors.

[Chris Ryan]

The idea that there is kompromat 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.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris 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. I, technically, it looks like, towards Stefanitz's, Stefanovitz's way of thinking, 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.

[Andy 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 Kaya and Kai now have. But I believe she says that she masturbates to the game tape.

[Chris Ryan]

That's right. And it reminded me, I tried to

[Andy Greenwald]

say that with gravitas, a different kind

[Chris Ryan]

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.

[Andy 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, I don't know, aspirational perspective, where she says, it's become my job to be seduced and lobbied and falsely loved so that the. 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 House Committee and then in this same episode, Stefanowitz and the Nazis are like, yeah, this is over. This doesn't work. So we're going to build a new Os based on racial purity and incels.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Andy Greenwald]

That is the world that we live in. And those are.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

As that's the most.

[Chris Ryan]

I think Soren was looking for that.

[Andy Greenwald]

I was going to 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 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, 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.

[Chris 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 Conrad about in a second, she's continuing as a character.

[Andy Greenwald]

I find this an interesting take by you.

[Chris Ryan]

There's not that much of a significant difference between what happens to Yasmin at the end of the 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.

[Andy Greenwald]

Sure, but they can come back.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure. Yeah.

[Andy 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 gonna be a crucial character.

[Chris Ryan]

Me neither.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Andy Greenwald]

Including that absolutely stunning scene that we didn't even mention. The shopping mall scene where he basically relays what Russians do. And you get the sense that these tricky, cold fingers of death have touched everyone.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

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, very plausible for people to commit suicide.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

Great call, 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.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Chris Ryan]

He shows up at the end of this episode. Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

To talk to Harper the. I mean, who do you think was the bigger get? Patrick Radden Keefe or the chicken shop date girl?

[Chris Ryan]

I think it was probably Amelia.

[Andy Greenwald]

I think Amelia was probably harder to book. I totally.

[Chris Ryan]

All due respect to the writer of say Nothing.

[Andy Greenwald]

No, I'm just saying, is the last season going to follow a more traditional narrative where Harper is now a hero who's going to burn down?

[Chris Ryan]

I don't think so. Worldview of this.

[Andy Greenwald]

I agree. I think that's the conventional view.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

Exactly.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

We'll talk to the guys about it. But I think the triumph of the season, which I'm not backtracking my criticisms of the week to week and some of the episodes 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 moment and a context that I think we will be poorer for when it goes off the air. Yeah, they did it. They walked it from one thing to another thing. And maybe when we do a post post mortem, we can talk about how we feel about twisting.

[Chris Ryan]

We're doing this on Sunday night. I think one thing we could do is return to our mailbag and have people send yeah, so it's TheWatchPotify.com but without any further ado, let's get into our interview with Mickey down and Conrad K. This episode is brought to you by Brooks Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. It can be hard to do your own thing when everyone else is following everyone else. But that's what some of the best films are about. An outcast striving to make their own way in the world. And this is your sign to be that outcast. From us, from vw, from the other outcasts out there. Take a chance, make the most of every day and don't be afraid to veer off course every now and then. Because if you don't do it now, then when? Learn [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by the Focus Features film Hamnet. From director Chloe Zhao and producers Steven

[Andy Greenwald]

Spielberg and Sam Mendes.

[Conrad K]

AFI hails Hamnet lifts the audience high above humanity. And now the Golden Globe winner for

[Chris Ryan]

Best Picture of the year has been

[Conrad K]

nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best

[Chris Ryan]

Actress Jessica Buckley and Best Picture of the year, Hamnet.

[Conrad K]

Our stories live forever.

[Chris Ryan]

Ready PG13 may be inappropriate for children under 13. Now playing in theaters everywhere.

[Mickey Down]

This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business.

[Chris Ryan]

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[Chris Ryan]

We are honored to be joined by Conrad K And Mickey down again on this pod. I think this has gotta be five or six times that they've joined us, including their legendary Gamestop episode on the Watch. They have 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 take it away?

[Andy 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.

[Mickey Down]

Thanks, guys. And dedication to the watch, obviously.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes, 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, in tone, sometimes in genre, and it was also the most compressed in terms of getting your order for the series, writing it, producing it and delivering it. So both. And can you talk us through, Conrad, you want to get us started about how you approached each of those challenges and how one affected the other.

[Conrad K]

Part of the thrill for me and Mickey Duatria's 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 load can these eight hours bear in terms of our ambitions for it without moving the price point of the show that much. The ambition has just grown because as writers and as filmmakers, just year on year, we become more ambitious about what we think the story can be. The thing we would say to each other is, if we weren't doing industry now, if there wasn't a fourth season of industry, what would we be interested to write about? So when we got into the room, we were talking about all our favorite conspiracy thrillers. We were talking about Pukula, we were talking about Michael Manz, the Insider, talking about conspiracy theories, thrillers generally. We were like, well, why can't we Trojan horse that sort of idea into what we've already done with the characters? What we thought was kind of interesting to us was the level of reality and versimilitude 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 and so real. The bolting them into something that felt more propulsive, where genuine threat actually existed at the edge of the world and then in the center of the world. We just kind of thought like that was thrilling. I mean, and the compression is, you know, the compression is just the nature of tv. Like 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'll go through, you know, their imperfections in the season. But in terms of what we set out to do, we've cited many times, quite boldly before the season started that we were influenced by Michael Clayton and obviously Gilroy is a big influence on our writing. I think in terms of what we set out to do, I think we sort of landed in a ballpark of it.

[Chris Ryan]

Mickey Conrad's alluding to 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.

[Andy Greenwald]

True. Drop your anti Yaz takes now.

[Chris Ryan]

It's not a.

[Andy Greenwald]

It's a safe space.

[Chris 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.

[Andy 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.

[Chris Ryan]

What is the DNA of industry that has to stay safe, steady, so that you can. Guys can then freestyle with other things like genre.

[Mickey Down]

First, 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 Conrad said, there is a romance at the edges of this world. 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 the core DNA of industry. There's a few different things. The kind of like intellectual DNA of mining Conrad's voice and the way that we look at the world and the way that we are quite cynical in our take. 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 sort of. The core sort of intimate relationships that you. That as Conrad said, we've built for three seasons prior. Coming to the show sort of 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 Jasmine relationship, but we had the Harper Eric relationship with the core of it. I was interested to see how those relationships would work in this sort of new landscape. And 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 went for a trading floor, we then went to a trading floor dealing with a telehealth company, and then we were suddenly in an actual company in the esg. And now we like writing about 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 we're always talking about what's the trade? 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. It's been said that the finance speak in that season was kind of technobabble. And as we've continued to produce the show and we've tried to make the finance speak actually story speak as well. And in season four, we kind of tried to present the easiest version of a trading succeed story, which is Harper is on one side of it with Eric, and 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, finite story to follow. And obviously that didn't happen because at all ways of 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 the sort of entrenched class system where the show is a finance show. And even though we've like removed Pierpoint, 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 finances driving the story.

[Chris 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.

[Mickey Down]

One of my favorite ones.

[Andy 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 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 wanna talk specifically about some of the decisions in the finale, but I did wanna bring it all the way back to the prem. 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 count bin faced. How's he doing in the by election today, by the way? I haven't.

[Mickey Down]

I don't know if he's standing actually. We gave him an extra. He's never. We gave him one more vote than he actually ever received in real life.

[Conrad K]

Oh my God.

[Andy Greenwald]

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 Jonah storyline. While you are also reintroducing Yasmin and Henry's status, while you are also reintroducing Harper and Erryk. Could you talk a little bit, Conrad, 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 From Inception.

[Conrad K]

We were obsessed with that 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 were doing iterations of the first few drafts of the episode and even in the cut, 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. Where we didn't situate the viewer in the universe they already knew Then there were versions where we had maybe 12, 13 minutes even of screen time without Harper or Yasmin or anyone being on screen. To us that was just thrilling. And I think 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 given what we did to the show in 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 really energized us. And we were just to be honest with you, we were really excited to get Max Minghella's character, Whitney, sort of stood up and up and on his fate because he's a really. He's such a different flavor 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 things you've found slightly challenging with the 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 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 Lorti by design was in some ways such a soulful character, such an anchor in the character, and you replace him with effectively a kind of cypher, avatar of capitalism, maybe the closest thing to an out and out villain or sociopath the show has ever done. And so in a way, and you marry that to the fact that the show really doesn't 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 help us do the show, but when we're in a room together, we really just, we drive to what we think instinctively feels like the best and boldest version of the show. And then because I think by the very 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.

[Andy Greenwald]

I would say the way you framed it is so interesting and reminded me of the moment in the finale when Alexander is talking to Sebastian and he's presenting this very old world conservativism and it suddenly sounds liberal compared to what you've moved the window of acceptability. You take out Robb and you put in Whitney and then suddenly everyone.

[Chris 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, 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, there's where she obviously becomes what she winds up being. Happens somewhat off screen in that kind of time gap or whenever that happens. When did you guys start thinking about where Yasmine would end up? Does it Predate writing season 4? Does it go back to the stuff with her father? And is this something that you had been charting for her for a long time?

[Mickey Down]

A little bit of sort of. Yes. Yes. A little bit of both. I mean, in terms of Yasmine's character, both, and exactly when we first introduced Yasmin's father as a character and the first scene we wrote for him, which is, you know, after Yasmin's having sex at Maxim, 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 her father would say about her daughter. He hadn't seen her for a while. And weirdly, 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, 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 on the story. And we've been really clear to say that it is not a wonderful one comp in any 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 Robert Maxwell quite interesting. And we thought there were parts of that biography actually, like sort of almost like Wikipedia entry stuff, like the idea of like naming a boat after your daughter, 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 Aztem's character. We've never been expected, even 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 Jan 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, I do think there is a kind of, like, transactional relationship that Yasmin has with people, which has been there since season one. And there's a kind of attraction to vulnerable people and the need to exploit and manipulate them. There's been there since one. She's dealing with Rob the entire time. There's a sort of power dynamics in her sexual exploits. 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 to make us feel like this is a character and a person who is a survivor is sort of an exercise in rationalization and that I can justify all my stuff because I've been addicted to abuse and that me begetting my trauma on someone else is fine because it was begetting upon me. The idea that she wants to ascend to power, would grab onto people who are in the ascendancy was also something that felt very congruent with that kind of behavior. So then we just thought, like, what is the natural progression of this character? Whereas the natural progression was someone that is an opportunist who has experienced trauma, who really looks the other way in terms of the political ideology stuff, 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 pushed her towards the most heinous version of that character. The audience is not meant to empathize with the character. You're not meant to empathize with any of the characters in industry. We write them and present them, and the audience is allowed to make that up their mind. We've said previously, they're all Rorschach tests for your own prejudice or for whatever.

[Chris Ryan]

My affection for Whitney now is sort of telling exactly.

[Mickey Down]

Exactly. Look, episode six was us trying to shade in a character who, as Conrad said, was an avatar of capitalism and ambition for the first five episodes. But with the Azmuth, Maryse's performance of her is empathetic. I think it's just. It's impossible not 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 place

[Conrad K]

because it wouldn't feel human. But 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 funnily, 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 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 really zero in on is like, we were getting into the room. And 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 foreign to the time in which we're writing, we basically set ourselves a thing of like, in our world, if the ascendant power is authoritarian power, right wing, techno, feudalism, Stepanovic, coming from that world, who is the most realistic character in the insecurities and the desires of the whole of the tapestry of people we've created, who would most likely start to drift like a moth to the flame of that thing. And it became very clear to us that there was almost an inevitability of Yasmin ending up, you know, being a comms director, which is kind of her skill set from almost season two in the Private Wealth Management for 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 Yasmin. It was like that was the thing, that was the story. That was the creative impulse in Us had to follow to this logical conclusion.

[Andy Greenwald]

One of the things that I know, I love that we love about the show on screen in terms of what you get out of the actors, and also off screen, in terms of our interactions with you guys and seeing 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 Harington, 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 to the places that they end up over the course of a season. Because the scripts are long, are dense, the scenes are heavy at times, and yet these actors always seem to have a North Star and a compass that I imagine you're providing them with specifically. The 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?

[Mickey Down]

So, Marisa. It is a bit of a cop out answer, Andy, but we've been living with this character as a team for the last, like, essentially the last seven years from Inception to where we are now. And they have just both grown the character, but also informed our writing of them. So we lean into the attributes of an actress like Marisa has. I know I spoke about the idea that she's 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 feel completely naturalistic. Like that is what we write to. In terms of actual. The sort of journey she goes on this, on this. On this season. I think in the same way that me approach me and Conrad 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 and say that Yasmin ends up sort of running this kind of quite controversial sex ring thing and that's like. And I feel like that sort of goes straight to, like, Zed there would really scare her. And I feel like it was a conversation that we had, which is an involving conversation about why she's got there, which allowed her to get to play that with any kind of heart. I feel like for kids. 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 fading upwards avatar of a sort of entrenched class system where people from his kind of background can kind of just

[Andy Greenwald]

be on a

[Mickey Down]

sort of hamster wheel or conveyor belt towards success. And he played it like that, but then he also played it with incredible amount of empathy when he was dealing with stuff about his family life and his relationship with his father. And he played with a lot of humor. And then obviously our sort of mantra in the show is if someone's good, you just give them way more to do. So when 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 they know they shouldn't be doing it. But like Kits character, Henry and has is kind of his novel in the fact that actually he wants to do better. He wants to, as he said, be a good person. He wants to democratize energy and then he wants to democratize banking. Banking, yeah. And you know, he has. As he's. Someone says to him, like Perry. Perry's character Laura Derd, talks about Noblesse of Liege. And 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 paternalistic way. But he wants to be better. And that's the thing we kept telling people hit, which is like, you want to be a better person. That's the. That's the North Star for you.

[Conrad K]

And you've got a soul, which. Which like with. 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. For someone's. To someone's soul or their morality.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Conrad K]

The other thing to say about the actors is they. I think they come to the show because. Or at least in and Max 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 have 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. 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

[Chris Ryan]

was as a fiend for mojitos.

[Mickey Down]

I just.

[Chris Ryan]

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. 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.

[Conrad K]

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 dartboard and said, well, that's the mantra for every hour. 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 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 and. Right, that's gonna be that episode. Episode six. Is gonna have a voiceover the first time in the show and it's gonna all these things. Sweet Pea is going to go to Garner in five and it's going to be a bit of a riff on Michael Manzie 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, I guess we just operate from a place of no fear again. And maybe that sometimes shows in the. Mick, you can jump in because I'm waffling, but maybe that sometimes shows in the excesses of what we're doing and some of the imperfections of the season. But I mean, I speak for Mickey, I have no idea. But we sort of, our approach is always jumping in two footed.

[Mickey Down]

Definitely. 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 Sunday nights on hbo, we 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.

[Chris Ryan]

Mother Russia waits for nobody.

[Andy Greenwald]

Listen. Later I talked myself out of it 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? What is it? No atheists and foxholes? Am I just getting my war metaphors mixed up? I'm tracking my own creeping conservativism as I watch you guys be braver and braver and I'll cop to it. Speaking about going for it. This is as good a segue as any. The returns of Rishi and Erryk 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 because Sagar 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 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 way. A.

[Conrad K]

The Rishi one was quite particular. I mean, we did something which we sort of blew up the grammar of the show by having his wife executed at point blank 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 Odillard movie? A prophet? Are we following him through some sort of netherworld where he has to repay some debt? So like. And all of it started to feel

[Chris Ryan]

like we were Conrad, don't tease me with a good time. You can't just drop a profit that just be like, we didn't do it.

[Conrad K]

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 Rooster 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 writer's room where you, 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. I mean, I made this choice coke to Mickey. But like, how can we take Rishi to hell? Well, we put loads of coke in front of him and get a sort of drunk, coked up Yorkshiremans to start monologuing about the late capitalism, the ills of late capitalism. A lot of people have been in that position probably after party and wanted to throw themselves out of a window.

[Andy Greenwald]

That monologue sounded a little Conrad esque after two pints.

[Conrad K]

I gotta say, I think we're both running our collective subconscious a little bit too close to the bone. On that one, Mick, I mean, how do we conceive of Eric vs Richard?

[Mickey Down]

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, you know, honestly, again, we didn't know we were going to come back, and it was quite difficult to derive ourselves out of that particular hole. And as Conrad said, we tried to, you know, we kind of conceptualize all the versions that felt kind of received, stuff like 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 like they need money, they need adrenaline. And 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. How do you actually make money in a very short amount of time using a computer and, you know, a kind of. Maybe a sort of pathological entrepreneurship and you end up being a drug dealer. I thought, that's quite interesting. I mean, like, you. He's. But then also, we talked about redemption, and it's funny, you keep. You asked about redemption. You sound like. My mother is constantly asking me when the character is going to be redeemed. And we thought, a character like that, does he want to be redeemed? Is there ever any kind of redemption for him? And we talked about, like, does he decide to, you know, go off the Harper, or does he decide to, like, get a back burn? Or does he decide to, you know, make restitution for his wife's murder? I mean, just thought, isn't it more interesting that this guy has just sort of returned to default back in his transactional ecosystem and actually hasn't really thought about the fact that he met, you know, was basically the. The. The architect of his wife's death because he just fucking. He just. He just blinked into it, and he's just. He's just flooded his. His. His mind to other stuff with dopamine and, you know, and sex and getting head in a car. And, like, I felt like that was the character we created. And I have been a bit of a betrayal of him to give him a redemption arc. So we thought, let's give him the worst possible ending we could. And that's not, you know, saga is a phenomenal actor. And quite honestly, again, like, it was kind of an exercise in, we love him. We want to bring him back. We 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 quality of saga and. And that we love him so much, we brought him back, which is what we do quite often. Eric, again, we had a conversation with Ken 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 that 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 it a prestige HBO quality. And we thought, we're going to bring it back. And then we thought, okay, what is. What is stuff we haven't seen before. What if. What if Ken have. We had a conversation with Ken, and he wanted to do something completely different. He sent us that Samuel Johnson quote which we uses in the. Which he uses in the crossword. And we just thought about an arc where he is trying really, really hard to be a better person. He has, as he said, lived the lives of pleasure, lived a life of life of, you know what he said. He's like, it's all leisure or business. And he hasn't been able to really square the two together. And we just. And the project. We wanted to see him work at Harper. We wanted to see him kind of back on his feet, wanted to see him successful in a professional capacity. But then again, like, all these characters, in some ways, always revert to the norm. They always. When obstacles are put in front of them, they go back to what is easy. And we gave him a very kind of awful and operatic ending, which we were kind of scared. We were like, oh, is he going to push back on this? Is he going to think this is too much for the character? But I think he didn't. You know, he sends us lots of questions about the finance and stuff. He asks us lots of questions for the character. That was one of the things he really didn't even question because he thought it was a kind of fitting end to the character.

[Conrad K]

He finds himself blackmailed, but what he chooses to do with the blackmail and how he signs a fund over to her, I mean, he doesn't know whether the woman's at underage or not when it happens. I always think of it as a kind of last stand when he goes on cnn I mean, me and Mickey joked about it being like the Eminem 8 mile beat where he basically lays out everything that's wrong with him. But to me it feels like an ownership of his sins.

[Andy Greenwald]

You guys have been very generous with your time and we know you gotta 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 is Harper. I thought it was really fascinating that Kwabina 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 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 world killer. 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.

[Mickey Down]

Well, Harper has essentially been living in sort of the superpoint kind of ecosystem for the last three, last two episodes, last two seasons. She's out of it in the third season, which. 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, these, like these, moved through these, these rooms. Hasn't really had any kind of conversation about her own identity. Really only had her foot on the accelerator the entire time, like lent into the transactional relationship 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, you know, her colleagues start getting assaulted for her own, for her in pursuit of what she's been doing. And then she's rich, she's successful. The tender short has words. And suddenly she finds herself in a room with the people who are she thought were her peers. And she realizes they actually hold, like, really damaging and horrible views. And she first sees it's like having a buck up called Water Porter. Being like, 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, Conrad said, sort of like a sort of coterminous relationship between authoritarianism and capitalism. She has a conversation with Kwarvena and I think it kind of unlocks to her that, like, she's been really focusing on the wrong thing. And I'm not saying that she's going to have a complete 180 around her character. She's going to lean into every empathetic or connected relationship she has. But she's allowed to start thinking as a human being and starting to be. And she's allowed to now start be honest about her own relationship with her own ambition, relationship with other people. It's unlocked something for us. It's unlocked 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, sadded girl who's 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 Harper, who was this kind of go getter obsessed of her own ambition, who believed that she lived in a meritocracy, realizing 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.

[Conrad K]

The problem with Harper's arc versus everybody else's arc this season is it's been much quieter. Mahala's played it much more quieter, 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. I think the tent poles of all of the moments Mickey just laid out, like treatment of the first time she shows pastoral care to sweet peace 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 learning for him in the same way, those are elements of the thing that Mickey's talking about, which is like her dark great white heart, great white shark heart sort of opening and allowing the possibility of light into it at the same time as Yasmine, which was much opener, 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 like diametrically opposed places, it did feel like. Felt like good 8 hours serialized storytelling to take them to a place where things have profoundly changed for both of them. And I just think, I think because Yasmins is effectively so loud and so operatic and so tragic. Kits is so loud and you know, Whitney's. Whitney, I think Harper's is. And Eric obviously exists in this sort of spectacular, almost mob hit kind of way. I think the Harper story is quieter.

[Chris Ryan]

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

[Andy Greenwald]

That's more valuable.

[Chris Ryan]

£2 million. But like it's to your point, Kyra. 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.

[Conrad K]

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 accelerated the whole time. You know, win all costs, 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 interior interiority that would be very strange. It would feel more like network television than an HBO show.

[Andy Greenwald]

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

[Mickey Down]

I think, 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 he is just kind of telling about what we want to do next.

[Chris 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 test

[Andy Greenwald]

your favorite French prison movies.

[Chris Ryan]

French prison movies Festival.

[Conrad K]

This is.

[Andy Greenwald]

This is the safe space.

[Chris Ryan]

You guys take care.

[Andy Greenwald]

Great to see you guys.

[Mickey Down]

Anytime. Thank you, guys.