\u201cYou just gave me my favorite day in finance,\u201d Eric tells Harper the day after she laid out her team\u2019s findings about Tender at a women in finance conference. The markets had opened, Tender\u2019s stock had tanked. Later, Eric twists the knife in Tender in a CNN co-interview with Whitney, demanding another audit of the company. The SternTao consortium won, and the team gets to take a rare victory lap full of pride for their work in their $100k-a-month hotel-office. (According to Myha\u2019la and Ken Leung, it was built on a soundstage in Wales but modeled after an actual hotel. In the show, you\u2019ll spot brand markers for the Hyde Park Hotel \u2013 the closest I could find after a good bit of Googling were rooms that looked mighty similar with the price tag to match at the Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park.)<\/p>\n
Of course, it was all too good to be true: Eric receives a blackmail text with video of him with a woman from earlier in the season and a photo of her passport; she\u2019s underage. He\u2019s cooked. He backs out of the company through a lawyer on extremely charitable terms \u2013 another rare attempt at generosity to Harper \u2013 but doesn\u2019t divulge anything beyond \u201creputational risks.\u201d This scene between the two of them cuts deeper than their past blowouts of who could hurl the cruelest jabs; it\u2019s so much more devastating for Harper to be betrayed after they had built up mutual goodwill, pride, and respect for each other. Though Industry has yet to be renewed for a fifth season, it\u2019s hard not to wonder if this is really the end for Eric as he walks off in the credits to the Judy Collins version of \u201cBoth Sides Now.\u201d<\/p>\n
IGN spoke with Myh\u2019ala and Leung about Harper and Eric\u2019s cycle of falling-outs that led to this one, allowing their characters a moment of legitimate happiness, and Whitney\u2019s slimy new brand of evil, which is new, even for Industry. <\/p>\n
IGN: What drives the magnet that keeps pulling Harper and Eric together? And how does moving out of Pierpoint this season make that more apparent?<\/p>\n Ken Leung: I think they recognize themselves in each other. Maybe in the beginning, he saw a younger version of what he had to… The kind of resilience and chutzpah that she showed in that first interview \u2013 he saw something of himself. And I think he turns to her this season to answer questions [about himself]. It’s come to the point where, “Well, if you resemble me, then if I have a question that I can’t answer for myself, maybe you can.” So she becomes a capsule of that kind of mirror for him.<\/p>\n Myha’la: I think Eric’s always been an idol of Harper’s. She comes in seeing a version of herself in him like, “This is what I could be.” And he feels like the only person who has the kind of volatile, dirty, scrappy energy towards finance, someone who will just support her, even if he’s not that way anymore. She’s like, “You get me. I know you’ll support me.” And when they don’t have the bank’s structure, then they can play out this pseudo-parental thingy without any prying eyes or [it being] an HR issue. But also, I think Harper is like, “Oh, it’s not like that. Let’s not go there explicitly because we know it’s happening, but let’s just not say it because the second we say [it], it’s going to ruin everything and we’re not going to be able to work together.” And she’s right. She turns out to be totally right.<\/p>\n IGN: Your characters have these very public victories \u2013 Harper in the women’s forum and then Eric on CNN \u2013 in this episode. I’m curious about your reaction to them getting to experience genuine happiness before it all just comes crashing down.<\/p>\n Ken Leung: It’s very freeing. I mean, it’s almost, like, for two seconds you’re allowed to dance. And so it’s fun.<\/p>\n Myha’la: It is fun. It was also funny to be like, “What does Harper look like when she’s laughing and smiling?” Oh, we’re so excited about this. What does it look like when I’m not panicking? I’m just happy about something or excited about the future of something. Still locked in and I’m grown. But also what does success feel like in a relaxed way? Which was weird, actually, to feel in her body. It was bizarre and foreign, which I think it’s okay for her to be uncomfortable when she’s genuinely doing well. She’s not used to it. [It was] teeing us up for the worst, as always.<\/p>\n IGN: Both Harper and Eric get to face off with Max Minghella\u2019s Whitney in this episode. What was it like playing off of him in these scenes and just having him as a new sort of evil in the show this season?<\/p>\n Myha’la: He was slimy. I feel like most of the villains [in] Industry, you can see them. They’re not hiding really. Like Roger [Barclay]’s character [Otto Mostyn] who’s like, “I said the r-word and I might just say it again!” It’s obvious that he’s not a nice dude. But Whitney, it feels weird, strange… The threat of violence or terror feels imminent, but he’s doing it so quietly and in riddles, which is just creepy, bro.<\/p>\n Ken Leung: There’s an effortlessness to it, too.<\/p>\n Myha’la: Yeah, you don’t really have to do much because it’s just so arresting.<\/p>\n IGN: Whitney singing to Harper over the phone gave me goosebumps, like, “This is awful to watch. I hate this.”<\/p>\n Myha’la: You should have been there because our AD was the one singing for me and he’s super-duper Welsh and he loves to sing. So it was actually kind of beautiful when he was doing it, not nearly as creepy as when I heard Max doing it, but I had to pretend like it was creepy. But inside, I was like, “Oh my God, you have such a great voice.”<\/p>\n<\/a>The Harper-Eric Connection<\/p>\n
<\/a>Two Seconds of Happiness \u2013 \u201cIt Was Bizarre and Foreign\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/a>Whitney Halberstrom, a New Type of Industry Villain<\/p>\n