Rishi-centric episode<\/a> is a really good example of that. It\u2019s probably the peak of what you\u2019re talking about, but it\u2019s laden with character-driven moments. We had as many things to solve within an hour as humanly possible, and it allowed people to enjoy the fundamental practicality of watching the noose tighten around someone\u2019s neck.<\/p>\nMickey Down: It\u2019s interesting to me to see how people behave when they\u2019ve got a gun to their neck and when they\u2019re pushing through a corner. Our characters have to feel like they\u2019re in constant survival mode, as Konrad said. There\u2019s always an obstacle to overcome or an obstacle they\u2019ve been pushed into. In always finding an emergency, that\u2019s when the show found its groove. And that\u2019s not to say there are not quiet, intimate, self-reflective moments or bits of romance, but the show works really well when there\u2019s a ticking clock and an urgency to the storytelling. All that made it quite easy to supplant Industry into a proper thriller mode for season four. The ingredients are already there since the characters usually act out of impulse and have a belief structure they\u2019re trying to impose on others. Our characters are constantly fucking, sleep deprived, or high on drugs, so that helps it feel like they\u2019re on the edge all the time. All of that has the makings of a good thriller, so it felt like a natural progression of the show at this time.<\/p>\n
AVC: When you sat down to map out season four, what are the arcs or character moments you wanted to accomplish? And how does the thriller aspect help with that?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KK: We also went into season four with a bit of a blank slate because of the way that we ended season three. So it was creatively challenging in a good way. We thought we could essentially do anything now. There is no Pierpoint, and we\u2019re not beholden to any source material or IP. We thought we could do anything we want to do now. We have these great characters whom people have seen grow up. There\u2019s a lot of buy-in from the audience who are rooting for their success because they\u2019ve seen them in their nascent stages, like they\u2019ve seen Yasmin get the salad orders, or at least they give a fuck about what happens next to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MD: The show\u2019s always been a reflection of what Konrad and I are interested in at the time. It started as this slice of life show about people working on the trading floor. But it\u2019s evolved into this contemporary look at society and capitalism, which it wasn\u2019t initially intended to be. But that\u2019s just because both of us are interested in exploring that stuff about how money corrupts, how power corrupts, and how it mutates you. That is the central question of season four and of the show: Did people always have this operating system, or was it their environment that turned them into these people? This year, we\u2019re bringing in new characters and we\u2019re losing some old ones. But the beating heart of the show still really is the core relationship between Harper and Yasmin and their friendship and their path. It\u2019s about what they will do for each other and what they will take from each other. It\u2019s a transactional relationship, but is it calculating or does it actually come from a place of love? That\u2019s continually what we\u2019re asking of them: Do they love each other?\u00a0<\/p>\n
AVC: Can you talk about the state of Yasmin and Henry\u2019s marriage and why you wanted to give this relationship a sort of bottle episode early in the season?\u00a0<\/p>\n
MD: It\u2019s practically what catalyzes Henry\u2019s story this season, and he learns what it is he needs to do to survive. It would\u2019ve been an enormous risk to have that story as the very first episode, and it could\u2019ve totally alienated audiences if we had started Industry season four and it was just Henry in a big house with Yasmin. It would\u2019ve felt a bit too much like a fuck you. So we put that all in episode two. If you have the privilege of doing a full season at this point, you can take some risks that maybe you wouldn\u2019t do early on. So this felt like a palate cleanser. Technically speaking, too, Konrad and I wanted to make sure we directed it. We were going to do the first two and the last two, so it had to be either of those blocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
AVC: Max Minghella\u2019s Whitney plays a major part in Harper and Yasmin\u2019s lives. How did you devise how their lives keep intertwining, even if they\u2019re doing totally separate things?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KK: It was a slow process and a geometric puzzle. It\u2019s something we talked about in the writers\u2019 room for ages. We have over 150 speaking parts in the new season. It really feels like a universe rather than the small show of the first three seasons, or the smaller show of the first three seasons, I should say. We had to talk about what we wanted the new faces to represent so that it\u2019s consistently surprising, such that when the huge reveals happen around him or Hayley [Kiernan Shipka] later in the season, it feels organically embedded in. We\u2019re also looking to cast good, egoless actors who are willing to not upset the dynamic of the show. We run a pretty enjoyable set where we work very hard but also have a good time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Max Minghella is a good example. He was like Kit Harington in that they came into the show very conscious of the fact that they didn\u2019t wanna upset the dynamic. Max plays Whitney, who is quite an overwhelming presence, but there\u2019s enough groundwork to explore what he does without betraying all of the stuff that has made the show. We have a small, pre-evangelical audience, and we were very conscious of the fact that people might be coming to season four thinking, \u201cYou know, these guys should have wrapped this up after three seasons.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club\u2018s TV critic.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe work is anti-status quo, anti-establishment, anti-power,\u201d Eric Tao (Ken Leung) declares in Industry\u2018s fourth season, which premieres…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-226025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}