From Breaking Bad to Fight Club, the misinterpretation of media that skewers the male power fantasy is well established, and the long-gestating HBO sleeper hit Industry, now in its senior season, is no exception to the literacy crisis.
While speaking with the Wall Street Journal, co-creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay said they routinely receive DMs from those within the financial sector who misunderstand the point of the show.
“Anything of this ilk, anything set in this world has to feel very seductive in this first act because you have to, basically, convince the audience to think that these people are having a great time, and you have to lean in,” Down said. “And then the third act is usually when it all goes to hell and you reveal the person’s pursuit of this thing is not gonna be edifying — it’s actually gonna destroy them. And a lot of finance bros just watch the first act and just think, ‘OK, that looks fun, I can do drugs and have loads of sex and that looks like rock ‘n’ roll.’ And they don’t really watch the third act where it all implodes.”
He continued, “It’s weird because I still get LinkedIn messages and there’s usually a slew of messages from people being like ‘Bro, I love your show. Got me into finance.’”
Kay added, “There’s a level of dishonesty as well with the way people engage with this thing, I think, where they watch Wall Street or they watch Industry and they say, ‘These people are sociopathic, they’re dead-eyed,’ when in fact what they’re really saying is: ‘I recognize parts in myself that I haven’t necessarily nurtured or I’m too scared to think about.’ But those traits — avarice, blind ambition — they exist in everybody.”
The two ex-bankers launched Industry in 2020 as newcomers to the world of television alongside their now-breakout cast. Initially tracing young grads cutting their teeth on the merciless trading floor of the prestigious London-based investment bank Pierpoint & Co., its fourth season pits its host of characters on opposing sides of a flashy new fintech company, Tender.
