What was the collaboration process with the other writers, especially as people coming from the world you’re writing about?
Down: We were relying on universal experience; everyone in that room had at one point been young and starting their first job, so we can mold those experience to fit the banking world of the show, but lots of the other writers’ histories fit in just as general experiences that anyone could have been through that fit in a show about any new job.
Kay: We had a very collaborative process when it came to just breaking the story; we had many people in the room. We were actually fortunate that we had Nia DaCosta in the writer’s room, who between “Candyman” and Marvel has some pretty huge things coming up. She was critical in shaping Harper’s voice. For the business scenes between the higher-ups, Mickey and I would overwrite those parts or engage with some financial consultants for some of the headier stuff like in episode four. Still, you can not expect writers to come in with no experience and write those scenes, so we focused on making sure we were all on the same page about character and experience, and having very imaginative creatives help coming up with scenes and dialogue was where lots of the work was; the business stuff was mostly Mickey and me.
Down: The writer of episode three, Sam Freeman, is the guy who said at the end of the day I don’t understand this jargon, but I understand if the character is winning or losing, and that is what a writer wants.
Were the four main characters ones you always knew were going to be who they were, or were they more vague outlines that got shaped more as the show kept getting worked on?
Down: We had a vague idea of what we wanted, but I came up with that core group of characters very quickly. They felt organic and real to the world, not subversive in any cynical way but were different from the usual rich white guy we see this world through. We wanted to see what it would be like to do this through people who definitely didn’t look like that.
Kay: All the characters share the insecurities Mickey and I feel about that world; our DNA is across all of them, really. Our friends as well.
Down: We deliberately picked characters who could all in their own way offer a unique and individual take on the world that others might not offer, whether socio-economically or their expectations going in or their view about themselves as they enter all this. You should be able to see the expected tensions that might come out of this from the outset, and we took advantage of that and hopefully managed to upend some expectations.
Were there any character dynamics that were particularly fun for you to write for? As a viewer, I have some personal favorites, like the interesting power balance of Eric(Ken Leung) and Harper’s relationship. Still, I’m always curious if you are looking forward to working on more than most?
Kay: I’m glad you picked up on that because Harper and Eric and Harper and Yasmin (Marisa Abela) are really for us the two halves of the show. It’s helped because all three actors’ performances are solid and feel very credible and real to the world. We do pretty much like writing for all of them, but there is a character named Greg (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) who you meet more in episode three, the kind of posh Hugh Grant type, who gets some hilarious dialogue and is played by a fantastic actor, who feels so real and like a lot of our friends so writing dialogue for him is great.
Down: We loved writing for all of them. There’s a reason the character list is so long; we just never stopped coming up with characters that we liked and kept giving them little lines of dialogue and little moments that we probably should have cut for time but liked too much. But yeah, the two main relationships, Harper, with both Yasmin and Eric, form the show’s, emotional heart. There are some scenes near the end of the season with Harper and Yasmin that we loved and couldn’t stop writing and had to cut down.
It’s probably early to ask what’s next, but after working so deeply in things that you know, do you think that is something you want to stay geared towards, or do you have interests in just collaborating on whatever comes.
Down: The things we are working on, which we can’t really talk about, are so wildly different from “Industry” that I can’t help from laughing. I think we like writing things with good characters and a good story. We just said yes to everything early in our career that was all miles away from “Industry,” Which has kept us excited and engaged with taking on whatever we find interesting.
Kay: I think we like the difference in having a wide slate in many different wheelhouses. It keeps you testing different muscles, and it feels like we would never try and limit ourselves to things as simple as just comedy or just drama; for us, it is always going to be about the entry point of the story and manipulating something radical and a bit different with it. We never want to be pigeonholed, and with “Industry,” we have so much to work and play with that I can’t imagine that happening any time soon.