[Editor’s note: The following interview contains spoilers for “Industry” Season 4, Episode 6, “Dear Henry.”]
After Season 3 of “Industry,” actor Ken Leung, who plays Eric Tao, had a message for series creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay.
“Ken said, ‘I’d love to do a fourth season, but you need to tell me what’s materially different about it,’” Kay said when he was a guest with Down on an upcoming episode of IndieWire’s Toolkit podcast.
Asked about this conversation, Leung told IndieWire, “I had felt like a circle had been closed, and I said, ‘Well, if we’re going to continue, then we need to open a new circle.’”
Leung also shared with the creators a Samuel Johnson quote: “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man,” which they all agreed had encapsulated Eric, a character who had failed in all aspects of his life that required humanity.
“We wanted to make good on that quote, which is ‘What is he at his most beastly, indulging in that really vicious side of his id?’” Kay said.
The starting point, though, would be with a more reflective Eric, as he’s drawn out of retirement and back to London to work with Harper (Myha’la). Bored with golfing and grilling, the underlying motivation for returning to London is to make amends with the people in his life, and to make an attempt at being a better mentor, father, and human being.
“It’s the clearest example of a character wanting to be a better person,” Down said. “And because it’s ‘Industry,’ that character has to have the greatest fall.”
That fall hit with T-H-U-D in “Dear Henry,” the sixth episode of Season 4, when Eric learns that the person he’s been sleeping with — Dolly (Skye Degruttola), a prostitute hired by Whitney (Max Mingella) as part of a blackmail scheme — is 14 years old. It’s a revelation that triggers Eric’s last three unforgettable scenes of the season as he a) goes on CNN to fall on his sword and protect Tao-Stern, b) painfully dissolves his partnership with Harper, and c) walks off the stage to Judy Collins’ “Both Sides Now” in the episode’s end credits.
IndieWire spoke to Down, Kay, and Leung about those three scenes, the last shot, how it should be interpreted, and if Eric’s “Industry” storyline just came to its end.
Dolly
Considering the long list of Eric’s despicable acts — remember when he weaponized Adler’s (Trevor White) brain tumor against him at the end of Season 3? — Down, and Kay had a challenge: What would be so beastly it could actually level Eric? For the audience, learning that he was sleeping with a minor would likely qualify, but Leung felt there was something missing in how he would play it.
“On the page, she looks like just another fling, just another girl,” Leung said. “And I didn’t want to approach it that way.”
Leung concocted an internal way of thinking about his relationship with Dolly that incorporated his character’s attempt to “unearth some of the humanity” he had lost climbing the corporate ladder, making being confronted with the truth a more powerful gut punch.
“I thought, ‘What if Dolly, in Eric’s mind — the mess, the jungle that that is — what if she’s the one? What if in his mission to find a new path to his daughter, to have a new relationship with Harper, he sees Dolly in a whole new way?’” Leung said. “What before might’ve been just a fling, another girl, another conquest, he’s like, ‘This is my chance at something lasting.’ So that then when the betrayal happens, the descending to his knees, comes because of that miscalculation. That’s how I treated it.”
CNN: Eric Goes Full Eminem
In the “Industry” writers’ room, it was referred to as Eric’s “8 Mile” scene — a reference to Eminem’s B-Rabbit winning the climactic rap battle by disarming his opponent with the verse, “I know everything he’s about to say against me. I am white, I am a fucking bum, I do live in a trailer with my mom.“
To both defeat Whitney and insulate Tao-Stern, Eric essentially does the same thing by publicly owning Whitney’s disparaging remarks and bringing the focus back to Tender, and why they should submit to an independent audit.
“That is one scene where, in order to win this final battle, he has to marshal the Eric that we know [from previous seasons],” Leung said. “That was fun to revisit, a fun touch point of the Eric that we know, in a season of a different, more reflective Eric.”
Dissolving Tao-Stern
Post-CNN battle, all that’s left of Eric is the hollowed shell of what he’s become as a result of the Dolly revelation. Having wanted to play doting mentor, it’s painful to watch Eric barely able to speak to, let alone look at, an emotional and confused Harper as he exits their partnership.
“It’s a difficult thing because we love Ken, we love writing Eric, we love that character, and it’s quite tricky sometimes to take a character that you love writing and you actually have such fondness for, and bring him to his knees in the worst possible way, giving him something that there is no way to go back from,” Down said. “It’s making a statement about not being able to run away from your demons, not being able to run away from the things that cripple you.”
For Leung’s part, there was nothing to discuss about the scene with the creators, nor to figure out with his scene partner, Myha’la, beforehand. “I don’t even know what there would be to discuss,” Leung said. “It was all on the page.”
The Deleted Daughter Scene(s)
What was also on the page but landed on the cutting room floor was an additional scene between Eric, his daughter Lily (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss), and his ex-wife Candice (Alexandra Moen) that immediately preceded the end credits and Eric’s walk down the street.
Leung described the scene, “[Lily] shows up with a nose ring, which echoes back to Harper’s nose ring in Season 1. Eric makes a comment about it, it’s triggering to him, and he blows up at his daughter for wearing a nose ring, and instantly regrets it. He has to kind of extricate himself from the situation, and says, ‘I’m gonna go get a pack of cigarettes.’ And who knows if that’s where he’s really going, but he just needs to remove himself, and then that walk follows that.”
That deleted scene would have shed a different light on Eric’s final walk-off, which is more open to interpretation without the additional context. Extracting the nose ring scene was also not an isolated instance.
“We shot a number of scenes with Serrana Bliss, who played my daughter, that didn’t make it,” Leung said. “It’s interesting to note because I think it informed a lot, there’s almost a shadow season underneath the season that we see.”
This sheds light on the difference in how Leung and the two creators discuss the character’s motivations. Whereas Down and Kay see Eric in Season 4 as wanting to be a better person to all those in his life (placing an emphasis on making amends with Harper), Leung sees his character’s efforts being far more father-centric, with the deleted Lily scenes playing a significant role in how he approached the character.
According to Leung, in his eyes, even Eric’s return to London was principally motivated by Lily (not a partnership with Harper, which in his mind was a means to the end), pointing to a phone call cut from Episode 1, in which he learns Lily has been getting in trouble and “starting to show signs that resemble Eric’s worst qualities.”
That Last Shot
Judy Collins’ “Both Sides Now” was intended to be a musical motif throughout Episode 6 — Kay originally thought it could play during Henry (Kit Harrington) and Whitney’s glory hole excursion [an idea nixed by the song’s right’s holder] — but they also knew it would be the perfect song to set the emotional tone for Eric’s end credit walk.
“It’s about loss, regret, it’s just so sad, but kind of so uplifting as well,” Kay said of the Collins’ classic. “And at that last moment, when Eric walks away, it’s like: Is he walking into a better future? Is he walking into hell?”
“The answer is ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes,’” Leung said when IndieWire read him Kay’s two open-ended questions and called attention to director Luke Snellin’s final shot.
“The way it lives in what we see, I think it’s where me playing Eric ends, and where the actor plus you, the viewer, are together in what that means,” Leung said. “I don’t think it’s my province to say. It’s so dreamy, and formless, we don’t see his face. It’s not really about him. It’s not about how he’s feeling. It’s not about even where he is going. It’s about the walking away. You’re just as in that scene as I am.”
Kay said Arthur Miller’s definition of a “tragic figure” was something he and Down kept in mind as they concluded Eric’s Season 4 arc.
“‘Self knowledge arrives, but it’s too late,’ and I think that’s Eric,” Kay said. “The choices you’ve made have led you to a point where things can start to come into focus, regret can start to really weigh in, and you can start to know simple, true things about yourself and feel ready to access those things, but you’re past a point in your life where it’s actually going to make any difference. That’s the essence of a tragic figure, there’s no way back.”
So Is That It for Eric?
But will Eric find his way back to “Industry” for a yet-to-be-announced (but seemingly inevitable) Season 5? While on the podcast, Kay and Down cautioned against making a connection between Eric’s Episode 6 exit and Gus (David Johnson) and Robert (Harry Lawtey) not returning to the series.
“When characters have found some kind of redemption, they’ve extricated themselves from the world of ‘Industry’ and the operating system which it propagates. They don’t belong in the universe anymore,” Down said of why Gus and Robert haven’t returned.
The creators rightfully noted that Eric having gained a similar level of self-knowledge, but that it coming as a result of sleeping with a 14-year-old, was not the same type of redemptive story beat resulting in a character graduating from the immoral and cut-throat world of “Industry.” Kay and Down were noncommittal about Leung’s return, and said they only had just started to allow themselves to think about how they might want to end the series. (The podcast was recorded in early January.)
Asked if he was engaged in similar between-season conversations with Down and Kay about his character, Leung cryptically answered, “I’m going to say ‘no’ to discussions.” Pushed on a clarification about what he meant by that, the actor added, “Come on, Chris. You know I can’t say what I want to say.”
Demonstrating one of the many differences between Leung and his character.
To hear Kay and Down’s full interview on March 2, after the season finale, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.