The makers of Industry have said people within the financial world regularly contact them, and have missed the point of the series.
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The drama follows the lives of people working their way up the ladder of the London financial industry, regularly plotting against each other to get what they want. However, as with similary-themed stories such as Wall Street, the moral message is lost on some viewers.
The show’s co-creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay revealed to The Wall Street Journal that they receive many messages from people who work in the financial sector, whom they say have misunderstood 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.”
He continued: “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. 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.”
Industry recently returned for a fourth season, which received glowing reviews from critics who hailed it as “top tier television”. Fans were in agreement, with the sentiment online being that the latest offering was the “best season yet”.
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