By: Jamie Steinberg
Q) For Mickey and Konrad, which aspect of the new season challenged you the most as creators?
MICKEY DOWN: I think the new season is a kind of a reinvention of the show, so that was a challenge and an opportunity. We scattered everyone across the chessboard at the end of this third season. We had destroyed our precinct. The show had reached a natural conclusion, and then to have to start it again was a massive challenge. But I think that me and Konrad [Kay] have always written ourselves into corners, we’ve always liked satisfying conclusions, and then having to basically come up with a new precinct, a new set of circumstances, a new narrative structure, a new genre, in some respects, was a challenge, but it was one that we really, really relished.
Q) When you say new genre, what do you mean? How did you land on the new genre? What is that genre?
MICKEY DOWN: Well, we’ve always kind of, like, Trojan-Horsed what we want to write about into “Industry.” So, the first season was a slice of life show about young people coming into finance or just going into a workplace which was reflective of what mine and Konrad’s experiences were. And then you know by the time we got to season four we were trying to flex different creative muscles. We you know if we weren’t doing “Industry,” we’d want to be writing a conspiracy thriller. So, we thought okay, let’s just write a conspiracy through it in the world of “Industry.”
Q) For Myha’la, Ken and Sagar, you’ve played these characters for several seasons. What have you learned from this experience, whether as actors as people, what’s been the biggest takeaway from the experience? Have you learned anything from your characters?
MYHA’LA: Christ, that is loaded many questions. How much time do we have? Oh my gosh.
SAGAR RADIA: We’ll let Myha’la deal with that one.
MYHA’LA: I mean…
KEN LEUNG: She’s going to answer for all of us.
MYHA’LA: I’ll do my best. I feel like it’s impossible to answer that question succinctly. However, what I can say is there are so many joys of working on something for a long time. And I’ll say from my perspective as a like a first timer coming sort of fresh out of on my big, my first, proper job and the biggest job I’ve done that the lessons that I sort of have learned are like life lessons. I came in, like so many of us, Marisa [Abela] as well and Harry [Lawtey] and David Johnson in the first seasons, we came in thinking we didn’t know if we were doing anything right. There was so much imposter syndrome, and we had an incredible amount of pressure that we probably just put on ourselves to, like, do a good job, especially because we’re working on something that we love and respect. So, I think the thing that I’ve learned over time is that I can do it. [applause] Thank you. I feel like confidence is something you grow. And in my situation, I was sort of faking it until I had enough evidence that it was true.
KONRAD KAY: Do you think you’ve got enough now?
MYHA’LA: You’ll never know if I’m faking it or not! [laughter] I think another thing is maybe not a lesson I’ve learned, but another joy is I love the longevity of TV. I am so grateful that I’ve been able to grow with Harper for over almost seven, eight years now. That has been a great joy of my life. And as an actor, the things that I care so deeply about because I’m so attached to this character are now something that I bring into every project that I do. A kind of reverence for bringing a person to life. A respect for all humanity, especially because I am playing somebody that people like love to hate so much. How do I find the–yes, clink! [cheers gesture] How do I find the humanity in that person? How do come to them with truth–which means no judgment–even if it’s, like, choices I don’t agree with? How do I do that so that I can do justice to that person and also like maintain the integrity of these great scripts. I don’t even know if that answered the question, but I said some shit so.
Q) Ken and Sagar, what have you two learned?
KEN LEUNG: I think the writing on this show is such that you make a first pass and you have certain ideas about what’s going on. But it’s written such that if you go over it again, you’re going to–it’s like music. When you listen to music several times you’re going to hear different things in it– certain music. And this writing is like that. It invites you to dig, because when you do that, you’re going to find stuff. And not everything is like that but what I’ve learned from this show is that even if things aren’t meant for that much digging, you’re going to get stuff. So that muscle of revisiting and, you know, having different frequencies of your radar on each time will produce stuff for you to play with.
MYHA’LA: Can I say just two seconds before we go on? I learned this thing from Ken. Like, this thing about, like, be patient with a script. There’s always something else to find. This, like intense, relentless curiosity to do this thing that I was talking about to service these scripts. I learned that from you. And it takes, like–
KEN LEUNG: I learned it from the writing. I mean, I–
MYHA’LA: Everything comes from Mickey and Konrad.
KEN LEUNG: It’s from you guys.
MYHA’LA: Everything comes from them. Yeah. It takes pretension out of everything. It makes you a service to the thing.
KEN LEUNG: It makes you curious, just eternally curious. Do I mean what I say? Maybe I don’t. Both can work. Yeah. Amazing. So, it’s so fun.
MYHA’LA: I love Ken.
SAGAR RADIA: Um, listen, it’s difficult to follow both of what these incredibly intelligent human beings come out with on a regular basis. That’s just another day. Listen, this industry is tough, man, like to–you have your good days, you have your bad days–to then stumble across a job where essentially the stars align is so rare. Tthe writing’s great, the acting talent is great, the audience has been great. So, the fact that we’re sitting here now in season four in a time where content is overcrowded. Content is being cut left, right and center. It’s a testament to the boys down the end. It’s a testament to everyone on here. It’s a testament to everyone who’s been part of the show. And I guess with that being said, in terms of the learning aspect of it, you’re constantly learning, you know? And I know that’s super cliche to say, but like, you know, as Myha’la touched on, you’ve got a bunch of new actors that came and were leading the show. Me, as someone who’d been in the game for a minute, I’m still seeing that and learning and seeing how they’re conducting themselves. I see someone like Ken, who’s got a hella of a CV behind him, see the way he conducts himself. I see Mickey and Konrad who are kind of writing the shows they go to and learning and listening to audiences, listening to forums, listening to what’s out there. Guys, that’s rare. Like I’ve been on shows where producers and directors, they’re so tunnel vision about the story they want to tell, and they don’t veer off it. Like it’s testament to them kind of keeping their eyes open and listening to what’s going on around them. Then you had new guys like this [gestures to Miriam, Toheeb and Kiernan] who are the next generation and also been doing it for a minute as well [gestures to Kiernan].
KIERNAN SHIPKA: [laughter] Just a minute. Just a minute.
SAGAR RADIA: They’re just elevating it and taking it to the next level. So, we’re constantly evolving and we constantly learning and just proud to be part of the show, man.
Q) For Mickey and Konrad and then for Toheeb and Kiernan, you continue to attract exciting new cast members like Toheeb and Kiernan, how long did you have them in mind for these roles. In addition to Charlie Heaton, who is new this season, what made them a good fit for this world as actors? What did you like about them joining this world?
KONRAD KAY: Nothing. Nothing at all.
KIERNAN SHIPKA: Silence, dead silence, oh God.
KONRAD KAY: Um, uh… good question. When people joined the show, Kit [Harrington] was a really good testament to this, because when we first had a meeting with him, he was like, ‘All you guys have created is very unique, I’m a fan of the show. I don’t want to overwhelm it.’ I was sort of amazed this season because we have obviously added a huge, we had a really packed roster of talent, we obviously I was just sort of amazed by how ego-less and how the sense of camaraderie that basically, I guess from people like Myha’la, Marisa and Ken, I guess everybody engenders this kind of, the feeling on the set. I was just sort of amazed by how seamlessly everybody fit into the world. Max [Minghella] was a really…Max basically had an analogous conversation with me and Mickey where he was like, ‘I really admire what you guys do. I really don’t want my presence to sort of overwhelm what you’re trying to do. You’ve created this amazing character. I don’t wanna–he feels slightly out of the universe of what I know the show to be.’ But then, I don’t know, I’m sort of rabbiting on.
MICKEY DOWN: I think also the thing I’m really excited by is just seeing, you know, they’re amazing, the new people we’ve got on the show and just seeing them do something that’s so anathema to what I’ve seen them do before. It’s just really exciting. I can’t wait for audience to see. Particularly Kiernan. We do some wild stuff.
KIERNAN SHIPKA: Yeah, we go for it.
Q) Kiernan, how familiar were you with Industry before this part?
KIERNAN SHIPKA: Um, it was on my list of things to watch. [laughter]
MICKEY DOWN: Everyone says that.
KIERNAN SHIPKA: I feel like that’s, I felt like that was a lot of my friends was like, ‘I’ve been meaning to watch Industry.’ And I really had been meaning to watch it, but, um, but no, I got an email about it. I taped with two scenes, one from the first episode and one from the fourth, so safe to say I was confused what I was saying. I hoped it made any sort of sense. And, yeah, then I met with Mickey and Kon, and we had great, like a great meeting and I read the first four scripts and I was, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really good.’ And then I proceeded to binge the entire show and found myself in Wales maybe a week after I was finished and was like deeply starstruck by everyone too and trying to keep it cool. But, but that, I mean I was I was familiar, I knew it was amazing and then, you know, dove in and was, like, ‘Oh, hell yeah, this is amazing, amazing.’
MYHA’LA: I also feel like this thing that you’re like, the camaraderie that happens, I always feel like it’s because people come in with a huge respect for the script. Like they’re like ‘I’m a fan of the show first’ or ‘I read the scripts and they’re amazing’ and that’s like a unifying thing. We come to work every day like really excited to do what we do and that is also not always the case. We are really passionate about their writing, about this universe and that makes it easy to like. Fall into the vibe of creating the whole thing.
Q) Toheeb, what was it like for you to join the show and also because Kwabena is immediately in a complicated relationship with a complicated person in Harper. And what’s it like as an actor to sort of jump into that relationship?
TOHEEB JIMOH: It was great, it was really fun. I mean, yeah, very complicated. One of my first days on set was a complicated day. [laughter] I think my first note from Mickey was “harder.”.
MYHA’LA: It literally was.
TOHEEB JIMOH: I think I got the most industry welcome in the history of Industry, the TV show. But no, I think like people have said, like it’s a great show. And I think, especially for young actors, there aren’t many shows that really require you to flex your muscles in such a way, like there’s such complicated scripts, really difficult language to wrestle with. And so, it’s just a joy. Like it forces you to like to pull on parts of yourselves you might not have had to use for other work. And yeah, I was a fan of the show, and I was just really excited to join and everybody made me feel super welcome. And, yeah, I’m excited for people to see it.
Q) And then Miriam, you’re sort of a sophomore in “Industry” terms in this season. We saw Sweetpea, we fell in love with Sweetpea. Now we’re getting a lot more Sweetpea. What’s it like for you to go into this season and what was it like to learn more about her world and to fill out the character?
MIRIAM PETCHE: Yeah, I mean, I guess it kind of feels like I’m like in like my second year of uni kind of vibes, like, I don’t know, it’s like I am still kind of finding the ropes myself, but I’m still like, ‘guys I can show you the way.’ Do you know what I mean? Like, not really. It’s incredible. I mean I’m so happy to be here. And I think that, I mean, it’s been kind of covered before, but these scripts are kind of like a tightrope that you dare to get on, and you kind of, you know, you go for it, and it’s such a privilege to be challenged in that way, you know? Especially as a young actor and a young graduate, I’m just happy to be here.
KONRAD KAY: I think Miriam actually deserves a special shout-out this season because she, obviously, she came into the show as a supporting character and then we strapped a huge episode to her back in season four and my god, did she deliver. I mean, like, and it was a huge, it was huge, it was hugely, it a huge pressure situation, incredible amounts of dialog and she gives one of the standout performances of the whole season.
MYHA’LA: You do, you do.
MIRIAM PETCHE: Guys.
MYHA’LA: You’re amazing.
MIRIAM PETCHE: I’m gonna cry.
MYHA’LA: You’re amazing [crowd wooing].
MIRIAM PETCHE: What the hell…
SAGAR RADIA: It’s not easy joining this show, it’s fast paced, there’s a lot of dialogue, not everyone can kind of keep up with that pace. And these new guys have come in and just absolutely nailed it, as Konrad touched on.
MIRIAM PETCHE: Thank you guys, I’m gonna cry.
Q) When you said, “strapped a huge episode to her back,” I really wanted to go first so I could be like, ‘speaking of strapped, the scene…’ but now it feels like it’s too far in the past. I love it. Thank you so much for the show. I love the show; I’ve loved it for years. I wanted to ask, I feel like Industry has a social commentary thread running through it always and it feels it must be difficult to decide what topics to weave into it, considering that you’re making a show that’s going to come out down the line. So how–when you’re writing the scripts and when everyone is deciding sort of what to bring to your performance – how do you decide how, like, current versus evergreen to try to make it?
MICKEY DOWN: It’s a very good question. As I said before, I mean, it’s kind of, there was a thing that we said that was taken in quite bad faith recently, which was ‘we make the thing up as we go along,’ which is just writing to me. That’s how you write stuff. And I think that’s the joy of writing long-form television is that it doesn’t have to be the same thing every time, and it can be informed and by the context of when we are writing. Season one was about our concerns, as whatever, we were 28 or whatever, and it was about small things. And then, as you know, we grew up and started to become interested in different things. The show became interested in different things and every season we go into the writer’s room, we say, what interests us now? And it doesn’t have to be like geopolitics or a particular thing about finance. It could be a relationship that we find interesting or a certain thinker or public intellectual or some kind of like something in the cultural morass that is like capturing our attention. And that’s where we start. And then again, it could be genre thing. We could say, okay, well, the idea of strapping corporate conspiracy thriller engine to the show interests us. And then what does that look like when we start thinking about the sort of–how like coterminous capitalism and fascism is, or what does it look like if we start thinking about the… whatever. I mean, it’s we kind of like what I mean I said this before I got in trouble, but we write whatever the fuck we want to write about. And we have no IP. We have a great audience. We are amazing fans of the show, but the fans of show are ever changing in what they want as well. They don’t come to the show and say, I mean, like, people love Yasmin and Harper. They love the relationships, and they love the fact that it’s frenetic. But like, the thing I love about our fan base and the audience is that we give them stuff that’s new every year, and they say, ‘great. Thank you. Thank for reinventing the show.’ And it was a huge risk for us to do this season, I think, and I’m really glad that everyone here on this stage trusted us, because reading the first couple of scripts of the season four, you’re like, ‘The fuck? This is a completely different show.’ So, yeah. Thank you.
KONRAD KAY: Especially episode two. [laughter]
Q) “A Clockwork Orange” at the end of this episode, the synthesizer and Beethoven is the same way that Wendy Carlos used for Kubrick’s movie. And the more I see these characters, the more I think, that they deal with moral issues in a very unsettling way, the same way that Alex, Malcolm McDowell’s character does in Kubrick’s movie. The way you depict London, in some ways, reminds me. So, is it just a coincidence, or were you inspired by it?
MICKEY DOWN: No. Hugely inspired. We completely ripped it off. Thank you for picking up on it. That’s just a great piece of music. The sort of Moog version of that funeral march, that’s actually a new version of it by Nathan McKay who’s our composer. It’s just, you know, there’s kind of like moral ambiguity to his work is a moral ambiguity to that film. It’s like that was why I watched that film way too early. I watched the film when I was nine years old, but it became my favorite film for a very long time. And it’s just stuck with me in terms of like; it makes you feel icky. It was also really uplifting. It’s like it has a punch the air quality to the ending that also makes you feel like very sort of like the world is obsolete. And it it’s yeah. Thank you for picking up on it. It’s no it was not a coincidence at all. It was completely rip off.
MYHA’LA: Nothing they do is a coincidence. It’s completely intentional every time.
KONRAD KAY: We do rip a lot of stuff off though. [laughter] But I mean, I think that’s part of making anything good.
MICKEY DOWN: Episode 2, when you see that, is just like a total rip-off of Barry Lyndon as well. [laughter]
Q) It’s a big Kubrick season, this is what we’re revealing. How has your general view of high finance changed because of this show? I’m curious for people coming in who are new, learning all the jargon and also for the people who have had to spend years saying things like “EBITDA.”
MIRIAM PETCHE: Silence.
KONRAD KAY: Charlie Heaton said to me yesterday, he was like, “For about a week afterwards, I could read the financial press and pretend I understood it.” And then he was just like, yeah, every third sentence “I’m sort of, yeah, I’m really behind that now, I sort of get it.” And then, he’s like, “But now I just don’t remember any of it.” I think– Myha’la you said you’ve never understood the business dialogue…
MYHA’LA: Nah, I don’t know what the hell we’re talking about, to be fair.
KONRAD KAY: And you make it so compelling.
MYHA’LA: That’s so sweet, thank you so much.
MICKEY DOWN: Some people try and understand it. Toheeb used to send me texts being like…
TOHEEB JIMOH: We have voice notes like there are so many voice notes I have with Mickey and Konrad of like me being like ‘no well, what does this mean? What does this mean?’ I remember I spoke to Myha’la I was like, ‘how do you do all of this?’ And she was like ‘look man. Inshallah and vibes, bro.’.
MYHA’LA: Yeah, you’re new. You’re new! When I first came, I was trying to figure it out, too. And Freya [Mavor] was, like, reading Finance for Dummies next to me and improving entire client conversations, and I was ‘like, dude, what the… I’m gonna look so stupid. I don’t know what I’m talking about at all.’ Like, people are like, ‘oh, can you do your own finances?’ I cannot, and I will not. It’s a bad idea. I understand in terms of, like… I’ve said and read this word many times, and I know if it’s, like a good thing or a bad thing. And that’s all I need to know if I’m an actor.
TOHEEB JIMOH: No, I think that’s yeah, you’re right, because like part of your job is just like making it hearable for the audience at some point. And it’s like, they’re not going to understand this because they don’t have like Mickey and Konrad to voice note with and so like you just have to like ping out the words that makes them like make them understand that this is good for our team. That’s not good for our team and then the rest is actually just Inshallah and vibes.
MICKEY DOWN: Toheeb wanted to know what the book was, like, how they’re investing, what allocation, I was like… But it was great because it made us interrogate stuff. So he was like, ‘guys, I’ve just looked this up and I don’t think it makes sense,’ and I’m like, ‘Konrad, maybe it doesn’t. I better rewrite this quickly.’
Q) WHen you meet real traders, how accurately do they tell you the show is?
TOHEEB JIMOH: Like super accurate.
MYHA’LA: Yeah.
TOHEEB JIMOH: Super, super, super accurate.
MYHA’LA: Yeah, sometimes. That’s not always my experience.
TOHEEB JIMOH: Sometimes?
MYHA’LA: Yeah, it depends. I mean, if it’s like an older white guy, he’s usually like, yeah, that’s kind of how it is, but not exactly. How long do you have for me to explain it to you? I feel like most people are like, ‘that’s super accurate.’ And then they’re like, ‘but we don’t do cocaine at work and we’re not having sex with our bosses.’ And, you know, that sort of thing.
KONRAD KAY: The first two seasons are pretty accurate, in terms of… And the first season especially, I think. We had lunch with a quite famous hedge fund manager, and he was like, I watched your fourth episode, and I actually sat there and ran the numbers on that tray, and they’re all perfect. The math absolutely checks out.
MYHA’LA: Perfect like your accent.
MICKEY DOWN: So many accents today.
Q) And one of my favorite things about “Industry” is how you guys play with time. Where, like, season three, you have 24 hours from episode one to two. Everything feels so congruent as opposed to like the first season where every other episode is a different span of a year. Coming in, when you guys are writing new seasons and there’s a time skip, what are those conversations like?
KONRAD KAY: Time is a real problem in our writers’ room. No, genuinely, because we’re always, we’re especially in season four, we’re like, ‘wait, this unfolds over like four days?’ And we’ve had producers come to the show, Steven was a producer between season three and season four. He’s like, “I’m not sure a lot of the stuff in season three chronologically makes sense.” And we were like, ‘yeah, fair enough.’ It’s a really hard thing because the show has its own velocity, which is part of the hallmark of the show. So, the way me and Mickey write it is always like, ‘what is the state of emergency that motivates the story.’ And I think that’s what separates it from a lot of TV is how much we pack into each hour. But it also means sometimes we have a very sort of hazy relationship to how we’re breaking stuff.
MICKEY DOWN: A lot of stuff happens in one day, often.
KONRAD KAY: Yeah, and like sometimes we’ll be breaking an episode and we’re like ‘wait a second, this doesn’t… This can’t, this can’t all…this has to be like a week’ because the emotions of it don’t work otherwise.
MICKEY DOWN: But also, we’re tied to like a margin call, which has to happen within 48 hours, but then loads of like character stuff, as Konrad said, has to unfold as well. So, we’re like, ‘okay, so like her mother’s died and then this, and then this, and then this’ it’s like, okay, well that all took place in the space of about 12 hours.
KONRAD KAY: It’s interesting that you bring up that it’s one of the things that we kind of glide over in the room because we think if the emotions work, then maybe an audience isn’t really paying attention to that stuff, which you obviously are. But me and Mickey, to be honest, we always work on emotionality. So, it’s like, is it emotional? Are you feeling stuff? Because that’s far more important than logic, I think.
MICKEY DOWN: It’s not good for the script supervisor.
KONRAD KAY: No, terrible.
MICKEY DOWN: She’s like, “Is like two in the morning why are they having this conversation now?”
KONRAD KAY: Yeah, we get a lot of those notes like why is this happening at 5:08?
Q) For Ken, when you were playing Eric this year, did you see him as a man fighting collapse or as someone finally allowing himself to feel the cost of everything he’s built?
KEN LEUNG: I don’t know that he’s doing either. I think he’s trying to find a way, in terms of playing, he’s trying find a to his daughter who he has neglected her whole life. Who somehow, despite that, is starting to resemble him in all the worst ways. I think that’s alarming to him. And I think it partially explains why he goes into this thing with Harper. She’s kind of his only hope to understanding her, he thinks. She–they speak the same language–she understands him in a way that nobody does. She’s a young woman. And so, I think that’s, that’s–I don’t think either of those choices. Yeah.
KONRAD KAY: Between season three and four, we had a Zoom with Ken about the character and potentially coming back to do another season of it, and he was like, ‘I want to play something slightly different.’ Which is obviously a very valid thing. And he sent us a quote, which was, “he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” And we made it the crossword clue in episode one. And that was a quote that Ken–and we were like, ‘fuck, that’s kind of Eric, right?’ And that’s his whole journey across the show. And we were, like, it cracked the character open a little bit in terms of what we were gonna do in season four, but then we’re like, we needed to sort of somehow get that into the show, so the crossword felt like, because it’s such a poetic line, it would kind of stand out in the show we thought cryptic crossword clues was the best way to smuggle it in.
KEN LEUNG: I just want to do a shout out to our props people because the crossword I actually did the crossword, it works Except for that except for that clue. They had to just put that in there, but everything else. It’s a legit crossword puzzle.
KONRAD KAY: It’s a Samuel Johnson quote, right?
KEN LEUNG: It’s a Samuel Johnson quote, yes.
Q) How do you think if Industry was a company what do you think would be the core values and what would be on onboarding deck for the newcomers?
KONRAD KAY: Core values of Industry, as in like… This is a hard question.
MICKEY DOWN: I mean, the core value of the show is to entertain. I think that has to be at the crux of every TV show. It’s not film. Film can, I mean it is art, but film can be a little bit more naval gazing, to be use of pejorative, and it can be a little more…
KONRAD KAY: A mood.
MICKEY DOWN: Yeah, it can about mood and atmosphere. It can be even a bit more novelistic. Whereas a TV show is meant to make you want to watch the next episode. So, it always has to be entertainment and there’s a great quote, which I’m going to butcher for Michael Eisner, about the fact that, like, you know, when you make something that’s entertaining, and it’s very difficult when it’s really good to not say something about the world. So, yes, we say something about the world, and there is several thesis statements embedded in the show, but at its core, me and Konrad, when we get into the writer’s room, we ask each other, “How are we going to entertain the audience this season?”
Q) I mean, one of the things we also had was about the costumes, especially for the actors stepping into the world. They’re chosen so specifically. We see Harper in her sort of power outfits this season. I’m curious for Kiernan and Toheeb to enter in this world to learn the sort of dressing codes of assistants and traders. What’s it like to work with the costume team on the show?
MYHA’LA: You guys are lucky. We got our money up, not our funny up, by season four. And now you get to wear the nice stuff.
TOHEEB JIMOH: I have so many of those costumes at home.
MYHA’LA: I got a lot of them, it was fun.
KONRAD KAY: Laura [Smith], our costume designer, is a genius. She’s probably the only, alongside me and Mickey, I actually think she thinks about our scripts deeper than we do. She does so much research. She’s so prepared. She draws from the most crazy art and literary references. She’s like, she’ll say, she will reference a painting. I’ll be like, yeah, sure. I have no idea what you’re talking about. She is, she’s a genius.
TOHEEB JIMOH: She really is. Even down to like, okay, why don’t you wear a pinstripe? Because Harper talks about not wanting to date one of these pinstripers in season two, and then now you’re a pinstriper. Do you know what I mean? Stuff like that.
MYHA’LA: Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.
MICKEY DOWN: She’s like, “This reminds me of the sort of 19th century Cusco School of art.” I was like, “Okay.” [laughter]
TOHEEB JIMOH: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, shout out to Laura. She’s really incredible.
MYHA’LA: She’s also really collaborative like whenever I go into a fitting with her she’s like “how does it feel on the body? Are you comfortable are you this? Does it make you feel like Harper?’ If I’m like, “This shoe hurts my foot and I can’t do the scene,” she’s like “Let’s forget it.”
TOHEEB JIMOH: Yeah.
MYHA’LA: Um, or if there’s like, she’s equally as sharp on things like, ‘I really need this tailoring to have this point of a whatever use of the couscous coos you just said thing.’ And if I’m like, ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ But she’s like, ‘but think about, just like, think about it a little bit longer than come back to me. And if you, if you like whatever about it, we’ll just nix it. But if you can get on board, that would be great because the storytelling is really important.’
SAGAR RADIA: Yeah, I wish Laura was here in season one. Season one, I wore the same suit for four episodes. [laughter] That’s not a joke, that’s not joke, yeah.
MICKEY DOWN: She was very, um, she was, she was, uh, very considerate about the, um, big dildo as well. She didn’t want Myha’la to have to wear something so heavy.
MYHA’LA: Yeah, she was super considerate about my dildo it was nice.
KONRAD KAY: That was fucking expensive. That thing was.
MICKEY DOWN: Yeah, it was. Weirdly as well she was like, ‘I really want to check with Max that he’s okay with this as well.’
MYHA’LA: That’s not weird, that’s super considerate.
MICKEY DOWN: Really considerate. But I was like, ‘Laura, he’s not actually going to use it.
MYHA’LA: But she’s thinking, she’s thinking!
MICKEY DOWN: She is very considerate thinking about it. And it’s just like she has such a, she’s considering all matters of her work and with the actors with us, with the actual, you know, her craft and yeah she’s a joy to work with as well.
KONRAD KAY: The thing I always think about is the really great filmmakers I admire is, like, what kind of happens is as their stars ascend, it’s actually they create a troupe of people who make them look better. And I think, like all our heads of department, they’re so good at their jobs that sometimes I’m kind of in awe of it and this season four is really a reflection of Laura and Simon’s work, the production designer, because at the shows. I mean, the budget hasn’t really changed. You guys can be the judge of this, but to my mind, the show has never looked better. And it’s really, it’s a testament to how specific that work is and how dialed in it is. I’m kind of in awe of both of them. That’s what, what’s the old adage? I was gonna say old adages, but I think that’s actually a quote from Seth MacFarlane. He said that like ‘film making is just sitting around watching other people make a film.’ [laughter] 100%. They’re amazing.
Q) Kiernan, you looked like you were leaning in.
KIERNAN SHIPKA: Oh, I’m just engaged. I just love listening to everyone talk. [laughter] I really don’t have anything to say that they haven’t already. But yeah, I mean, it’s amazing. I feel like I was, you know, coming in as a new kid, I was finding the character, and the clothes help with that so much. I mean you can only do so much until you put something on, and you go, ‘oh, that makes sense to me now.’ It just, it feels like the entire vibe of the set, you feel like you’re in Industry all of a sudden. And it’s just kind of magical. Light bulb thing that happened for me where I went, ‘oh, wow, now I’m really in the show.’ And I think you can really feel that and it’s a testament to you know every department. Yeah, and it just fun. I feel like my particular character is concealing and revealing a lot and her style really changes throughout the season, too and that was cool. I mean it’s cool. Everyone looks so stylish there, but there’s a real narrative underneath that and yeah that’s all I’m going to say.
Q) For Mickey and Konrad, how do you approach the lifespan of the show? Is there an ideal number of seasons?
MYHA’LA: Infinite seasons, it will never end, forever!
KONRAD KAY: Ah, I need a break. Yeah, we’re not going to say in too much detail now but yeah, there is a lifespan to show, and we think about it. Somewhere between like 17 and 22 seasons, I think.
*PRESS CONFERENCE*