“I will always remember you like this,” Myha’la’s Harper Stern says — voice quivering, her finger accusatorily pointing — to Eric (Ken Leung) when he dissolves SternTao in the latter half of Industry’s latest episode, “Dear Henry.” Doing so by way of a proxy lawyer, the bright-and-fast-burning inverse fund’s evaporation severs not just the duo’s business connection to each other, but also their personal relationship.
After last week’s early episode — featuring Sweetpea (Miriam Petche) and Kwabena’s (Toheeb Jimoh) side-quest to Accra to unearth Tender’s illegitimate dealings — SternTao is on the cusp of making good on its short selling predictions, even as Harper reels from the sudden death of her estranged mother and Eric contends with his woeful track record as an absentee father.
“He says he doesn’t have a parental bone in his body, and she doesn’t know how to be a child,” Myha’la tells Deadline of their bond. “And in that scenario, they both instinctively take on those roles with each other and are cosplaying it for themselves and feeding a hole, licking a wound. And I think that happens because you need it, like it is a huge moment in her career, and she has no one to hold her. That is the beginning of the end. It’s the thing that they say they can’t do because it’s going to mess with their business, but it ends up being the thing that they both need to continue on in the business aspect.”
Myha’la as Harper Stern in Season 4, Episode 6 of Industry (HBO)
When Harper lays out the fund’s findings about Tender in an explosive speech at a financial conference, the camera pans to a prideful Eric, beaming and nearly paternal in his freudenfreude. Later, Harper returns the favor, watching with rapt admiration when Eric pivots and gains a foothold during a CNN confrontation with Tender’s inscrutable CFO Whitney (Max Minghella), who is fighting against a new audit for his fiscally defunct company.
But, the crescendo of success cannot last forever — not in Industry’s morally bankrupt investment arena — and Eric’s sexual misdeeds from last week catch up with him when he’s anonymously sent a video of his encounter with a minor.
“Harper and Eric, on a cellular level, understand that their relationship goes way beyond work,” Myha’la tells Deadline. “They both understand that if they go there, there’s no going back from that. And the real danger is that it will be great and then inevitably, it will end just like every version of their relationship. And it’s too dangerous because it’s too emotional, it will hurt too badly, and it could ruin them both … When they get too close to one another, the dangers of the business get in the way. And for better or for worse, they’re separated.”
Below, both Myha’la and Leung discuss SternTao’s short-lived triumph and where, if anywhere, Eric can go next.
DEADLINE: There are so many parallels between your characters here. They both have these prideful smiles at each of their galvanizing speeches — Eric saying he didn’t think he could feel pride for someone else other than himself. How did you see their career trajectories and bullish attitudes reflective of each other in this episode, particularly?
KEN LEUNG: In order to climb this business ladder, they had to summon — I think this is true for both characters — a certain type of courage and resilience, and the way that antibiotics also kill good bacteria, I think it killed some of the other parts of them that they needed as people. And in these moments, the pride, the galvanizing speeches, it brought back a little of those lost pieces. And so I think it’s doubly glorious to experience because, ‘Hey, we are people. We’re not the monsters everyone calls us,’ despite what we had to summon to get to where we’re at.
Ken Leung as Eric Tao and Serrana Su-Ling Bliss as Lily Tao in Season 4, Episode 6 of Industry (HBO)
After Harper’s speech, Eric’s saying that it was this miraculous run; there’s a sense of triumph. It’s really earned; it’s his favorite day ever in finance. Upon rewatching it, they seem so primed for the fall. It feels so Shakespearean and you know something’s going to go wrong. It feels too good to be true. How did you play with that tension across both of your characters, sort of building that rise and then tracking that fall?
MYHA’LA: I think for me, the good news is I didn’t have to write the script, so I didn’t have to build the tension or track the — none of that. I just got to play each scene as they were there, written. We’re lucky that we just have excellent writing and that we had a place to fall from, because the fall was obviously imminent. But to put us in a place of what feels like pure joy and success and a kind of security was teeing us up for the greatness that is that fall.
When that fall hits, Eric uses a lawyer as a proxy to dissolve SternTao and the hurt on Harper’s face perhaps supersedes the grief she feels after her mom’s death. What was it like playing that scene? And how would you characterize Eric’s refusal to acknowledge or sort of hint around why he has to step away?
LEUNG: I think he’s protecting SternTao as an entity. He’s protecting Harper’s baby, basically — that’s the first time I’ve articulated it that way, that feels very right, like he’s protecting her baby — and he knows that he did something that will destroy it, so he has to remove himself. I think at first it’s for himself. It’s to keep that a secret, keep that locked away, but it’s for her. It’s his version of the most giving he can be. And the lawyer is so that he doesn’t have to actually do it, go through the work of it, which is very Eric.
MYHA’LA: I think it’s also interesting, because he’s like, ‘Well, let’s have an intimate relationship.’ But the thing that he’s doing is so clinical. I actually think it’s interesting that the lawyer has to do this part, because he’s like, ‘Now our relationship is personal,’ and this is so impersonal, like, ‘I can’t do it,’ but when I first read it, I interpreted it as, ‘I’m protecting her,’ obviously, but the fact that she doesn’t know that, like, all she knows is that he’s in here with a fucking lawyer. He won’t look at her or speak to her or tell her. Obviously something bad has happened, but she’s like, ‘Well, you can tell me, obviously you can tell me anything.’ That’s the kind of relationship we built, that’s the relationship you asked for, and because he won’t do it or can’t do it or whatever, she obviously thinks, ‘You forced me, you backed me into this corner where I now rely on you emotionally and you won’t do the thing you forced me into, like, fuck you bro.’ So it feels [like] cowardice. It feels like there’s a limit to what he’s able to share. But it shouldn’t be for her, and that feels really unfair.
Also, it’s not the first time she’s been abandoned by a family member, by a father figure, especially after her mom passing and her being open about [it]. Who knows? We don’t see the rest of that conversation, she might have gone in and told him, like, ‘My dad is this and la la la.’ Who’s to say that he doesn’t know that she feels super-duper abandoned and wasn’t afraid to engage in this kind of relationship with him because she’s afraid of being abandoned, and he does it anyway? So she’s pretty pissed and extremely hurt, and feels alone in the world. She’s in so much pain and she wants him to feel pain too.
Ken Leung as Eric Tao in Season 4, Episode 6 of Industry (HBO)
We don’t know about Season 5, and at the beginning of this season, Eric is sort of pulled out of retirement, but the closing credits sequence seems pretty final. What can you say about where you think Eric can go? Is this like a final chapter for him?
LEUNG: This might sound funny, but I don’t think it’s my business to say where he’s going. The way he walks away is offering the audience a voice in where he’s going, so it’s kind of where my playing the role ends and us sharing the role — me the actor, and you the viewer are both responsible for what that means. So it’s not my province to say. All I know is that he’s walking away and that is the story. The walking away is the story.
Myha’la for you, at the beginning of this season, it seems like Whitney is brought in as a parallel, or the only person who can match Harper’s energy. But as it progresses, he’s certainly more of a foil, and perhaps the only person to genuinely freak her out.
MYHA’LA: And he doesn’t just match her freak, he exceeds her freak.
Exactly. She may be ruthless, but he’s cold and calculated and borderline sociopathic. How do you view him in relation to Harper and the elements of humanity he kind of brings out in her?
MYHA’LA: I hope that people compare them and think, ‘Yeah, actually, maybe Harper’s not that crazy, like honestly, she’s just hardcore at her job,’ and maybe it feels ruthless because her friends sometimes happen to be caught in the crossfires. But damn, he’s actually nuts. He’s actually insane. And she smells it on him almost immediately; he says that thing about funerals, and she’s like, ‘That’s fucking weird of you to think, but also then have the nerve to say out loud. We don’t really know each other.’ Also we’re sort of sleeping together. You want to show me how crazy you are, off the second date? It’s nuts.
I think she feels like it’s bizarre, because they do engage in this extremely intimate relationship the day they meet and then she almost immediately finds out he’s on the other end of this trade of hers, but I think there’s an element that we don’t really get into, get into, that she’s like, ‘I saw you in your birthday suit, damn near inside of your body. I got really close, or I let someone else get that close to me who is deceptive and manipulative and has his own really, really personal agenda.’ I think she’s just grossed out by him.
I think the phone itself, all of those elements feel creepy and close to you in a way that you kind of can’t look away. But I think on the phone, because you can’t see each other, there’s a kind of intimacy that you create on the phone as well … Everyone says that she’s a bad person or a monster or whatever, so I think in weak moments, she questions and says, ‘Am I really? Why am I really doing this?’ So I think that was a low moment, and she feels like, ‘Oh, this guy’s a monster, and he chose me, and he saw me — am I also that way?’ For like a split second, then she’s like, ‘Girl, no, he’s insane.’
Max Minghella as Whitney Halberstram and Ken Leung as Eric Tao in Season 4, Episode 6 of Industry (HBO)
I wanted to bring up, if you want to speak to this, theories about who sent the tape to Eric. It’s sort of implied that it’s the escort agency and under Whitney’s discretion, because of the Yasmin storyline that’s happening in this episode as well. Did you discuss that at all with Konrad and Mickey?
LEUNG: No, I don’t know. I don’t know that it would have been useful to discuss it. I think during the CNN interview that Eric suspects will go a certain way, and it doesn’t — he gets thrown for it — I think maybe somewhere in there he starts to wonder, because the shock of it is so consuming that I don’t think he’s even at the next step of, ‘Well, who’s behind this?’ He’s not intellectual about it. He’s just like [doing] damage control. So he’s in that kind of place.
One of the last things I did want to mention is that so many fans adore the TikToks that you guys make. I’m just so curious, like, I feel like you’ll be filming a very tough scene, and then it’s ‘take five,’ and it’s like, ‘it’s TikTok time.’
MYHA’LA: No, I’m so fucking annoying on the set. I’m like, ‘Can everybody wait? I’m filming a TikTok.’ I once asked our DoP, I was like, ‘Can you film this for me?’ And then I was like, ‘Oh my God. Like, I’m on the set of Industry HBO, like, knock it off.’ Do you know what I mean?
No, I think people love it. I mean, people are tapped in, but I feel like that adds a layer to it for sure.
LEUNG: There’s gonna be space in the call sheet now for Myha’la’s TikToks.
MYHA’LA: Yeah, like an extra hour.
LEUNG: Myha’la time.
MYHA’LA: Oh my God, I hope everyone’s paid overtime, yeah. No, people have literally been in my comments section on my TikTok being like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what this show is, but I’m gonna start watching it, because I like your TikToks.’ And I’m like, ‘That is crazy.’
LEUNG: Wow.
MYHA’LA: Like, that is actually so insane to me. I was at a concert once, and this girl came up to me, and she was like, ‘Oh, my God, I haven’t seen Industry, but I love your TikTok. I’m just, like, a fan of your TikTok.’ And I was like, ‘I went to Carnegie Mellon University, bro.’ Like, this is crazy, do you know what I mean? [Laughs]
LEUNG: And then they watch it and it’s like nothing like what they—
I was gonna say, they were like, ‘Where’s the whimsy?’
LEUNG: Where’s the dancing?
MYHA’LA: Where’s all the choreography? No, people have been like, ‘You’ll watch the most devastating episode of Industry of all time, and then go on Myha’la’s TikTok, and she’s, like, being insane.’ [Laughs] I have to heal myself somehow. This is a hard job that we’re doing.
I think it’s perfect. I think it’s like: shot, chaser.
MYHA’LA: Yeah, absolutely. The TikTok is the chaser.
This interview has been condensed and edited for concision and clarity.
