‘Industry’ Season 4 Finale With Creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down

You're just talking about the story.

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You're just talking about the story. You're just talking about the story. I remember back in the glory days of Mad Men when we were potting about it and talking about it. I was writing about it.

I kind of reached this point where I said, it's not only that this is the best written show on TV. It's the most written show on TV, and I did not mean that as a negative. I just meant that everything was labored over and constructed and crafted in such a skillful way that it drew attention to itself and it earned it.

I feel like in 2026, I'm not saying industry is the best show on TV, but it is without a doubt the most show on TV. It is giving us so, so much abundance, shut out your guys, recline, and doing so in ways that touch all the genres that we love are completely alive in a way to recent television history.

And then also pushing the envelope in terms of a specific, quite bleak vision of the world that we all share and inhabit. And I was most impressed by that unafraid walk towards darkness in this episode. Yeah. You can see some paths that they could take for the last season.

“I think they introduced in the last episode here very much.”

Two sides of a political debate that could rage through the final season if you wanted to take as to fanowates in Bevan and talk about some kind of, as I think whether it's a campaign or whether it's just like an ideological battle that they have, or they could go in a hundred different directions, they could do another short of the season with Harper. It definitely feels like the end for some characters.

And when those characters are given their, their last grace notes on this season, you know, like a lot of seasons of industry, you're just like, "I'm really in, what's the show now?" Like what happens? Who do you think is the most?

I mean specifically as men, which we can do that headline now, which is, do you think she's off the show after the season? I think that she will have a much different relationship to the show after this season. I think she will remain the co-star of the show, but I think that her heroic arc seems to have taken a turn.

Yes. And I think like Yasmin and Harper are end game.

This show has always been about Yasmin and Harper two hearts intertwined.

Yes, they have very, they have some similarities and they have some shared history. One way to find out your differences though is to seat one of them next to Nazis. Like that's, you know, it's like a black light and a little bit excessive white light in the sense of like, "Oh, we're not all the same here." So this episode opens with the fallout from the previous episode with the collapse, the full

collapse of tender and the full collapse of, of Henry and Whitney's great lie. Although tellingly, and we could talk to the guys about this, it begins with a political talk show.

“Yes, it begins with a that's political fallout.”

That's basically where I'm, I'm going with that. Which is interesting. And we get a little bit of, he has been asked for a divorce, Henry Cress Fallon. I guess acquiesces Henry is also, seriously considers, absconding from the United Kingdom with Whitney, with a fake passport and one of the best scenes of this season, if not the

the UK and, and according to Whitney, kind of re-strategyized and regroup.

But essentially, defect to Russia and it's the fake passport that Whitney hands Henry, a Lithuanian passport that turns him. He finds it like an appalling, shoty piece of work kind of, and it is the class monster comes out one last time for one last great fight.

“Could I, could I use this opportunity to use Henry's words to describe the passport?”

Please, you're a fucking poor boy, civilian document. Yeah. Right before he says, eat my shit you peasant. They've had some real great standoffs on a plane. I think last time, when they were flying back to England from New York after the peer

point. Yes, speech meeting, Whitney's like, you know, you can't control your emotions because you're a fucking child and now we've got the shoe on the other foot and the shoe is hunting

boot and he is saying, I would never stoop to being an international con man with no name

and no background because even in prison, Henry still feels like he's worth more than somebody like Whitney who is a complete and total fabrication and fiction. You were born a disgusting fucking mooch and you will die a disgusting fucking mooch. Yes. I believe it's what he says.

Tough love. Yeah. Some remarkable things about this opening and then we can get to that private jet scene is I don't know if this is a sign of maturity or just the nature of narrative serialized television.

But the boys will be talking to you shortly.

“I think are starting to excel at and/or prefer writing the hangover more than the”

night out. Wow. This was a 40. This was honestly, this was the hangover episode. It took me a minute to kind of remember how much time had passed since the previous episode.

It wasn't until Aquabino's like you smell like the club. Yeah. And she's like, well, that tracks that I realized. I love the K for ketamine. Yes.

Oh, yeah. Well, I think at the club with the three K's, the Yasmin joins at the end of the episode. The Yasmin's like, good morning. I would like a divorce comes on the heels of like one of the epic benders to end all epic benders.

Just the kind of harsh light of morning stuff where people are who they are and that

does lead into, I mean, Henry is in an amazing season for the character and in an amazing

season for a ket Harrington. Is he the most alive and most in control of himself in the moment when when he fully reclaims his landed gentry thick headed. And it's one last great fight before death because his effective sentence, you know, he obviously doesn't go to prison, but his sentence is to be a lobotomized middle-aged fart on a boat

being being assisted by two lords who are just like, just take your lithium and shut up. Take your lithium with your ankle bracelet and will help you catch fish that we stock the pond with.

“The more significant I think development of this show obviously is there is a six month,”

I think a six month flash forward. It is weirdly. It is only, I believe, six weeks. I noted it because it, what happens is we have, we have this big scene on the plane. And then yeah, and then there's the interpole notice on the screen for Whitney.

It suggests that Whitney has been gone for six weeks. Well, there's this great smash cut because Henry is sort of decimated and I can't remember what the last shot is of Henry before we cut to this. Because when he's got arrested, it's the turn-style needle drop one way, by the way, I'm not trying to spoil your enjoyment of the upcoming last season of industry, but if you do

want a sense of what needle drops will be getting, just follow Conrad on Instagram and see what concerts he's been to because we got turned style and geese in the months leading to this episode. So the last scene as he comes home from that, he says, I love you. I can change and then he hears that the police are there.

Right. But importantly, he is not arrested. The last thing he does is he offers, and they're like, that's not necessary, you're not even that dangerous. The thing I noted, and we haven't really spoken much about the editing and the pacing of the season in terms of the technical stuff, is there's essentially

a smash cut to the sculpted, beautiful face of the actor, he plays the character, Sebastian Stefano. It's been kind of in the background for a bit. Is there a form? And it's a reform MP who is very much cut from the JD Vance Peter Teele technologist, post-liberal

democracy, I believe both in working people and our official intelligence and fascism. He tells Harper he'd like her help in designing a new OS presumably for society, yes. There is a smash cut to his sculpted, beautiful face, and it's almost as if another character

It's like there's always going to be another one, that's the thing in this world.

Yeah, there's always going to be another bank and another politician and another editor. They just continue to produce these people to take these roles and to pull the world and the direction that they want them to. It was Shadowed Edward Halcroft, great actor, who enjoyed him recently in the agency. Yes.

First season on the Paramount Plus network. This, we could talk about what the character is, what he does, and what he pretends for the future of the show.

“I think that the senior describing is really important and really artful in underscoring”

something we've been kind of talking about, and teasing a little bit in our conversations about the show. We'll bring it up with the guys that I think the comp, the HBO comp, certainly not in terms of quality or longevity or anything, but I just mean in terms of construction and intent. The comp for the show is not succession, as I think some people have made in the past because

it's UK and there's some money, some woody barbs on P.J.'s. It actually is aspirational towards being the wire and the rise of Stefanowitz in this

episode reminded me of the incredible bunny-colven appearance in the season finale of season

two of the wire, where we're introduced to Robert Wisdom, the actor, is a semi-familiar face even then. And then we're like, "Well, why are we following this guy?" And it's that swagger of like, he's going to matter, because all the pieces matter. There's a world in which animal croft is, it's Stefano, it's just one of the main characters.

I assume that he is, and I mean, increasingly excited about the fact that what the guys seem compelled by sure is Russian spycraft and Mike Clayton, who among us, but also the way that modern capitalist society is built on these corroded systems that are desperately intertwined and metastasized on to each other, and you cannot tell the story about one great stock hit without also talking about the larger repercussions for society.

Yeah, and Stefano is meeting with Yasmin and Alexander, Alexander has a kind of neocon suspicion of him, I guess, he's a little bit skeptical of-- You won the Orwell Scholarship, then you became everything he warned us about. Yes, but when he leaves, you see a glimmer in Yasmin's eye that recognizes the future. And recognizes that Alexander maybe is fading, and this is the guy who's going to step

into the brief-- Rome Falls, Byzantium Rises. What does Alexander say? He refers to Sebastian's voters as young murderous undersextmen, and Yasmin looks absolutely turned on.

“And I think Stefano, it's called them working-class people across-- across racial--”

Yeah. Yeah, there is something that is so potent and so fissile here and what they're doing with Yasmin, because she is actively turned on by narrative, like she was trying to sell a television show in Hollywood in 2018. Yes.

Like, everything is ziplis, everything is meaningless, nothing actually has stakes. It's just words. And we saw this path-- this path was paved earlier in the season when she greets the wheels for the Nazi banker to write his thing pieces in-- Much to Henry's shock.

Yeah. How could you have him writing a-- he's just an old racist, and Yasmin's like who cares it'll be yesterday. Tomorrow's chip wrapper, like this guy's column. It's fun to see the show interact with-- and obviously it's interacting with history in

European history. But more specifically for the purview of this podcast, with the types of entertainment that we grew up seeing in that your dad gave four stars to in the inquire, because this will

made me think of remains of the day, which is an incredible movie.

We've done that yet for rewatchables at CR Month as a long one, maybe we get like an AG long weekend.

“How would you love to have a film do you like to say?”

I'm just saying. I'm a fail for that version of the show. Hopkins Top 7 Butler in the-- we got-- I think the-- in that episode-- sorry, in that film, there's like a-- like a like a state, like a rich, posh old money family, and the way that the essentially board steward of the family flirt to a Nazism.

And it both shocks people, but then it also just kind of happens. Yeah. Look at the world today. Exactly. And so the way that it's playing with that same awareness.

Yasmin is a character in this show in terms of being a creative, like as a fictional creation for Mickey and Conrad. I've often found very interesting because Marissa Bell is obviously an amazing performer. She is an interesting character, but she's been the odd one out of all-- Harper has found her calling in life, which is to be a world killer.

She's had people around her. She's studied under Eric. Henry, obviously, felt like he had some sort of destiny, probably, to become prime minister,

something significant with your life. Even Whitney, whoever had these directions that they were going with, Yasmin's flirted with finance, she's flirted with client relations, she flirted with aristocracy, she flirted with comms, and reader, she found a role. So we move on to a political fundraiser, essentially, in Paris.

A law-scirting fundraiser, because the UK-- it's weird, they have these things, we're like laws, and we're not supposed to-- We're not supposed to take donations from outside of the country. You can. Yes.

Although there are shell companies, it'll allow it to be. You can. I say him for a reason. Yasmin has brought together a group of right-wing luminaries from across Europe to hang out with Stefano, it's in Paris, and she has also brought a group of young women, including

Hayley, including Dolly, who was Eric's partner in the video, who we learn. I believe, although narrative is fluid. He's not underage.

“I think it depends on how you read what Yasmin said.”

Right. We can get-- Men want her to be underage. Because it is illicit. Girls lie about their age.

What if girls also discover their womanhood when they want? Well, I think it's all fluid. I think my takeaway was that it's possible that she was not, but that they fake documentation to scare Eric, and that the story that Hayley and Vladimir Putin told Yasmin is an inversion

of that, that she was always overage or of age, and that Eric asked her to pretend to be

otherwise. I believe President at the Paris Party is the bar made from Henry's town, the States town. I think, from who we met earlier in the season, that seemed familiar. She's the one who thanked her and didn't speak French. I also just wanted to note one of the cool things about the episode was this off to Paris,

where Hayley is like, remember, they say, "Remember babe, it's Paris, anything can happen." This is the halfway point in the episode. This is--these guys have always been elite at playing with our expectations in terms of the time. Yeah.

So Yasmin, after this dinner is concluded, it's time to retire for drinks and smokes, and young women who sit on these guys' laps, and it becomes apparent that Yasmin is essentially running these women, and it becomes apparent to Harper who is sitting there with her, and is just like, "What the fuck is going on in the choir?" Yes, but it's defense.

She's right when she says, "Cock heavy parties are always dead."

True. True. Anyone else want to come up with that? No. Okay.

“I think, guys, is your camera off like, "Fraid on you for you."”

Where's my--where's my lead? And it becomes apparent that Yasmin is assuming the role of a helium at Maxwell, and that Harper is appalled, and if you think she's appalled at one moment, Yasmin shows her the video of Eric, receiving favors from Dolly, and it's a great scene just because Harper's--Mahalla is just kind of like working through like, "What the fuck is happening?"

And she's like, "Why are you showing me this?" But then the more important question is like, "Why do you have this?" What are these voices coming out of your mouth? Who are you? What do you become?

This isn't you take my hand, and then-- And she says, "If you've ever cared about me right now, take my hand and let's go." And Yasmin takes her hand, because she has cared about her and does care about her. It does a Godfather kiss. But Gives her a kiss, and it's just like--

Like, "Fraid on kiss." Yeah. You can bounce. Um, so, it's horrifying.

“It's horrifying also considering her family history, which I think fictionally represents”

her follows loosely some of Haley Maxwell's background in terms of gelane, isn't it? The G, I think you say. I don't think so, man. I think it goes Haleyane. Isn't it?

What Kai, what do you think? Is there a teen at first? Great. Thank you.

Um, I always thought it was a gelane.

Gaelane Maxwell. That's just, I don't know, it's just a gelane. All right. That's okay. Maybe in France.

You don't know her as well, though. Clearly. My point being, I think this is going to come-- as a shock to some people, even though if you look at the breadcrumbs, they may be leased. I mean, there's no sentimentality here, and that is something to be that I respect in the way

Mickey and Conrad work, and I think it might be a bridge too far for some viewers of television. I think that's okay. We knew from the beginning, even when we, and they didn't know, this would be a five-season epic spanning genres and eras, that this was an origin story show, because it's about kids starting on the ground floor of a business.

It's a really good point. We didn't know it was the origin story of a supervillain, and they probably didn't either, but it's fascinating that they've chosen to lean into it.

want, but not necessarily asmen.

I would argue with the opposite.

“I think that of all the characters the show has introduced.”

Asmen has had the cleanest, not the the the straightest path, but the cleanest relationship to what she wants and needs. It's constantly said. She wants to feel necessary. She wants to be wanted, and she wants to be necessary, and she wants to have people

do what she wants. I mean, she says it this season, as well, about when she was young. But it's not. It's outside of romance. I think that that's the best, because like, right, the rob relationship gave her that in

some ways. It was, let's just jump in this car and go on a road trip and get out of this place. She could never. And it wasn't enough. The actual love isn't enough, and that to echo it in the very haunting scene, where

she plays the last voice mail from her father, we're written into that every word of

that that monologue is basically, it's commodity trading.

Bring a friend. Be you. You're desirable. I've named up rich boat after you. Don't bring boys.

Be sexy, be, have that there's your value. I couldn't help but wonder, Terry Bradshaw, the voice, what our dad voicemails would be on, Andy, do it, recently saw him. No, the voicemail, I recently received eight voicemails from my father, and I called him back.

And he said, article in New York Times about Tokyo style pizza. Have you heard of this? It's called me to discuss. So, you know, I definitely played it five times lying on the platform in the bathroom.

I'm going to talk about it.

But so, the interesting thing to me is the Harper of all of the scene.

“Quabana says something, and I think we don't need to delve too deeply into this, because”

it's something I want to talk about with the guys directly when we have them on the line. But he says, "Are you an NPC?" and she's kind of been an NPC. This is Harper Harper. There was a, even I were joking offline the other day, and I was saying, like, the real twist is that Harper's been a ghost all along, like Henry's father.

Yeah. There's a version of the season where that's true. She profits from everything. She sets some things in motion. She doesn't go to Africa.

She just floats above and her own journey is really opaque and off-screen literally and figuratively. She tells Quabana, "Oh, my mother died," you know, it's all internal for her. I actually don't know what she wants. And I think the potential excitement for season five is this character stepping into what

she wants. She's not finished. She's not done.

“But more specifically fueled by what happens at the end of the episode, because I think”

one of the defining things of the character is that she is post-class, post-racial, post-American, post-anything. She's just pure, id, and capitalism. This is the system. I will win this game and it is all a game on some level.

When she sits down at that dinner, it's Paris Bay where a beautiful dress and they're Nazis there. Yeah. And they're like, you're not like the other ones. And then her friend is sex trafficking, potentially underage girls.

And the actual reality of the people who she does business with, who she associates with, who she becomes close friends with, hits her in a way. I don't think it's any coincidence that the next scene is kind of her one of her few real emotionally vulnerable moments of the season with Quabana, where she says, "Is it just because you're the only other black person I interact with?"

Like, the show steers away from things in a ways that can be interesting, counterintuitive and it ran towards who she is at her core as a woman in the world as a black woman in this world. But I, in ways that I found really compelling and interesting in what it might mean for a more moral line going forward.

I think that this isn't really a criticism. I would like to see Harper do something other than short-a-company next season, right? Yeah. Another note just on the Asman stuff, which I think is going to be discussed at Nazion over the next couple of weeks, because it's a major turn for a major character and I'm really

significant show, albeit somewhat of a cult one, but still a very significant show and it's done quite a little bit. I think it's worth noting the scene with her in Hailey when she asks Hailey if she has footage of her and Henry, which I was reminded takes place in a room I believe with Hitler paintings.

So there's a couple of different elements of embarrassment there. But the idea that this is not the good painting, that's not the lesser landscape. Yeah. The idea that there is compromise on everybody and that rather than anyone being in control were all part of this sort of ever-changing, ever-corrupting organism, that is the world.

you know, rich and powerful men, that she will then shove the way of the world that she

wants. I technically it looks like towards the fan of it's way of thinking. She herself is still under Hailey's thumb. I mean, Hailey does not say like, "Oh yeah, you're totally in the clear and I destroyed the tapes and you're all good."

“I believe she says, and I wish you took the opportunity to quote the show directly”

more just for the purposes of compromise that Kai and Kai now have, but I believe she says that she masturbates to the game tape. That's right. And it reminded me of, I'd say that was gravitas. A different kind of way of the way, like Whitney responded to Henry's question about the

same thing, where he was like, "Do you think I'm capable of that?" And he said, "Yes," and he was like, "There's your answer."

That was essentially Hailey is being provocative about like, "I find it's stimulating,

but it's like, it still exists." The show is achieving rare air and incredibly successful air for this season, which I've struggled with at times. When it steers towards this jaw-dropping, leech, chilling realization on the part of many people, including maybe even the show itself, that we are all trapped in this morally

bankrupt, panopticon of contemporary existence. And I really liked the construction of the episode that gave space for like Bevin's speech at the beginning, which assails the world, the way it is, from an institutionalist, left-leaning perspective. I don't know, aspirational perspective, where she says, "It's become my job to be seduced

and lobbied and falsely loved so that neoliberalism can continue its decades-long project of gutting the moral architecture of how we govern," said as Bill and Hillary Clinton appear before a house committee. And then in this same episode, Stefano Witz and the Nazis are like, "Yeah, this is over. This doesn't work."

So we're going to build a new OS based on racial purity and insults. That is the world that we live in, and those are, maybe if Soron brought those guys to

“Helms Deep, we'd have a different outcome, you know what I mean?”

That's the most rare thing Soron was looking at that. Let's go say, that's the most ringer-filled way to explain our contemporary political moments. I think shows our generally television shows, even the most forward-thinking ones, are generally conservative, small-sea in ways of like institutions will win out. The goodness of people will win out, you know, on Thursday we were talking about the

pit and we're talking about how like the show is essentially about human dignity and how that matters. It's like I think that it is not a small thing that this younger generation, the ones who, as someone says in the opening political thing, are the ones left having to put the bill for everything.

Our making a television show that's calling bullshit on everyone and not feeling the need to suggest a quick fix, but seeing how people sort of squirm and seek solace and profit in the aftermath. It's interesting I think that like this idea of whether or not Yasmin continues as a character, which I suppose we can ask him making a comment right about in a second.

She's continuing as a character. I find this an interesting take by you. There's not that much of a significant difference between what happens to Yasmin at the end of the show and what happens to Eric a couple of weeks ago. It is a place you can't really come back from morally, I think.

Or, sure. But they can come back. Sure. Yeah. And I think everyone can and will.

“I think that's what they've proven by having, you know, by having people just be on call”

to show up and you don't actually, and keeps you on your toes.

Like I didn't know Jenny Bevin was going to be a crucial character.

I didn't know Stefano Whitz was going to potentially emerge as the biggest person in season five, I didn't know that there was more Boston to play. Sure, including at that absolutely stunning scene that we didn't even mention. I was shopping mall scene where he basically relays what Russians do and you get the sense that these tricky cold fingers of death have touched everyone.

Everyone loves the PM, the Chief of Staff of the PM and Boston just being like, stop talking about this. And the return of the Echo of Suicide, which is how Henry began the season and then we end in a place where it's like, it's very plausible for people to commit suicide. Yes.

I thought it was a funny and for Henry's character to be on a boat much like he has been his father. Great call. But we can talk about it with them, but I'm curious how you feel because the set up for the next season, as you said, could be almost anything.

Is the show now going to be about, is it going to, I have Patrick Radonky for it over here. We can just ask him. I would love to talk to him about the state of play, V's of either Russians and London. Yeah.

Is it about shows up at the end of this episode, yes, to, to talk to Harper. The, I mean, who was you think was the bigger get, Patrick Radonky or Chicken Shop, date?

I think it was probably a meal.

You think I knew it was probably harder to book. I told him to respect to the writer of say, no, I'm just saying, yeah, is the last season going to follow a more traditional narrative or Harper is now a hero who's going to burn down. I don't think so.

I don't think so. That's the world view of this. I agree. I think that's conventional.

“How could you make a show about Harper taking down Yasmin?”

We're watching it play out in real time. Exactly. The show doesn't lie. It may be fabulous in places. It may embellish it may emphasize, but it's fairly straightforward and it, I, yeah.

We'll talk to the guys about it. But I think the triumph of the season, which, you know, I'm not, I'm not back tracking my criticisms of the week to week and some of the episodes in the, in the, in the most year middle of the season, but the triumph of the season to me is the successful argument that it made that it is a show about a world view.

It is a show about a moment and a context that I think we will be poorer for when it goes off the air. Yeah. They did it. They walked it from one thing to another thing and, you know, maybe when we do a post post

more than we can talk about, yeah, if I think we can do this during the Sun Sunday night,

“I think one thing we could do is return to our mail bag and have people send in questions.”

Yeah. So it's the watch at spotify.com, but without a further ado, let's get into our interview with Mickey Down and Conrad. We are honored to be joined by Conrad. Mickey Down.

Again, on this pot, I think this has got to be five or six times that they've, they've joined us, including their legendary GameStop episode on the watch. They've just concluded season four of industry. The show will return season five and it's the final season guys, congratulations.

On this incredible season of television, Andy, why don't you, why don't you take it away?

Yeah, congratulations, guys. I think the GameStop episode was legendary. I wasn't a part of it. So for me, the legendary episode Mickey is the episode you did from the delivery room. As your first child was coming into the world, I feel like that showed a really, really

healthy balance of work life and I respect it and appreciate it. Thanks, guys. I'm dedication to the watch. Yes. Above all else.

It is noted. Four was at once the most ambitious season of the show.

“I think everyone watching and everyone making it would agree.”

It was a change in setting and tone sometimes in genre and it was also the most compressed in terms of getting your order for the series, writing it, producing it, delivering it. So both and can you talk us through Conrad, you want to get us started about how you approached each of those challenges and how one affected the other? Part of the thrill for me and Mickey, the way to get us credit, what they've allowed us to do with the shows to continuously get in there and come with a very fresh mindset of like,

almost how much load can these day hours bear in terms of our ambition for it? But I'm moving the price point of the show that much. So the ambition is just grown because our, as writers in this film makers just year on year would become more ambitious about what we think the story can be. You know, like if the thing we would say to each other is like, if we weren't doing industry now, if there wasn't a fourth season of industry, what would it be, what would it be interested to write it out?

So like when we go into the room, we were talking about, well, you know, a favorite conspiracy through it as we're talking about Piccolo, we were talking about Michael Manzie inside a, we're talking about conspiracy through it as generally, we were like, well, why can't we try to hold that sort of idea into the, what are we already done with the characters?

What we thought was kind of interesting to us was the level of reality and versatility reports, the first couple of seasons meant you had incredible buying with these characters already.

You were connected to them. You were three-dimensional, hopefully, they were played beautifully by the actors. There was almost, the stakes of the story were kind of exciting for us then because they felt so human and so real. The bolting them into something that felt more propulsive, whether it's where genuine threat actually existed at the edge of the world and then in the center of the world. It's kind of thought like, that was thrilling.

I mean, the compression is, you know, the compression is just an age of TV, like, when you were up against it, it's been a way that I kind of, that focused the mind and made us more determined to succeed and sort of, like, you know, pull it off. But I'm sure that we were going through, you know, very infections in the season. But in terms of, like, what we set up to do, you know, we've cited many times quite boldly before the season started, that we were in for us by, like, Michael Clayton and obviously girl was a big influence on our writing.

I think in terms of what we set up to do, I think we sort of landed in a ballpark on that. And Mickey, Cara's alluding to, like, how, what, what kind of load bearing show this is and how it can support all these different ideas and all these different genres. But what's the line of what has to remain core industry DNA? And obviously, like, there are central characters who we are stuck with, not stuck with, but we are traveling along with throughout the season. Well, I mean, the thing is is that it's not a sentimental show.

Drop your anti-As takes now. It's not a safe space. I wasn't, it's not anti-As. It's just, like, putting characters in a position where it's hard to see paths forward for them more or less. I don't know what you mean. I was all the finale, and I'm rooting for him more than ever. But please, Mickey, you take the floor.

What is, what is the DNA of industry that has to stay steady so that you can guys can then freestyle with other things like genre?

I think the sentimentality of it is that the edges of it has come right set.

“The edges of this world. And when it does reveal itself, I think it's a little more powerful given how cynical the rest of the kind of the exploration of the world is.”

And the core DNA of industry, but there's a few different things. It's kind of like intellectual DNA of mining fundraiser boys and the way that we look at the world and the way that we are quite cynical, and I'll take on this world.

And then there's a kind of like, we always talked about this thing being like a operatic and being this huge backdrop we've painted in the, in this season.

And it has sort of Shakespeare in the way that being too grandiose. It still needs to have, you know, the sort of the core sort of intimate relationships that you think are as kind of a set we've built for free seasons prior. I mean, to the show, some cold season before and getting this kind of like sort of corporate conspiracy thriller would have felt received version of something else. I think it's because we had, you know, the hardware, the Jasmine relationship. But we had the hardware, Erica relationship with the core of it. I was interested to see how those relationships would work in this sort of new landscape.

And, you know, another sort of very practical thing is a show has to be about finance in some way. We talked about the fact that we wanted to widely aperture between seasons. We, you know, we went for a trading floor. We then went to a trading floor dealing with a Teddy health company and then we was suddenly in an actual company in the SG season. And now, we weren't, like, writing about, you know, the intersection between politics and media and finance. But it has to really be about finance. It has to have some to say about finance and how finance sits within that ecosystem.

So like, we're always talking about what's the trait, like, what doesn't show that I was put on. And in some ways, this season was pretty simple in that regard. Because the first three seasons, I mean, the first season in particular, was it kind of like, you know, it's been said that the finance peak, and that season was kind of technobabble. And as we've continued to produce the show and tried to make the finance peak, actually, historically speak as well. And in the season four, we kind of tried to present them the eases version of a training to succeed story, which is Harper is on one side of it.

Yeah, and right now, with Eric and the estimates on the other side of Henry and with the, and she wants the things to go down and they want the thing to go up.

And we thought people would finally have an incredible finance story to follow.

And obviously, that didn't happen because as always of industry, we think you've written something really intelligible. And it's end up being incredibly unintelligible. But that's really important to us. And I go for going forward, you know, I love writing my politics. I love writing about, you know, Yeah, I've a class is a lot of writing about this sort of entrenched class system with a show he's a finance show. And even though we've, like, removed care point, removed the training for removed what the sort of, in some ways, the sort of like adding go to authenticity of the first season.

We're still interested in how finance is driving the story. I still have time for any financial techno battle. When Harper's like, peel that off into the puke or whatever, which is like selling. I was like, that's really good. But I was like, did you have a moment though, when you thought, when can he picked up and he said, who is this?

“And I thought, all of a sudden, that's what the season was doing.”

When he, like, literally was going to say, it just goes to like, he didn't know who they were. It was like, but I guess it's a testament to the, you guys that I was like, well, that they'll probably find a way out of this. We do want to talk specifically about some of the decisions in the finale, but I did want to bring it all the way back to the premiere of the season. There was a lot of labor necessary. No, not labor party labor in the other sense to, if it's also, what was the tin can had party?

It can't be in face. How's he doing in the bi-election today, by the way? I don't know if he's standing, actually. We gave him an extra reason. We gave him one more vote then he actually had to receive real life.

I was typically kind of, see, this is a sentimental show. You started it in a very interesting place with tender in the tender 1.0, with the Whitney and Jonah storyline. Well, you are also reintroducing as been in Henry's dad as well. You are also reintroducing Harper and Eric. You talk a little bit, Conrad, about why you started there.

And then how challenging it was to bring us from that point all the way to where Whitney ends up. For conception, we were obsessed with an idea of a cold open, which is true.

It went through you and with the characters that you'd never seen before.

And there was this really curious balance to strike where, especially when we're doing iterations of the first few drops of the episode. And even in the car was basically at this constant push with ourselves, pushable about how quickly. How many minutes of screen time could we have where we didn't have one of them. You know, where we didn't grasp it, situate the viewer in the universe. They are ready new.

They know a version of where we have like, you know, maybe 12, 13 minutes even of screen time with our half, or he hasn't already been on screen. To us, that was just thrilling.

“I mean, I think the idea of, the idea of renewed company and new voices for it to be so front-footed.”

And some ways was just to us just follow the boldest thing to do. And like given what we did to the show in season three, it felt very natural for the next choice after blown and precinct up. To be the boldest choice we could possibly make, so that kind of like really energizes us. And we were just to be honest with you, we were really excited to get maximum yellows character.

And I think in introducing him to the show, you know, Andy, I've been listening to your, you all season talk about the show.

And it's very fairly critiquing it on some of the, you know, you're very balanced in the way you talk about it. But some of the, some of the things you've found slight challenging with the season note, I totally agree. And I've been thinking about it while you're respected on it.

“I think a lot of the boils down to a lot of your, the kind of the core of your critique actually boils down to the simple one for one replacement of Rob with Whitney in terms of screen time.”

Because you take a character who, in a way, wipe with Harry Lorty by design was this in some ways such a soulful character, such an anchor in the character.

And you're replacing the effectively a kind of cipher avatar capitalism, maybe the closest thing to an out and out villain or sociopath the show is ever done. And so that, in a way, and you, you marry that's the fact that the show doesn't really have much time to slow down because of the necessitations of a genre plot. And like that balance, I think has really changed the way the show almost presents itself. And I think the pilot was a huge barrier to entry in, in that regard, but it was the thing that we felt, you know, me and Mickey is so gut led and was so instinctive.

We got led, and obviously, HBO helped us be the show. But when we're in a room together, we really just, we drive towards, we think instinctively feels like the best and boldest version of the show.

“And we, and then, because I think by our own nature as being a creative duo, we just push each other a little bit over our line.”

There's very little fear in what we do, and I think that's just a function of the fact that we, we add each other on own. The way you framed it is so interesting and reminded me of the moment in the finale when, when Alexander is talking to Sebastian, and he's presenting this very old world conservativism. And it suddenly sounds liberal compared to what you've moved to the window of the ability to take out a rob and you put in Whitney and then suddenly everyone shifts slightly. Well, and it's also like Whitney introduces a new level of like reality to the show because if Whitney can do what he's doing.

There are certain things that seem then more plausible. Mickie, I wanted to ask you about Yasmin in relationship to Whitney actually because when I have been going back through the episodes from this season. Knowing what I know about Whitney now, the performance takes on a completely different tender. And I will do so with Yasmin, even though, you know, the point where she obviously becomes what she winds up being happened somewhat off screen. In that kind of time gap or whenever that happens, when did you guys start thinking about where Yasmin would end up? Does it predate writing season four? Does it go back to the stuff with her father and, and is this something that you had been charting for her for a long time.

I remember a bit of sort of yes. Yes, a little bit of both. I mean, in terms of your fans. Both of them exactly. When we first introduced Yasmin's father as a character and the first he wrote there, which is, you know, after Yasmin's having sex with Mike, she comes out into the living room and she sees a father and the first thing her father says to her is this kind of comment about her appearance. And we actually thought that was kind of just a sort of weird study inappropriate thing that the father would say about daughter, you hadn't seen it for a while. And really the way that I'm letting you play it, skewed towards more creepy than just awkward.

And suddenly there was this kind of relationship there, which felt like it had to be unearthed. And then obviously, you know, in season three, this sort of illusions to real life storytelling or real life events as we should say, a kind of, a kind of bold that I kind of explicit. Like, you know, we've had to talk kind of that length and it's kind of like round of exit interviews about we get in Maxwell and the influence of her on the story. We've been really clear to say that it is not one of one company in regard and that it's, you know, it's we, we borrow from all parts of this sort of, you know,

that we borrowed from literature, we borrow from the needy, we borrow from contemporary stuff, but we did find the kind of biography of Gillian Maxwell, kind of in her early years in her relationship with the Robert Maxwell quite interesting. And to be thought out to that biography, actually like sort of all that Wikipedia entry stuff like the idea about naming a boat off your daughter, the boat where she then dial, it's kind of just interesting. And then it's sort of like, it was sort of stuff that we could shade in, you know, the idea is character. We've never, in explicit even Teresa, or even probably each other about what the nature of her, their relationship was.

“And why it felt like it was so eerie and you know, I think if we were to tell you and Teresa that even as direct as should not be able to play out the nuanced ambiguity that she plays with.”

And so we keep a loading to it, but we never come down to harm them.

I think even though there's sort of biographical elements that we engented into the story in the sort of second or third season. I do think there was a kind of like transactional relationship that Yasmin has with people, which has been there since season one, and there's a kind of attraction to vulnerable people and a need for exploit to manipulate them.

And the sort of morass of her character just came together until they just feel like this is the character and a person who is a survivor is an exercise in rationalization and that I can justify all my stuff because I've been there. They took abuse and that me beginning my trauma and someone else is fine because it was big end up on me. She wants to like ascend to power with grab onto people who are in the ascendancy, but it's also something that felt very conjured and conjured with that kind of behavior.

“So then we just thought like what is the natural progression of this character?”

What is the natural progression with someone that is an opportunist who has experienced trauma who really looks the other way in terms of the political idea of the ideology stuff. He really doesn't care about left or right, he takes about power and then also has the kind of backstory which she feels can feed that. And we honestly thought like push that towards the most heinous version of that character. The audience involvement to empathize with the character. The moment it implies who any of the characters in the industry, you're right, they will pretend that the audience is allowed to meet up and mind.

We said about the previously like, they're all real short tests for your own prejudice or for whatever you feel. By affection for Whitney now. Oh, it's sort of terrible. Exactly, exactly. So it was a six with us trying to shade in the character as comrades that became was an avatar of capitalism and ambition for the first five episodes.

But the other thing that Marisa's performance is empathetic. I think it's just it's impossible not to empathize with her in some respect. I think that's the reason we'd thought we could do this by the way.

I think like if we had a very cold actress paying this part, we would never pursue this to this place.

But the truth is also like we before the season came out was it's very funny to have been going around about how like someone took one of our comments in bad faith. And it was all over to it to like it said industry writers make it up as they go along. And like Mickie said to me very, very fondly he was like, well, isn't that just the definition of writing, which obviously is. Be equally the best thing, you know, you guys know this because you're obsessed with long long form returning TV.

“The best thing about wrong form TV is you, you can write a season, diagnose it, and then the characters reveal themselves through the writing, right?”

It's got like seasons one and two. We were kind of, you know, building this world building the characters trying to understand them and by watching the actors play them because that would inform how we were writing them. And then by the time we got to the end of season three, you know, everything Mickie said holds the one thing I'm like really zero in on is like, we were going into the room with we can't not write about authoritarianism and capitalism because because they're very cartoon that is. And because that's been true throughout history, but feels very.

Aren't the time in which we're writing.

We basically sell ourselves a thing of like in our world.

If the ascendant powers or authoritarian power or right wing tech, you know, techno feudalism. It's the band ofish from our world. Who is the most realistic character in the in the insecurities and the desires of the whole of the tapestry of people we've created. Who would most likely start to drift like a moth to the flame of that thing and it became very clear to us that there was an an almost an inevitability of the asmin ending up. You know, being a comms director, which is kind of a skill set for almost season two in the private world management.

For this right wing authoritarian, it was kind of like, and the best thing about the story from my point of view, and I know it can speak to Mickie is that there was no other story for us to tell. It wasn't like, it wasn't like, oh, we have a thousand we have a thousand versions of what we can do with the asmin. It was like, that was the thing, that was the story that was the impaltment created impulse, and I was had to follow to this logical conclusion. One of the things that that I know I love that we love about the show on screen in terms of what you would you get out of the actors and also off screen in terms of, you know, our interactions with you guys and seeing, you know, the viral dancing videos that some of you participated in some of your cast participated in is the closeness that you guys have with the cast and when you bring them into the family and how they become part of it.

It's resulted in like, you know, a career redefining performance from Kitt Harrington, which has just been astonishing this season. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the conversations you have with, we could talk about it with Marisa, we could use Kitt as an example, whichever of them loans itself more to it. In terms of building, building them a character ship pointed in the right direction to get them to the places that they end up over the course of a season, because this, this scripts are long,

our dens, the scenes are heavy at times, and yet these characters always seem to have a north star and a compass that I imagine you're providing them with.

“Specifically, a question is about like, what do they need? Did Marisa at some point say that she needed a club night with Harper? Do you have to have the conversation about why she needs that?”

How do you keep them on the track that you are designing for them as you go along? So, Marisa, it is a bit of a cop-out answer, but we've been living with this character all as a team for the last, like essentially the last seven years from inception to where we are now.

So, really, and into the attributes of the actual actress like Marisa Hats, I know I spoke about, you know, did this is a very empathetic performer. She's very funny. She has a heart and her performance.

She can make dialogue that feels kind of a stiff at point or purple, feel the complete naturalistic.

Like, that is what we write towards. In terms of actual, this sort of journey she goes on this on this season.

“I think, in the same way that me approached me in front of an approach to all the characters, which is a place of love. She has to almost at least understand what is running on what is motivating, was motivating as you know.”

I feel like we started to understand that Yasmin ends up sort of running this kind of quite controversial sex ring thing. And that's, like, I feel like that sort of goes straight to like, that would really scare her. And I feel like it was a conversation that we had, which is an involvement conversation about why she's got there, which allowed her to get to play that with any kind of heart.

And I feel like for kids, we do get a bit of the shoe, which is like, it was just that he essentially just done everything by the end of the season. And again, like season three care.

We wrote him as his kind of sort of NBA sort of fading upwards avatar of a sort of entrenched class system where people from his kind of background can kind of just listen. Beyond his own hamster will look at their belt or success. And you played it like that, but then he also played it with an incredible empathy when he was doing stuff about his family life and his relationship with father.

“And he played it with a lot of humor. And then obviously, our sort of mantra in this show is, if someone's good, you just get a way more to do.”

So when we brought him down for season four, we would have said, like, this is what we want you to do, which is kind of about everything. This is the journey we want you to go on. We want you to weirdly be a character who is kind of quite,

it's kind of quite rare in this universe and that you have good intentions, whereas a lot of the characters here that kind of motivated way have a race or self advancement.

And they know that even then there shouldn't be doing it, but like kids, parents and Henry is kind of, you know, he's novel in the father and actually he wants to do better. He wants to, as he say, be a good person. He wants to democratize energy and then he wants to democratize banking. Yeah, and you know, he has a, as he's, as he's there, someone says to him, like, I'm very curious character, or he talks about no less of the age.

“And he has a huge blind spot around that, because he doesn't really understand us in the significance of someone from the age background telling people what to do and it's kind of put them this the way.”

But he wants to be better. And that's the thing we kept telling the kids, which is like, you want to be a better person. That's the law staff for you. And you've got a soul, which, which, like, with with with Rob leaving our show, he actually weirdly became the guy who we started to, we always have to write a sort of Faustian struggle for someone's someone's soul or the or their morality. And all his interactions with Whitney too, you can just see that soul dying a little bit. And he's true. I can't believe I'm being confronted by Satan. Like, I'm trying to do the right thing here.

The other thing to say about the actors is they, I think they come to the show because or or at least in case the max case, they're hungry for the material as well because, you know, you said the kid got to read a fine himself like, they, they're so good, but they have, they always have to turn up my athletes because I mean, Max said they was almost I blocking out having to learn how much dialogue we were getting to do. But like they, it's, it's their level of dedication to, to, to meet the material at the level that they think they need to meet it out, which means that, literally, we'd like, especially like kids case, I mean, for most the actors, especially the women, they're, they're not actually direction we have to do to that performance is pretty.

You'd be amazed how a lot it was. I mean, for Mohito's, I just, I love the thriller aspect of this season. I know obviously there's parallels to the, the wirecard story in, in Germany that you guys drew from, I was curious about, whether or not getting into this kind of new territory for you in this show, this thriller, this corporate and international espionage story. I felt like going back to the beginning of the punk rock origins of the show in the first place, because you're like, you're learning how to tell a spy story and how to tell an espionage story kind of like on the fly.

What were the things that you were surprised to find challenging things that you found surprisingly easy? Tell me a little bit about switching up the tone of the show. I'm haunted by a thing that Andy always said a couple of years ago, which is like, you guys have got something nice on HBO, it's the arena, like, it doesn't matter how successfully you are, you might never get this chance again. So, let me make you sort in that, well, that's the mantra for every hour. We kind of treat each hour as an event as we write it. So, before we even film there or even begin to edit it, where we rewrite it, we just, we sell ourselves a target, we have 55 minutes, how do we make it as impact for this possible.

And we pin that to the board, right, that's going to be that episode episode six is going to have a voice over the first time in the show and it's going to have to be all this all these things. He's going to go to go and go on and five and it's going to be a bit of a reform Michael Manzie insider. We saw with that kind of like macro idea of that's what's going to make an event for an hour and then we saw with all that down on the scene into breaking story. I've got to be honest, we, I guess these operate from a place of no fear again and maybe that's some shows in the, make you can jump in because I'm awful in, but and there are some shows in the excesses of what we're doing and some of the imperfections of the season, but.

I mean, I speak for Mickey, I have no idea, but I assume we sort of approaches always jumping in two footed.

That's funny. I can't remember what exactly you said Andy in the last podcast, but you said something about. It's been about we should have the confidence. Maybe I was a wrong wording to basically leave all of this sort of the more. I don't know, like espionage neglected stuff about Russia to season five. But then we're any, you know, we're working of your principle, which is like, we've got to start the night on HBO. We've only got one chance to do this. We have no idea if we're going to get a season five.

So we have to basically burn through all our best ideas. Mother Russia, wait for nobody listen. I mean, I later, I talked myself out of it.

“I think, and I, and I think I genuinely admire this that like everybody is a radical until they're actually in the firing line.”

You know what I mean?

I'm like, what does it know, atheists and foxholes? I'm getting my war metaphors mixed up.

I'm tracking my own creeping conservativism as I watch you guys be braver and braver. And I, I, I, I'll cop to it. Speaking about going for it, this is a good to segue as any. The returns of Rishi and Eric were not guaranteed considering where each character was left in season three. I think it was a good sense that we had a feeling they would return both because as we were saying,

you guys are pretty fearless about painting yourselves out of corners. You may have painted yourself into, but also because cigar and can have become such close collaborators and our brilliant in these roles. That said, their returns were shocking in sense of how aborted they felt. You know, that that we, I think as in viewing them week to week, I was like, okay, well, this is the launch pad for something larger and there. Either wasn't room for it or that my thinking was more conventional if there would be some sort of redemption arc.

I, I wondered if you could talk about the ways you considered their returns and how you were able to deploy them with the limited real estate left for them in such a large season. The Rishi one was quite particular and then we, we did something which we saw blue off the grammar of the show by having his wife executed a poem, but I'm range in the finale of season three.

“I think if we all we were coming back, we might have not done something so bombastic.”

That said, when we go into the right to do a movie, it's like, oh, Rishi's second act, is there prison drama like, you know, like the jack or the automobile profit?

Are we following him through some sort of never world where he has to repace and death?

So like, and all of his sides of feel like we were. I read don't teach you to be with a good time. Come on. You can just drop a profit. They're just like, yeah, and we don't do it. That doesn't sound fucking good.

But we just, to truth is, we didn't have the real estate to do something like that and it also felt like a betrayal of the risk to show to Mickie's earlier point about being a pure. You know, a show that has to have a but bedrock and finance and trading and all of those. All of the things that are started about. And but equally, you know, and we wanted to. There's a weird inevitability when you start to break story in a writers room where you, you.

“I think maybe this is what kind of happened with Eric and Rishi where you start.”

You start to, like it's not like we think, oh, they have to accept episodes four and six. But there's a way that the story reveals itself as we're breaking it, which feels like, well, this is the organic end point. So these characters and for us, we thought, like. We thought, Rishi, I mean, I made this show to Mickie, but like. I could tell Rishi to hell, well, we, we put loads of coke in front of him and gas sort of.

Drunk coats up the auction and start monologueing about, you know, like capitalism deals with, like capitalism. You know, and anyone, there's a lot of people that've been in that position probably. And after party and what, and once it's broken, it sounds like a window. Yeah, that, that monologue sounded a little con red ass. Get your two points, I gotta say. I think we're both running our collective subconscious a little bit too close to the bone on the one.

Mick, what, what, what, how do we conceive of Eric versus Rishi? I, I also think, obviously, with the Rishi thing, we wanted to just, I mean, I, I, we came on the watch after season three in intellectualized that execution of his wife. And, you know, honestly, again, we didn't know we were going to come back. And it was quite difficult to to dry ourselves out of that, particularly the whole.

And it's come around said, we tried to, you know, we kind of conceptualized all the versions that kind of received. It's not like him being in prison. And we just thought, what actually happens to someone like that, that has been spat out by the system.

And I thought, like, the only thing I could, you know, he's, he has a drug problem. There is very easy access to large amounts of narcotics now through the internet. Actually, make money in a very short amount of time. Using a computer and, you know, kind of, maybe a sort of pathological entrepreneurship. And you end up being a drug dealer. I thought, that's quite interesting.

I mean, that he's, but then also, we talked about redemption. And it's funny, you keep, you asked about redemption. He said, no, no, no, no, there's constantly asking me when the character is going to be redeemed.

“And we thought, a character like that, does he want to be redeemed?”

Is there ever any kind of redemption for him? He talked about, like, does he decide to, you know, go off the harbour? Does he then decide to, like, get a backbone? Or does he decide to, you know, make restitution for his wife's murder? I'm just thought, isn't it more interesting that this guy has just sort of returned to default?

Back in his transactional ecosystem. And actually, it hasn't really thought about the fact that he, you know,

was basically the archetype of his wife's death.

Because he's just fucking, you know, he just, he just blinked it to it. And he's just, he's just flooded his mind to other staff of dopamine and, you know, and the sex and getting head in the car. And like, I felt like that was the character we created. And I feel like it would have been a bit of a betrayal

or a him to give it a redemption arc. So we thought, let's give him the worst possible ending we could. And that's, you know, Tiger is a fucking phenomenal actor.

“And quite honestly, again, like, it was kind of an exercise and we love him.”

We want to bring him back. We could have easily just left him and said, "Oh, he went to jail." Or, you know, he's out of the world. And because of the, you know, the quality of Tiger and what, and let me love him so much, he brought him back.

And we should probably do quite often. Eric, again, we had a conversation with Ken at the end of, and the end of season three. You know, one of the last days of shooting where he was essentially, I think we're done with the character now. At that point, again, we didn't know he was coming back.

But he really felt like his conclusion had happened. And then again, we loved Ken. We think he's, like, kind of, one of the sort of bed rocks of the show.

We always joke that in season one, when we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.

We just put the camera on Ken's face and he gave it a prestige HP quality. And we thought we were going to bring it back.

“And then we thought, okay, well, what is, what does stuff we ever seen before?”

What do Ken, I really covered this issue, Ken, and he wanted to do something completely different. He sent us that sandal jumps and quotes, which he uses in the, which he uses in the crossword. And he just thought about a, and so, and arc where he, is trying really, really hard to be a better person. He has, as he said, lived the most pleasure and lived the life of him.

You know, what he's saying, he's lived it like, it's all major, all business. And he hasn't been to really square or two together. And we just, in the present, we want to see him working part. We want to see him kind of back on his feet. We want to see him successful in the professional capacity.

But then again, like, all these characters in some ways always refer to the norm.

They always, when obstacles are put in front of them, they go back to what is easy. And we gave him a, you know, a very kind of awful, not bright ending, which we were kind of scared. We were like, I was going to push back on this. You know, I think it's just too much for the character. But I think he doesn't, you know, he says, there's lots of questions about the finances,

that I think he asked us, lots of questions for the character. One of the things he really didn't even, he didn't even question. Because he thought it was a kind of fitting end to the character. He finds himself blackmailed, but what he, what he chooses to do with the blackmail, how he signs the fund over to, you know, he doesn't know if the woman's underage or not when it happens.

I, I, I always think it is a kind of lost stand when he goes and see it. And I mean, make a joke about it being like the end and then they might. Well, he basically lays everything that's wrong within. But to me, it feels like an ownership of his sins. You guys have been very generous for the time when we know you got to get back to season five.

So if you allow one last question that starts with a character, and then I'd like to leave you a little room to walk us into where you're thinking for season five without giving too much away. The character I wanted to focus on for the last question is, is Harper. I thought it was really fascinating that Quabin is says you're like an NPC because that was a lot of the role she played the season. There was a, I was joking with Chris earlier that there's a version of the show where she's also a ghost for episodes at a time,

much like Henry's father was. And I thought it was really interesting in terms of your story, telling decision making process and also what it might pretend for the future of the show that she is floating above it. She's profiting. She's opaque about her feelings. She's not being honest with anyone. And then she sat next to two Nazis and her best friends turns into a sex trafficker.

And suddenly the sort of high-minded prophet overall, she's post-racial, she's post-national, she's post-everything. World killer. She's the world catches up with the world killer. And I found that to be a really interesting choice, especially for a character that often doesn't remark on her differences in the world that she's dominating.

However, as essentially, she's been living in sort of a superior point, kind of ecosystem for the last three years, for the last two seasons. She's out of empathy, which, and all she wants to do is get back into it. She gets into the season for her. She has a huge amount of success.

As you said Andy, she's like, basically moved through this with these rooms.

Hasn't really had any kind of conversation about her identity. Really only had a full and a big seller and it's a big time of time. Like, lens into the transactional relationships she has. And hasn't really thought about the consequences of cost of it or talk until really bad things start happening to her. Like, you know, her colleagues start getting assaulted for her and for her, for her, for empathy of what she's been doing.

And then she's rich, she's successful, the tender shoulders were to sign that she finds herself in a room with the people who are she thought were her peers. And she realizes that actually hold like really damaging and horrible views.

And she first, it's like having a buck on call waterboards.

You know, actually these are kind of people that the thing that you have invested in entire life in, that this is the thing that actually ends here. The end of these kind of people ends with the current set of, sort of, like, sort of cool terminus relationship between authoritarianism and capitalism.

“She has a conversation partner. And I think it kind of unlocks her that she's been really focusing on a wrong thing.”

And I'm not saying that since she's going to have a complete one A to a rack character, she's not going to leave it to every empathetic or connective relationship she has. But she's allowed to start thinking as actually human being and starting to be anti-zenotonous, starting to be honest about her own relationship with her own ambition and relationship with other people. It's, it's, it's unlocks on me for us. It's unlocked like a new part of Harper. And we joked when we started writing season four that the trick of the season would be to take Yasmin, who is this kind of onging the Rosada girl who's gathered her own shadow and turned her into thing that she's become.

Which we feel think is sort of inevitable sort of conclusion of her. But also to take Harper who was this kind of go get a obsessive, her own ambition, who believed that she lived in a meritocracy, realizing that actually the thing as I said, the thing that she's been pursuing might not be edifying, and actually there's, there is a world where actually a connected relationship is good for you. The problem with Harper's Mark was that everybody else is on this season as it's been much quieter.

“I was played in much more quiet. I think actually just the, in a very bombastic operatic, even allow that, quite the dense literary, maybe even over written season on some of the characters part.”

And most of the ones still Mickey's point. Like I think the ten poles of all of the moments Mickey just laid out, like a treatment as like the first time she shows pastoral care to sweep he and gets it thrown back in her face, her having to learn how to be a boss. So losing Eric in the way she loses him, and then the herding to him in the same way. Those are elements of the thing that Mickey's talking about, which is like her dark, great white heart, great white shark heart sort of opening a hell out in the possibility of light into it at the same time as Jasmine, which was much open.

Much more open, at least superficially becoming a bit more like a bit human black. Like those two, the characters always in conversation each other as a kind of ying and yang.

While it would be too crude to say we wanted to leave them in like diametrically at those places, it did feel like. And I just think because Jasmine is effectively so loud and so operatic and so tragic, this is so loud and you know, Whitney's Whitney, I think Harper's and Eric obviously exists in this sort of spectacular almost mall pit on a way. It's still amazing though, because she winds up with $2 million dollars, you know what I mean, it's more valuable. Two million pounds, but like it's to your point, Cara, that's like the win is almost less significant than the size of the losses that other people experience so that almost feels less.

It doesn't grab the headlines the way that the other characters will coming out of it. The morality of it is really important, because it's like if we're doing the final season, and we know we're going to write towards an ending is be very weird for the characters, and especially the lead character. It's good TV for her to have a film, the accelerates the whole time, you know, when all costs help me down, but for her to not engage once she's at the top of the mountain with what that actually literally means to her day-to-day lives, her feeling about herself would be really weird.

“Is it fair to say that that awareness is leading you into season five that that is a window into where you're thinking?”

Or is it purely a profit prison trauma?

It's kind of telling by what we're going to do next.

“Thank you so much for the show. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.”

We hope we can have you guys, on again, maybe to discuss more about season four, but good luck right in season four.

Just your favorite French prison movies.

And also French prison movies festival.

This is the safe space. Thank you guys. You guys take care. So guys, any time, thank you guys.