Failed “Finance Bros” Find Success with HBO’s “Industry”
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For my money, forgive the pun, one of the best things on television is a show about making money, making as much of it as possible. Industry on HBO is a financial drama centered on a group of junior employees at a fictional investment bank in London. Industry is currently finishing its fourth season, and the show was created by Mickey Down and Conrad Kay, two old Oxford friends, both of whom did stints in the financial world. In fact, they say if they'd been any good at finance, they probably wouldn't have created a TV show about it in the first place. Mickey Down and Conrad K., welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
I have to say I'm a huge fan of this show. Conrad, tell me how this show came about. You both worked in finance. You knew each other from university.
Yeah, I mean, we were spat out pretty unceremoniously by the financial industry. My boss, when he fired me, said I was the worst ever salesman that graced the doors of Morgan Stanley. What were you selling? U.S.
What is the premise of HBO's 'Industry' and its creators' background?
equities, but selling is a very strong version of what I was doing. I think you're supposed to make about 40 outgoing calls a day. I made about four a year. So the metrics didn't really stack up. So they picked me up on my collar and threw me out onto the street. I'm very happy bullshitting in all areas of my life, apart from the area where when I have to pick up the phone to a Dutch pension fund manager who's looked at Apple stock for 20 years and I have to pretend to tell him something about the stock that he doesn't know. That was really tough for me, to be honest.
Mickey, did you get into finance, too, for the obvious reason you wanted to make some money and please your parents?
That's exactly right. Well, my mom thought that finance was too much of a spiffy career, even though she's an architect, which I think blows my mind because she's one of those immigrant mothers who just says, if you're not a lawyer, basically you don't have a job. Doctor doesn't count? No, doctor. That was never going to happen for me, David. So it was lawyer or nothing. And I had no interest in being in finance at all when I got to Oxford. I really had no interest in anything other than just like partying and having a lot of fun. And it was around us that suddenly, you know, in the second year, everyone started getting these jobs or internships. I looked around and said, God, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?
So I applied to all those jobs, didn't get any of them. I ended up working for the Home Office, the civil service. And then I went to work for Rothschild, which is a kind of, you know, old blue-blooded institution. I mean, I have like kind of quite fond memories of it because I liked the people I worked with, but the job itself was just not for me at all. I was like incredibly ill-suited to it. At that level, it's literally just staring in front of a computer screen and doing PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets. And literally, it's just an exercise in, do you have the ability to stay up 100 hours a week?
So from there, what's the origin story of industry?
I had sold this thing to NBC Universal, which was a kind of comedy short about a young guy who didn't want to be a banker and wanted to be a DJ with some sort of autobiographical elements. It really felt like a sort of hobbyist vocation. It didn't really feel like something that I could sell my parents on, quite frankly. And then when I made this thing and it was bought and I got an agent, suddenly it felt like a job. And I could then take that to Conrad and say, look, we should try and actually make a career out of this. So we started writing a script that we called Not an Exit, which was essentially, it was a kind of cathartic exercise. It was about two guys who were in banking who absolutely hated it.
And it was a bag of ideas, it was a mess. It was like 10-page scenes of characters called Mickey and Conrad.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–1:20
2
What is the premise of HBO's 'Industry' and its creators' background?
1:20–4:03
3
Why did Mickey Down and Konrad Kay leave the finance industry?
4:03–12:59
4
How did the idea for 'Industry' originate?
12:59–15:29
5
What themes are explored through the characters in 'Industry'?
15:29–17:21
Speakers
6 identifiedMore from The New Yorker Radio Hour
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