Industry, The gripping BBC/HBO financial drama won over audiences with its portrayal of young bankers navigating the high-stakes world of investment banking.
As the third season progresses, the show reaches new heights of popularity, with the premiere surpassing season 2 and the third episode attracting a record 370,000 viewers across platforms, Deadline reported. The fast-paced story, set against the background of international finance, has many asking: is it Industry based on a true story?
With its intricate power dynamics and relentless pressure, the show’s intense depiction of the banking world feels almost too real, leading audiences to speculate about real-life experiences that may have inspired it.
Creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, both former bankers, spoke candidly about how their personal exposure to the world of finance influenced the series. “Coming from the other world [of banking]we wanted people watching in that world to think, ‘Okay, they’re doing well,'” Kay said Radio Times in November 2020.
From the culture of long working hours and fierce competition to the display of modern banking practices, Industry struck a chord with viewers familiar with the financial industry, which makes it all the more compelling to explore how parallel the show parallels real life.
But how true is it? Here’s everything you need to know about the HBO drama Industry and the real life inspiration of its creators.
Is Industry true story?
Season 3 of Industry, Sagar Radio as Rishi Ramdani and Ken Leung as Eric Tao.
Nick Strasburg/HBO
While Industry is not directly based on a true story, drawing heavily on the personal experiences of its creators, Kay and Down. Both worked in investment banking, which strongly influenced the conception of the series.
Although some elements are more generalized to their experiences, others hit close to home. Down, for example, had first-hand experience in the same department that Gus (David Jonsson) was portrayed in in the first episode of the series, the co-creator said Newsweek in November 2020, adding that it’s “the quieter, nocturnal, M&A culture of the job.”
Combining their experiences, Kay and Down sought to present a realistic depiction of the world they knew, correcting as many everyday nuances as possible.
“Me and Mickey were adamant that we wanted to do 100 percent of everything we could texturally about the world, you know, the production design, the jargon, the rhythm of the language, the way people talk to each other,” Kay recounted. Radio Times.
However, he also acknowledged that the industry has evolved since their time, blending authentic details from their experiences in the early 2010s with more modern elements to reflect current practices and challenges.
“Me and Mickey were in town almost seven or eight years ago, and obviously … there was a lot of modernization,” he said.
When it comes to the inspiration for writing the series, Down said Los Angeles Times in July 2022 that they were always “naive” for books and movies set in the cruel world of investment banking.
“We thought, ‘Why isn’t there a modern version of this?’ But it wasn’t until we started writing from the perspective of the people at the bottom that we thought, ‘OK, there’s actually a lot to this,'” Down said. “It allowed us to do what we wanted to do, which is a series of ambitious young people set in London that is [also] an inside look at baseball [an] industry we were comfortable writing.”
What company is Pierpoint based on?
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Industry, Sagar Radio as Rishi Ramdani.
HBO
The fictional bank Pierpoint & Co. it is not directly modeled after a specific real-life company, but instead serves as an amalgam of various prestigious banks in London.
While viewers speculated about connections to major financial institutions, the creators deliberately left Pierpoint’s exact inspiration unclear, allowing the show to stand on its own while evoking a general atmosphere of high finance.
“It was really important to me and Mickey that a person in finance could watch this show,” Kay said Newsweek in November 2020. “Even if it’s a small percentage of the audience, they can say, ‘Oh wow, a little sensationalized, a little hyped, but the essence of the world is almost completely accurate.’ ”
How realistic it is Industry?
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Industry Season 2, Myha’la Herrold as Harper Stern, Ken Leung as Eric Tao.
Simon Ridgeway/HBO
Industry it has been praised for its authenticity, particularly in its portrayal of the intense work environment, gritty culture and personal costs associated with the financial industry.
Real-life bankers have spoken out, with some finding the series uncomfortably close to their own observations, while others note that certain aspects, such as the depiction of drug use, are exaggerated for dramatic effect.
The creators of the series also addressed the balance between realism and fiction, emphasizing that in such an intense line of work, each end of the spectrum must exist somewhere.
“There are definitely people who are obsessed with drugs and sex in the city,” Down told Los Angeles Times. “There are also very ‘boring’ family people who hang their heads, are obsessed with their work and geeky.”
Although Kay and Down have their own narrative experience to draw on, they strive to keep it as realistic and relevant to the times as possible, bringing those on the ground with key insight. They have three consultants integrated into the writers’ room and production process, who scrutinize the dialogue and storylines to ensure that everything presented in the series looks believable for the modern banking industry.
“Me and Konrad, we understand how these places work and the cadence of dialogue — the soundscape and what it looks like and how people act and their motivations,” Down told the paper. “But we hadn’t been in banking for a decade, so it was good to talk to people who were really in the trenches, top and bottom.”
Kay said Newsweek that he and Down were “obsessed” with replicating the chaotic atmosphere in which much of the play takes place: the trading floor.
“Trading floors are very dirty places with very busy tables, food is everywhere and the bins are always full,” he said. “We have friends in the business and a few of them have visited a couple of times and they just couldn’t believe how real it looked because, I mean, we actually built an almost fully functional trading floor.”
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Source: HIS Education