Scribble

Audie Cornish

00:00:00

'Industry is a show about a lot of things. Yes, finance, failed IPOs, coke binges, sex in the workplace. But it's also a show that asks really big questions like what makes an anti-hero? When does a man tip from toxic to terrifying? And if you're always chasing power, how come you aren't happy when you get it? Well, Ken Leung is here to talk to us. He's one of those actors like where you think, where have I seen you before? Rush hour? We're lost! But you're never going to forget his performance on HBO's industry, because for four seasons, he has portrayed the character of Eric Tao, an epic, an epically toxic trading floor bully. He's hanging out, snowy day in New York, all the plows are beeping and trucks in the background, but we really dug into industry and I want you to stay with us.

Audie Cornish

00:00:54

I am curious because for people who don't know, the plot of Industry originally started out with investment bankers, and it's broadened its scope over many seasons to be kind of what I would call capital I industry, right? Each season might be something about a little different, but it's really about the business world and the people who are in it. One of the things that's intriguing about this character is he speaks softly and carries a big stick.

Ken Leung

00:01:21

That's accurate.

Audie Cornish

00:01:22

Physically and psychologically.

Ken Leung

00:01:25

Physically and psychologically. Okay. I think the bat is interesting because...

Audie Cornish

00:01:33

Like he, just so we know, he had a physical wooden bat.

Ken Leung

00:01:36

Yeah, he had a wooden bat.

Audie Cornish

00:01:38

And menaced the other sort of characters around. And just imagine you doing this in a white collar workplace, just for people to picture it. It's not a normal place to see this.

Ken Leung

00:01:47

'I think it, it revealed two things. One is that, you know, he felt empowered to do whatever he wanted. But the other thing that may be not so obvious is that he feels threatened by something that he needs to carry a weapon or something intimidating at all. Speaks to a kind of insecurity in him. So I think that duality was there from the get-go, which made him kind of compelling from the Get-go. Those two conflicting things.

Audie Cornish

00:02:19

Have you met an Eric Tao before?

Ken Leung

00:02:21

I haven't met an Eric Tao in finance, but maybe I've met Eric Tao's in life. It's interesting because he's modeled after an actual person. At least he was in the beginning.

Audie Cornish

00:02:36

Oh, I didn't know that.

Ken Leung

00:02:38

And yeah, so I knew that there was a real person walking the earth somewhere. And that was interesting too.

Audie Cornish

00:02:47

Who was that person? If you don't mind me asking.

Ken Leung

00:02:50

I don't know who that person is. I don't mind you asking. I wouldn't mind telling you if I knew. I didn't want to know so much because there was this sense of this world already being foreign, the world of finance was so foreign to me, and I think it's fair to say to most of the cast. And so I needed to make it, find a way to make in my own. Right. And it did something, actually, to know that it was. Modeled after a real person. Since then, I've met a lot of people who tell me that I remind them of bosses that they've had. So he kind of... I'm always quick to say, I'm so sorry to hear that. Because he seems to fit some kind of archetype of a boss in this world.

Audie Cornish

00:03:41

The people who created the show are investment bankers. So the early seasons really feel visceral and almost like watching a hospital drama where they're talking in real detail about the surgeries. And you're kind of like, I don't know what this is, but it's definitely life or death. So I invested in the show. And over time, it moves away from that, but into, yeah, archetypes that we all recognize, but we just don't see on TV as often. And certainly Eric Tao is somebody who is afraid of youth. He's afraid of irrelevancy. He is driven by what he describes as his own id, for better or worse. How did you come to understand that part of him? Like what drives a person like this?

Ken Leung

00:04:26

I'll say that it evolved. It started off, how did I find that ambition? It started with the project being presented to me and Lena Dunham was our first director. And I remember when I got the role and we had our first chat, she prepared me in such a way, she's like, you're gonna come in, most of the cast are young, they're like freshly out of drama school. They might be looking to you in a certain way. So you're gonna come in as the kind of vet. So be prepared for that.

Audie Cornish

00:05:06

So art imitating life right away? Like, first of all, that's the structure of the show itself.

Ken Leung

00:05:10

'That's right, that's right. So I came in with a, you know, grab the bull by the horns kind of way for the purpose of setting an example. I remember, you know, kind of just trying things, experimenting with things and just improvising lines and and just trying to own the role right away. Lena kind of created a very safe space for that kind of experimenting. Now I have to say that it's so amazing that it started that way because while they are young, obviously, they are world-class actors and they did not need me to set an example. But I'm so grateful that it was presented to me that way because it activated something that helped me.

Audie Cornish

00:06:09

As they were having their experience, can you tell me about what your initial experiences were in acting? How were they different?

Ken Leung

00:06:19

Um, well, first of all, I didn't go to drama school, so I, I didn't, go, I, didn't really study it so formally. I mean, I didn't study it formally at all. Um, but I had a teacher, I took a, a kind of intro to acting class at NYU. And I had, a teacher who was very kind of a practical minded teacher.

Audie Cornish

00:06:42

So you're like 19 or early 20s. What is this? I like to situate myself.

Ken Leung

00:06:46

'Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. 19, 20, like that, was when I took my first acting classes at NYU. And she was very practical-minded. She was a working actor in addition to being a teacher. And so she was like, just get out there. And so I did that. At the time, it was out in print. Now everything's online. But backstage was the trade paper that would list what was going on and different things that you could audition for. And I would circle anything I was remotely right for and just went out for everything.

Audie Cornish

00:07:23

Was that a lot of things or a few things?

Ken Leung

00:07:24

It was a lot things, but it was a of particular types of things, being an actor of color. And there wasn't so many things that, or anything that was asking for, you know, Asian slash Asian American actors. So I went out for the ones that were not race specific. And those tended to be classical plays, where it's about the language and not so much about, you know, race. So I did a lot of plays, I did lot of theater. And it wasn't until, I guess Rush Hour was my first major film. And at the time, it's funny, because at the I was doing a play where I had blonde hair. I think that has got to be one of the main reasons why I even got that film. Just because the picture was so unexpected. So yeah, it was, it differed in that respect. It took a, it took a long time, it's a lot of theater and a lot of plays. I'd say it was more gradual, kind of slow process as I was not schooled. I was kind of.

Audie Cornish

00:08:41

It also means you're not drunk with power, you know, like sometimes you hear about young actors who get too much too fast, or it blows up on them really quickly, and how they are or are not able to handle that.

Ken Leung

00:08:56

I don't know that that's a function of age necessarily. I mean, that there are, you can be drunk with power at any age. It depends on how, maybe what you're in it for. If you're in it for that, maybe when you finally get it, you're a little too excited. No, I've never been, I never, I didn't become an actor to be famous or to even be in films. You know, I recognize something in acting that I needed as a human being. It balanced out being raised in a sort of withdrawn immigrant mentality in the form of my parents.

Audie Cornish

00:09:41

What was the heritage, can I ask? I'm Jamaican, so I just like to ask.

Ken Leung

00:09:44

Chinese. Southern China. I needed something to engage me with people and to learn how to be a person in all manner of situations, you know, acting offers this just spectrum of experience, you know how to how to deal with your emotions, what even what they even are, What am I feeling? It's all about that. And I needed that to feel part of the world, because I feel like I was missing that in way in my upbringing. So I found it very healing and very kind of world opening. And so that's why why I did it. And maybe that's that's part of a difference too. Like I didn't go to drama school. I was like, oh, this, this is what I need to do now. And I'm gonna stay in it.

Audie Cornish

00:10:42

'I can identify with this, I did not go to journalism school and like everyone around me like went to Columbia and like did all these things and I just sort of followed someone who's a journeyman teacher from college, like somebody who just did the work and talked about the reasons to do it that were everything but prize-winning, everything but, you know, it was a very mission-driven kind of thing of like what are you doing, what is the lens, like how do you help people process things. There was all this stuff. That this person taught me that we're not about being Woodward and Bernstein or something like that. You know what I mean? Like it wasn't that. And I do think that that does, how you enter does affect how you live in that house.

Ken Leung

00:11:29

Yeah, and it remains that way. Now I see it as more than just an engagement with people. I see as an engagement with the present moment as acting is, it can be, despite all the noise that sometimes it seems it's surrounded by. Basically it all comes down to this one moment between you and somebody. And ultimately you kind of don't know what's gonna happen. Even if it's, you know the words, you know what the plan is, you know, what the basic layout is, still anything can happen.

Audie Cornish

00:12:12

Can I be honest with you? That is not always true. That happens. It's not always. It's an actor like you, I genuinely watch and in some of these scenes where I think this is where a person would yell, you don't yell. Some of these things where I thing this is a person who should cry or should feel humiliated and what does humiliation look like and what's going on with your eyes. You are an actor and this is where the theater thing really comes in as I think about it, especially with line delivery. I genuinely don't know. Where something is going to go. And that becomes particularly valuable in a show like this, where in every conversation, there's an exchange of power. You're one sentence away from being the person who has all the cards. And then another sentence away from it being the end.

Ken Leung

00:13:01

Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow, that's a really...that is a really insightful way of watching the show. I've never heard it articulated that way, but that's absolutely right.

Audie Cornish

00:13:13

One of the things that's fascinating about your character is over the course of time, he goes from being a mentor and in particular, there are young women in his charge and little seeds of things that start out sort of bullying and toxic. By the time we're in season four, he's in fully compromised position with young women, right, with a sex worker. And if you had seen him in that first season as a kind of family man, but a little bit of a bully. You might not have thought this is where he'd end up, but the minute you see it, you're like, this is the only place he could have ended up. And I've never seen a show that showed me how a man in particular makes that transition. I always know the beginning, family man. I know the after, you're in the Epstein files. I don't know how the person gets there.

Ken Leung

00:14:05

'I would say that we're together on that not knowing. I think the reason the show is compelling is that we didn't start off knowing that that's where we're gonna go. Yeah. But as long as we go step-by-step, honestly, we'll get there together. And I think that's what you're maybe recognizing because you, you did it with us, you know, I mean, Mickey and Conrad had never written a show before. I know. You know, so the first season was their first season of as being writers. So they have been open to learning and thinking about what could, what could this be? Where could they go? What have we built and how much road do we have in front of us? You know, talk about schooling versus no schooling. Yeah. This has been their schooling. And they've taken it the same way maybe I took acting and you took journalism. In fact, we came in not knowing stuff, but we came with a passion to touch on something that because they have a history of being real bankers, those first scripts despite whatever else it may be in terms of screenwriting traditions and the correct way of doing this or that, there was a feeling of, even if you didn't understand even though it was all financial mumbo jumbo, you could feel that it came from lived experience.

Audie Cornish

00:15:55

The feeling was true.

Ken Leung

00:15:57

Yeah, the feeling was true. You don't quite know why you know that. But it's a feeling. Oh, these guys, they've they're from this world. So I think that automatically, you know, that creates a kind of gravity that pulls us into it from the get go.

Audie Cornish

00:16:15

We're here with Ken Leung, he is from HBO's Industry. Stay with us. I think another thing I can identify with, and certainly a lot of black women can identify with as watching the show, is this character, these characters at the center of it, who are strivers, Americans, transplants, they are fish out of water, and they are people of color on top of that. And the show is very preoccupied and sort of rooted in the British class system, whether that be accents or actual proximity to aristocracy.

Otto (Industry)

00:16:51

You are in an enviable position for a woman of your age. Unfortunately, Harper, this is a brave new world based on merit.

Harper (Industry)

00:17:01

You hired me on merit.

Otto (Industry)

00:17:03

I hired you as a face.

Audie Cornish

00:17:06

'And it is something that feels familiar in a way that I feel uncomfortable admitting. And that if I hadn't sort of seen women online and other people talking about this, I probably would never say out loud, which is that like, yeah, you can be an anti-hero. You don't have to be a noble.

Ken Leung

00:17:29

You just have to be a person.

Audie Cornish

00:17:31

A person.

Ken Leung

00:17:32

'You have to be human. You have to be true to that. Yeah, because that's the thing that resonates with us. It's not whether you're a hero or anti-hero that resonates.

Audie Cornish

00:17:42

'But it's very easy. I feel like characters too, especially characters that look like me, you're either a problem or you're a model minority. You don't get to be the anti-hero. You don't get to backstab people. The only place we get to do that is reality television. But when you're the housewives, and like the whole thing is about backstabbing. But I'm shocked by the number of people who call the main character a sociopath or a psychopath. And I just think, what? I watch "Mad Men". This is... "Breaking Bad", have we not seen this before? Was Tony Soprano a good guy? Did I miss something?

Ken Leung

00:18:17

It's reductive of the character because she goes through a spectrum of things. To call her anything, sociopath or anything, is sort of, uh, narrowing the scope of what you're, you're kind of given. Um, so I don't know. I think that's, it's interesting when people express that because what they're... What it sounds like they're saying is this behavior doesn't represent me, so I'm going to call it something. I'm going to name it and put it over there. Sociopath. Bad. Over there, different from me.

Audie Cornish

00:18:59

I couldn't do that. I couldn't be the person to betray people. I couldn't be the person to...

Ken Leung

00:19:03

Or I don't want to identify myself. I don't want to align myself with that, or call it something. Now obviously that is now me reducing somebody's comment to that. So online forums are the platform for these types of... right?

Audie Cornish

00:19:25

'No, no, you don't get away with that. Cause if you think about it... When you're thinking of Eric Tao, for example, you've got to find a way to connect with this character who, at times, is pathetic, venal, sexualizes every relationship with a young woman near him and -

Ken Leung

00:19:47

Yeah, commodifies, commodifies.

Audie Cornish

00:19:50

Commodifies it.

Ken Leung

00:19:50

Yeah.

Audie Cornish

00:19:50

You gotta find a way to that.

Ken Leung

00:19:52

Yeah, yeah.

Audie Cornish

00:19:53

And so that's what I'm saying. I mean, I'm kind of using the online commenters as a proxy, but like people forgives that character. You know what I mean? Forgives him for a lot, I feel like. And thankfully, the writers don't.

Ken Leung

00:20:07

And don't forgive Myha'la's character.

Audie Cornish

00:20:09

I don't think so, not the same way.

Ken Leung

00:20:14

That's interesting. I'm not so privy to the online.

Audie Cornish

00:20:18

You're very lucky. That's why you're so pure.

Ken Leung

00:20:21

'I mean, I choose not to be privy, but, but yeah, they are shorting themselves. They're short-changing their own experience of the Harper character because the Harper character is a lot broader than the scope, the lens, that they're using to judge her. Then they're shortchanging their own kind of experience of the show and of her character. And that's unfortunate.

Audie Cornish

00:20:50

'Now that you are at least past this moment for the character - we're heading towards the season finale of this season - but he has had, let's say, at least the ending of a chapter. Do you see a through line through any of your past characters or plays with this one? Do you realize that there's a kind of role you might be gravitating towards over time?

Ken Leung

00:21:14

I do see a through line in how I'm perceived. Since "Industry," I've gotten roles that resemble a cutthroat business guy. I've got things that resemble Eric on the surface, or can resemble, generally speaking. So yeah, not so much a through line that I'm imposing, but a through line that other people are imposing.

Audie Cornish

00:21:49

But what do you like to play? There's gotta be something that you tend to... I mean, even I tend towards a certain kind of interview and a certain kind of person.

Ken Leung

00:21:58

I like to play something that scares me a little bit. Something that... How am I gonna play this? Something that makes me go, 'How am I going to play this?'

Audie Cornish

00:22:08

'Mm-hmm.

Ken Leung

00:22:09

It's like, you know, going back to why I act in the first place. I wanna meet a new person, and not know how to be friends with that person. Have to kind of find my way to being friends with person. That could be any role. You know, just, there has to be an element of, 'I don't know, I don't know' to it. What kind of interviews do you gravitate to?

Audie Cornish

00:22:39

'Thoughtful people. But what it means is sometimes I don't go for like a lot of big A-lister type films because I don't want to hear it was really great working with this director, and we always had chosen them for the part. You know what I mean? Like, I often want to hear from the writers. If the director is particularly thoughtful, I want to hear from them. I don't believe in forcing people to talk who don't want to. You know, sometimes your art comes out a certain way, and you're not gonna be good at doing an interview, you know what I mean?

Ken Leung

00:23:13

Yeah.

Audie Cornish

00:23:14

But there also has to be something going on behind the eyes, so to speak. And there's lots of people on "Industry" I'd love to talk to, but I really knew you had done so many things on this show. Some were sweet, some were frankly grotesque. Some were so, so intense emotionally that I kind of wanted to know, who's the person who can do that and go home and be someone else, right? Like to me acting is like magic, but it felt like you had figured out a way to portray something that I had only seen, as I said, in graph 10 of the news story.

Ken Leung

00:23:54

Thank you so much.

Audie Cornish

00:23:56

And I'd always think how did a person end up there? How did this person delude themselves into this jargon about altruism and end up in prison? Like how?

Ken Leung

00:24:08

It always makes me think of the Vietnam Memorial and that, you know, you... At the beginning, it's like a name, two names, and you keep walking. And then it's, like, oh, it's more. It's like a dozen names now.

Audie Cornish

00:24:24

That wedge gets wider and wider, yeah.

Ken Leung

00:24:26

Before you know it, you're swimming, drowning in nothing but names. And you're like, ha, I didn't do anything. I was just walking slowly. I love that element of: you don't get there by any other way except one foot in front of the other. And then it will get you. The there will get you, you won't get there, there will get you. And that's such a moving sort of revelatory kind of experience that I love. I love that in roles. It's particular to TV shows because the film is contained. Whereas a TV show obviously can take years, such as "Industry," and so that build is really gradual.

Audie Cornish

00:25:23

'For people who are going to be new to the show, because this is what happens - the buzz builds, especially with like a really sort of big season - what would you want them to have, think about, right, as they're giving it a chance? If they're ignoring all the hype.

Ken Leung

00:25:38

To not be turned off by the jargon.

Audie Cornish

00:25:44

Yeah.

Ken Leung

00:25:44

'I hear that a lot, that it only takes - it takes watching it for a while to realize that that stuff's actually not so important to understand. So I would like anyone who's approaching it for the first time to kind of know that it's not a clinic on finance. That's just the playground. And if you can get over the language of it, which is foreign, you'll see other stories reveal themselves.

Audie Cornish

00:26:19

Use the subtitles, I always say.

Ken Leung

00:26:21

Yeah, yeah. You have to use the subtitles.

Audie Cornish

00:26:22

There's often jokes in the subtitles. That's a running thing.

Ken Leung

00:26:25

It's true, it's true.

Audie Cornish

00:26:26

There are jokes that could only be understood if you happen to have the subtitles on. It's the only show right now I think that embraces our current sort of default interest in subtitles.

Ken Leung

00:26:38

Yeah, yeah.

Audie Cornish

00:26:39

Well, please tell everyone what you're up to, where they can find you. Sounds like not online, but where they can find you next.

Ken Leung

00:26:49

Well, I'm going to be in "Project Hail Mary." That comes out on March 20th, I think, is opening day. I'm working on a new show right now in New York.

Audie Cornish

00:27:02

Okay, and maybe today's shoveling, it sounds like.

Ken Leung

00:27:05

Um, yeah, we're gonna have to wait until it stops for shoveling.

Audie Cornish

00:27:08

Yeah, I heard that beeping the whole time. I'm like, the trucks are working.

Ken Leung

00:27:12

You're struggling to even do anything. You have to wait for it to stop, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon.

Audie Cornish

00:27:17

'Well, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. Thank you for being patient with all of my questions and-

Ken Leung

00:27:23

Of course! Thank you for the questions.

Audie Cornish

00:27:24

My little pieces here and there, my pontificating.

Ken Leung

00:27:28

Thank you for watching the show so closely and being so thoughtful in the questions.

Audie Cornish

00:27:35

That was Ken Leung of HBO's "Industry". The season finale is coming up this weekend. Here is where I note that Warner Bros Discovery is a parent company of CNN. We'll see you next week.

The Assignment with Audie Cornish