Of all the moments from “Industry” Season 3 to go viral, it came as a shock to both Ken Leung and Harry Lawtey that their trading floor pep talk hit so strongly.
The moment comes after both characters have their own troubling nights. Eric (Leung) spends the evening on a bender and then hits the trade floor wired for a long day riding weird energy. Robert (Lawtey) suffers his own breakdown and visibly cracks at the start of the day. It’s after that where Eric pulls Robert aside and has him shouting the mantra “I’m a man and I’m relentless,” which then resonated with many viewers.
“I remember when we were shooting it it was too much,” Leung told TheWrap during a new installment of How I Did It, presented by HBO — our second for “Industry” after our chat with Sagar Radia. “Too much, too fast, too soon. We kind of found or felt our way to what eventually became the scene as you see it.”
He added about the finished product: “I remember feeling like we just went through something.”
Lawtey wondered how long Eric had used that saying as a mantra to push him through the days on the trade floor, and Leung countered that it might not have been something he’d verbalized before.
“I think it was improvised to use that as a pep talk,” Leung said. “I think it speaks to his state of ‘today is a huge day and I’m not in the state for it.’ So there is no time to talk about losing clients or feeling bad. There’s no time for any of this. We have to just get on our horse. I think that’s where the man/relentless thing comes from.”
Lawtey said he was not expecting that moment to resonate with fans – or of all the questionable things Robert has done in the series this would be what he was approached about.
“Of all the peculiar things I’ve said and done in the show, this is the one that garners the most attention from just like out and about,” he said. “If I meet people on the street or whatever, I’m surprised how regularly people will say this back to me now.”
“Industry” Season 3 is streaming on Max.
