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“Industry’s Trevor White on Adler’s Secret, Eric’s Betrayal.”

“Industry’s Trevor White on Adler’s Secret, Eric’s Betrayal.”

“To industryI'm sure you know when you think, “Oh, these two guys get along?” That looks good!' It’s not going to be good.”
Photo: Nick Strasburg

Spoilers for follow industry's third season to seventh episode “Useful idiot“, which premiered September 22 on HBO.

industryThe number of deaths continues to rise. The third season's penultimate episode, “Useful Idiot,” is a bloodbath for Pierpoint, as the bank's overwhelming debts and poor decision-making finally catch up, setting Pierpoint on the irreversible path of a sale to another financial institution. But only one character dies, both literally and metaphorically: Trevor White's Bill Adler, the man who has cleaned up more than one Pierpoint mess over the years and who ultimately becomes the bank's scapegoat for its catastrophic ESG failures .

“Unless I come back as a Banquo ghost, that's probably true in every sense of the word,” White says with a laugh after recounting that Adler was almost written off the show in season two with a “Me Too” story were. “I’ll obviously pitch for a review, play squash or something.”

Adler — who told his Pierpoint colleague Eric Tao (Ken Leung) earlier in the season that he has brain cancer — spends the episode convinced that Eric is on his side when it comes to protecting Pierpoint's autonomy. As Adler becomes more and more desperate, he promises Eric a promotion, invites Mitsubishi to a meeting about a capital injection, and quotes Michael Mann's statement heathe is unaware that Eric has already switched sides. When Eric reveals Adler's diagnosis at the Mitsubishi meeting and suggests that his failing health has led to mistakes that are damaging to Pierpoint, Eric stabs his long-time colleague in the back, just as his former protégé Harper Stern (Myha'la) did to him has.

It's a typical full-circle moment industrywhose emotional impact depends directly on how White plays Adler. He is shocked by Eric's betrayal, looks wild-eyed at the revelation of his secret, and then resigns himself to being ousted from the bench to which he had dedicated his professional career. “It’s like raising children. When it's really great, you know it won't quite last. And when you can't sleep for a week, you know it's not going to last,” White says of the short-lived alliance between Adler and Eric. “To industryI'm sure you know when you think, “Oh, these two guys get along?” That looks good!' It’s not going to be good.”

industry began with Hari's death and since then it has always felt like Pierpoint demanded a pound of flesh from its employees. Did you ever expect this result for Adler?
It's never nice to end, but listen, if you're going to end, you want to have an unforgettable ending. And it certainly feels that way. I didn't find out what actually happened until quite late. Between seasons they said, “Oh, you've got a really rich storyline for season three,” and I thought, Well, that's good. While we were filming episodes one and two, Mickey and Konrad explained to me why I was repeating. I tell Eric about the cancer in the fifth episode, and in the seventh episode he takes advantage of it in the most cruel and horrible way industry Away. But the quality of the writing is so good, and the way they bring Eric and Bill, these two characters with a long history, together as Bill reveals this deeply personal secret – they've never been closer. I firmly believe that in this moment they truly are as close as two people could be.

I thought Bill was very practical. He defends Eric against Harper. He tells Eric to fire Yasmin. Then, as they enter the boardroom, he suddenly comes under attack for defending what he believes Pierpoint stands for. he is treated as sentimental. Did you proceed as if the room was already ready for Bill before Eric announced his condition?
No, I don't think that's it. I studied economics and really thought I would be a version of Bill Adler, or, in my generation, Gordon Gekko, Bud Fox. That's really the path I took. I traded and sold stocks. Obviously I didn't go down that path, and I'm grateful to be able to play a character like that because it reminds me – especially the way things are going with Bill – why I didn't want to go down that path. (Laughs)

But across generations, I think there is a real difference between someone who is a Gen-Xer like him, someone who has spent a lot of time working in Japan, where the institution is absolutely king and the individual thrives in it, and then the American model, where the individual is everything, which is more of a millennial thing. It's really shifted. And I don't think that's all a bad thing, that people won't just be beholden to the big company and allow them to be overworked and underpaid forever. For what? So you can say you've never missed a day of work in your life? Bill would be the type of guy who would be there at least 14 hours a day, five to six days a week and think nothing of it. I guess it seems romantic, but there's a combination of practical and romantic that I really love about the guy. I truly believe he wants what's best for the company and that it's what's best for him too.

A large part of this episode revolves around the relationship between Bill and Eric, the years of history and the competition there before Eric stabs him in the back at the request of the CFO. How did you and Ken work together?
Unfortunately we had to film the scene later in episode five; That actually came after we finished episode seven. I wish we had had that sooner, that little something extra when you experience the real moment you really had as two people. It just makes the betrayal even more obvious, but due to scheduling constraints we couldn't do it.

We sat in that boardroom for days. We didn't even have to pretend to be tired, sweaty or annoyed. This is what happens when you spend 80 hours in a room for five or six days in a row. It's not a big room with so many people in it all the time, and the lights – you didn't have to act. I almost prefer it that way. It informed about the claustrophobia. Everything happened as much as it could at the moment.

What emotions did you want to evoke in Bill's final moments?
You have to get to a point where your mind is challenged and pulled out from under you at the most stressful moment of your entire life. I'm completely taken aback by Eric. I knew there had to be some stronger emotional connection to these moments. I honestly didn't know what that would mean except that it would just be terrible. Because this is someone who defines himself by his work, his way of working and the success of his work, and until that moment there was nothing other than confirmation of that.

There were versions where I broke down even more in the boardroom, but that wouldn't make sense for trying to jump back in the elevator, which then gets ruined again. Even in that final moment, there were versions of me where I was breaking down in the elevator, or versions of me where I was more defiant, which I think is what they chose, a kind of “Fuck you, Eric.” There was a version of a sentence like, “If that's you, then good luck living with yourself.” But I think less is more in this case.

One could argue that Adler gets what's coming to him; He himself says: “No one owes anyone a tomorrow here.” But it is brutal to see the new CEO shrugging off all his contributions and making Adler a scapegoat. Where do you place Adler on this spectrum, if he is a tragic figure or a victim of the machine he helped create?
I think it's both. We see with Harper and with Eric that they are willing to do anything to triumph personally and professionally, and I don't think Adler would understand that, or at least understand it better based on yesterday's rules. That might mean sweeping a me-too thing under the rug, because for Adler it is Nobody was injured. We're fine. The institution does not suffer.

There was a Canadian documentary called The company. It was about how companies are legally treated as individuals, and when a company is profiled it is almost shockingly labeled a psychopath. And I think some of the other characters do have sociopathic qualities industrythat they simply disregard other human feelings or consequences for their own good. And I really don't think that's Adler. I think it just depends on the end result. You have to produce; Either you sell most of the cars or you get laid off at the end of the month. This is Alec Baldwin Glengarry Glen Ross; It's this guy who embodies pure capitalism. I was actually thinking about the Jessica Rabbit quote Who framed Roger Rabbit?: She says: “I’m not bad” –

“I’m just so attracted to it.”
Yes, I feel like Adler has some resemblance to that. He's not bad, it's just how he grew up. He is a victim of the very system he supports and which he assumes is the only way to operate.

In this episode Adler quotes heat When he tells Eric that for him “the action is what matters,” it made me scream. What do you think of this reference to Michael Mann?
I'm glad you have this. Conrad and Mickey added Randolph and Mortimer trading venues Reference; They are obviously big cinema lovers. I was like, “That feels like it's from…” And they were like, “Oh yeah.” And I was like, “Oh yeah!” It's fun when that happens because people like you can do that on two levels enjoy. Even when Adler is talking to Eric, Eric asks, “Where do you get the energy to do that?” Jesus.” I love that and the fact that it has this whole extra layer of resonance. You want to say a sentence that's fun and memorable , and this is one of those that I will always treasure.

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