Ken Leung Talks ‘Industry’ and His Character Eric’s Big Episode

Spoilers for episode four of Industry’s Season 2 below.

HBO’s Industry spends a lot of time on the lives of Harper Stern (Myha’la Herrod) and her fellow Pierpoint contemporaries. As the entry points into this financial world, their lives in and out of the London investment bank Pierpoint & Co. are the show’s primary focus. As such, we don’t know much about the external life of Harper’s boss, Eric Tao (Ken Leung). Audiences get bits and pieces about Eric’s home life throughout the first season, but his demeanor outside the trading floor is largely a mystery—until now.

In the fourth episode of Season 2, “There Are Some Women…,” Eric heads to New York to visit the American branch of Pierpoint’s operation in the wake of losing a major client. While there, Eric comes face-to-face with his past, including the ex-wife of his former mentor and many other factors. With his back against the wall, Eric makes a last stand against potentially getting pushed out from Pierpoint. The episode paints Eric as a cowboy, saddling up for one last gunfight before hanging up his holster. This metaphorical gunfight doesn’t go his way, and he’s promoted off the trading floor into a client services job.

For Eric, who often roams the trading floor like a lion on the hunt, it’s a fate worse than death—as evidenced by the prison-like scaffolding on the exterior of his new office. For actor Ken Leung, the episode allows him to dig deeper into what makes his character tick. “When you remove the trading floor, and you’re actually in a new environment [with] new characters, it opens up a window to who you’re playing,” Leung tells Complex. “For me, it offers more rabbit holes to go down. I love that; that’s what makes it fun.”

In the wake of this big episode, Complex sat down with Leung for a wide-ranging conversation around Eric’s arc this season, the return of a beloved piece of clothing, what makes Industry different from other projects he’s worked on, his experience playing Commander Zhao on Netflix’s adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and much more. This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.