This story contains major spoilers for episode four of season four of HBO’s Industry, “1000 Yoots, 1 Marilyn.” Click here to read GQ’s conversation with Sagar Radia’s Industry co-star, Charlie Heaton, about this week's episode.
Four episodes into Industry's superlative fourth season, things are looking bleaker than ever for Rishi Ramdani. He’s stuck doing brown paper bag jobs for Harper (Myha’la) because the press around his wife’s death is so big and bad that he can’t pass a basic background check. There’s an implication that he tried to commit suicide before being admitted to a UK mental health center. Now Rishi’s doing anything he can to survive, including selling cocaine to other bankers in The City.
The proverbial chickens come home to roost in this week’s episode, “1000 Yoots, 1 Marilyn.” In the last act of the episode, Rishi crosses paths with Jim Dycker (Charlie Heaton) during a coke-filled evening that turns bad very, very quickly. The implication is that Dycker dies of an overdose—right as the cops show up to investigate a noise complaint. Realizing how screwed he is, Rishi takes to the balcony to escape, only to land on the ground with both his legs gruesomely shattered. It’s (yet another) tough beat for Rishi, but another superlative showcase for actor Sagar Radia, whose incredible performance continues to resonate. In fact, despite all of Rishi’s misdeeds (of which there are plenty), I found myself deeply saddened by his ultimate fate.
In the wake of “1000 Yoots, 1 Marilyn,” Radia sat down with GQ again for a long and expansive chat about Rishi’s fate, living with ambiguity, and much more.
Sagar Radia: Yes and no. I think yes, because there could easily have been a close off there, and everyone would've been accepting of that and going, Okay, well, we get why Rishi maybe, I dunno, went off the rails or disappeared, went to start a new life, ended up in therapy. There's an easy out, should that have been the case, and I think everyone would've been at ease with it. No, because I had spoken to the boys before we closed the season out. For them, they felt there was still a bit of juice to squeeze out of this story. I didn't know to what extent that was going to be; I didn't know if it was going to be a season-long thing, whether it was a one-episode thing, whether it was a four-episode thing, who knows? I didn't know at the time, but I knew they definitely communicated that the story wasn't quite closed off yet. And for me, I was open to listening to what that looked like.
We had a dinner, and they spoke about what they saw for Rishi. They love writing themselves into a corner. They love putting themselves in a position of how do we get out of this? They mentioned to me about how this was going to be a different season for Rishi, and how it was going to be testing for me as an actor, and how it was going to be different to what we've known Rishi to be.
I was always curious to see what they were thinking. When I got to read it, it made a bit more sense, and then they obviously explained to me what the plan was for episode four. Every time I've been given an episode four, my jaw hits the floor.
All of the above, everything you've just said. It does make it weightier. It's not that I don't like to know what's going to happen with my character. It was a very special situation with that standalone episode, because I was learning Rishi based on what they were writing. So it was the first time we got to see him outside of work. It was the first time we got to see how he coped when there were subtle bouts of othering from these very aristocratic white people that were his wife's family. It was the first time we got to see how he handled extreme pressure to a point where he didn't know how to handle it. It is the first time we got to see what addiction looked like for him, and exploring that. Because we never got a chance to delve into that in the first three seasons, it was more a case of turning a page and going, “Oh, that makes sense of his behavior in season two and season one because that's justified here.”
When you talk about how extreme he is as a human in terms of his decision-making, his boldness, his brash nature, and he's very bullish in his decisions, all of those are essentially traits and characteristics of somebody—I mean, I'm generalizing—who would have an addictive personality. So a lot of that was me going, “Oh, okay. All the work we did there makes complete sense when you now put it in this environment, i.e., gambling.” It does give you an opportunity to plan, journey, and mark how we are getting to this final point, which kind of comes with its own benefits. I enjoyed having that aspect; it was fun.
Always learning. I think any actor is always learning about their character because you dunno what the writers are going to do with it. To be one of those actors who's like, “Well, my character would never say that,” I think, sometimes comes from a place of insecurity because you worry that it might be something that you may not be able to handle or [are] not quite sure how to play.
I always try and say to those types of actors that actually being in an uncomfortable position is probably the best place you need to be, where the best growth happens. That's where the evolution happens of you as a character and you as an actor. If you can start to get comfortable with being in those uncomfortable environments, I genuinely think that's where the best growth takes place. But for me, I guess one of the key things that I learned was, “Okay, what does Rishi look like when we take the swagger away?” What's left is much more exposed and a lot more human. I think the common misconception is that when someone's playing rock bottom, they're really dark and sad and out of it.
Actually, it's probably where they're most honest. Because they've hit a point where they just can't do it anymore, from that comes a level of honesty. You see that in his conversations with Harper in episode one, where he's being slightly reflective, and he's kind of saying he needs a bit of help, but in the Rishi way. You see when Sweetpea shouts in his face, he hasn't got the energy to fight back anymore. Once upon a time, he wouldn't have had anyone speak to him like that.
He's a different person now. I've never played Rishi this quietly before. To lose the humor, to lose the swagger, in a way, that came with its own challenges. Rishi has always been someone who's filled the room with noise. Playing him in silence was arguably far more revealing.
A bit of both. What's on the page will always inform what you're going to do, at least for me anyway. Ultimately, I think that's what cultivates good characters: if it's written well, there's less you have to do. The harder the writing is, the harder the ability to form a three-dimensional character can be. But what Mickey and Konrad have done for four seasons is [that] each character is so definitive, so specific, complex, layered, and three-dimensional that actually a lot of the writing does the work. Then it's using your instincts. As someone who's played the character for four years and going, “Okay, this is my intuition towards where I think his energy would be. Let me run with that and see how the boys feel.” Actually, it's a blessing that they directed the first two episodes because then if there was anything that wasn't quite where they were thinking, and I was thinking, we were able to navigate that. But they were really supportive the whole time.
Initially speaking, it was probably that. That scene was always going to dictate how we started the season. If, for whatever reason, they felt like they wanted a different energy to it or they maybe wanted to see that bravado still, then that would've been a conversation to be like, “Okay, why? Where does it go? What's the arc of getting into where we get to in episode four?” But I think they wanted him to be down and out right near the start. That makes complete sense because essentially, this season, Rishi is running on instinct rather than confidence. He's not trying to win anymore. He's just trying to survive. He's used to that bravado as we spoke about, and this year we got a chance to see, okay, what happens when that mask shatters? There's a point—and we can all relate to this as humans—where we get tired of being a person that we're not anymore. With Rishi, there's a point where the charm stops essentially being that shield that he's navigated life through. We see for the first time what happens when that armor cracks.
We see that right from the beginning, and a lot of that comes from the fact that he's taken on and [is] dealing with so much grief. He's a widower now. He's a single father. He has lost his job and his identity, which was a big part of his life. Ultimately, you're then taking a step back and going, “All right, well—who am I now?” I genuinely think he's questioning that every single day.
No. I think if you were to have an answer for—if I, as Sagar, knew what Rishi was at this point, then it would be difficult to play the complexity of it because there’s an answer then.
I try not to overthink any of the characters I play and work on my instinct as well as the character's instinct, as well as the writing, because that allows me to find things in the moment. I've never been one of those actors who—and you may have met some, and I know some—where they're very definitive about what a scene has to be and the journey they need it to go on for this result to happen at the end. I think sometimes you are doing yourself a disservice by doing that because you just don't know what's going to come.
A perfect example for Rishi is season one. I was able to lean into that bravado, that sort of outward confidence, and the chest-out personality he walked with. I didn't know it was going to be to that extent until I got onto a set, started playing him that way, and saw the response from the boys. The first ever readthrough we did for episode one of season one, I remember saying that line to Robert, "Change your suit, you look like fucking Neo,” or something. I remember the whole room just burst out laughing, and I was like, “Oh, okay. They're digging what I did there. Maybe there's something there.”
I kind of remember—being an actor who probably needs validation—I think I looked at the boys, and I could see them look at each other like, Okay, we didn't know that was going to generate such a laugh, but it did. To have those moments of my own instincts leads to where we've got Rishi to.
That probably comes from being an actor who never was formally trained. I never went to drama school. I just almost fell into it. I used to go to these part-time drama classes when I was a bit younger. You turn up, pay 10 pounds, go in, do script work, and improvisation. The teacher is guiding you along that way and allowing you to lean into your instincts. Once upon a time, drama school was about—especially for people who would come down from the north of England—like, let's beat that accent out of you, and you need to sound a certain way. It has to be Shakespearean in that sense, and you have to be almost posh in the way you would sound and come across.
A lot of that has gone since television transformed into ultra-realism with what we see now. That's where that came from. I was never formally trained, and I wonder if I did go to a traditional drama school, whether that would've been beaten out of me, or I would've felt the pressure to change. But because I never did, and very gratefully, my instinct and choices have led me to a point like this. I think I've always led with it.
There wasn't a conversation about it. I think the boys are really good at kind of letting their actors make their own choices in those situations. So that could be read as a suicide attempt, that could also be read as not a suicide attempt.
I did read it as that, but I also didn't want to make too much of it. Again, I'm not someone who's experienced anything like that or my friends or family, so it's not been around me to know what that looks like. I would assume people who have gone through that are not trying to volunteer that information as loud as they possibly can. That choice that I made was to make it quite throwaway because there's an element of embarrassment to it. There's an element of failure.
100%. 100%. Especially for Rishi and everything he's gone through. He is the definition of a man of a certain time. In terms of his masculinity, the way he carries himself, in the way that he conducts himself, and speaks to people. A Rishi in 2026 would not be acceptable in the workplace. Anywhere, really, but especially in the workplace. I did choose to kind of read that as a potential suicide attempt.
In regards to him listing Harper as his sort of point of contact or next of kin, I don't think he does that with any sort of pride. He literally has no one else. His wife's family don't like him very much and rightly so. He doesn't have any other family he can lean on who understands him and gets him the way Harper probably does. Harper and him have that toxic relationship where yes, there's a lot of hatred, but it's almost like a mutual understanding that we are very similar in that sense. I see you for who you are, and actually, because we are so similar, we probably butt heads in that way.
Inevitably, there's still an element of mutual respect, otherwise Harper would not have entertained even bringing him for these sorts of paper bag jobs that he's doing for her. With that in mind, he felt like, Okay, let me just put her name down. It was more of a case of, I haven't got anyone else.
Absolutely. Absolutely. We need to show all types of people, especially a character has been on a journey like this; we need to show them in all their complexity, we need to see them in their vulnerability as well as their strength. We need to see them in their complexity, as well as the simplicity that they may be traveling through in life. Like in season one, people found Rishi really funny because he was there on the floor as a personality, just talking to these grads and showing them what life in this environment is like. But did we understand where that bravado came from? No. Actually, when you go further down into season three, you see he could arguably be a second-generation British Indian who has to behave this way as a form of assimilation. He has to come into this bank, be accepted, and respected, and he has to lead with his chest out. He has to potentially be the bully so he doesn't get bullied. That's the insecurity that he is always led with.
I think it's important to show all aspects of it because, as humans, we are all multidimensional and we need—race or ethnicity aside—ultimately, we're just trying to tell the story of a character. To get an opportunity to do that is rare for someone who looks like me. Between us, we could probably name less than five people who look like me who get to do this on this scale, if not higher. Whether it's big-budget movies or things where they get just to be a guy, and it's not about race, it's not about ethnicity. A lot of that is purely incidental, and ultimately, they just get to play characters. I'm very lucky I've had a chance to do that.
That's a great question. First and foremost, unfortunately, I think the Hugo thing is playing on his mind, but not nearly enough, as the grief he's going through. That grief doesn't come out as tears for Rishi. It comes out as silence. It comes out as bad decisions as we see. It comes out as that survival mode. That grief, all of us can relate to grief, can change the architecture of a person. For me, then trying to play that, I tried to play the spaces Rishi didn't really know how to fill anymore, that he probably used to with the noise, the loudness, and the bravado. Then, deep-rooted within that, sits this guilt of what he's now done to his son because inevitably there's going to be a level of trauma that his son's going to have to grow up with and deal with. But I think Rishi, in true Rishi way, has probably pushed that down and tried to ignore it. He's only confronted with it when he then has that scene with his mother-in-law, and it's like, “Listen, I get it. You want to keep him, but the best thing for him is for him to come with us.” I think Rishi, against his own instincts, knows that's the right decision. So he ultimately has to sign away the rights.
I'm always going to believe he is worthy of that, but this is me playing that character. This probably comes down to the question of when people say, “Are these characters bad?” Inevitably, I'm sure, whether it's me or other actors or other shows and films you've spoken about, every actor probably always defends their character like they should.
I don't see these characters on this show, and especially Rishi, as bad people. I see them as operating in a system that rewards this type of selfishness and emotional shutdown. When you put humans in an environment like that, you are never going to get saints. You're going to get survival instinct. It's about winning, and it's about making the most money because that's where the results are. That's where the pats on the back are. That's where the promotions are. That's where the bonuses are. So yeah, man, I feel like he's always just been that way since he entered this world.
So one of the rare things that we got a chance to do was, Michelle, our director, wanted to—she was coming on for the second block, so she was a fan of the show, and she knew all these characters as an audience member. What she wanted, in order for this scene to land the way it needed to land, because it's such a long scene and there's so many different dynamics to what's taking place: what's going through Rishi's head, what's going through Dycker’s head, and what eventually then happens to both of them in their own respective ways.
We sat down in a room, me, Charlie, and Michelle, and we had a small rehearsal one day, which was amazing. We got to get the script. We read it out loud; it was in a big room. We used the space, we moved, we pretended like it was the apartment, and we tried loads of different things that didn't necessarily happen when we got to set. It was just a point where we can familiarize ourselves with each other, familiarize ourselves with the script to a different degree when you're saying it out loud. We threw some music in there. We tried some cool little games and exercises to help, threw in some props to see how that changes our mindset when there was two characters who are drunk and high, and what do those things do to two people when they're interacting in that way. That was really, really helpful because me and Charlie weren't just, for the first time, meeting on set and going, “Cool, let's hit these six pages, five, six pages,” whatever it was.
And then it's just a matter of going to work, getting the lines down, and then me and Charlie just riffing off of each other. We tried loads of different things. We improv’d a few different things. We tried the scene in multiple different locations around that sofa. That was really helpful, man. Charlie's really easy to play off of. It was almost like a tennis match where we're both passing each other the ball and seeing where we run with it. It wasn't a night shoot, but it was quite late at night, and we just managed to have fun with it. Because we had had the rehearsal, I think, a good three weeks prior, we felt a little bit more comfortable coming into it. Okay, we know what this looks like a little bit. I'd also done a rekkie with the team and come down to see the space because I wanted to get a visual of what we're looking at, especially for the balcony stuff. We wanted to get a sense of that. That always helped.
Then you throw in the team, whether it's the props team and what they were able to provide for us on the table, Michelle, with her direction, a couple of the producers came down that day because I think they wanted to see how that all manifested, because it's a real point in that episode. Everyone seemed happy with it. Mickey and Konrad weren't there, but I did get a message from them after we'd shot it, saying they were really happy and impressed with the direction we took it in. Then, like you said, it's a matter of how it comes together in the edit. I think people are going to be in for a surprise.
The short answer is yes. Everything that he has gone through, that we have seen him go through, especially season three going into season four, has led to this moment. What happened with his wife was just torturing him. In my head, I thought that Rishi was always going to be someone who was going to be able to bury it and move on. That's the type of guy he is. This was just a step too far. To have his wife shot, in his face, on his birthday, and that blood splatter over him was just a level of trauma and torture that he was never going to be able to overcome. When you then add the layer of what that's done to the family and the son, and his identity as a human in general, you get to that moment. I think he's jumped with a view for survival. I imagine in that situation, you're going to do anything you need to do to get away. It's almost animalistic.
When he's on the ground and he can't do any more, there is a level of realizing that this is what was supposed to happen. This is exactly what I deserved. That little smirk is just him kind of going, Okay, this is everything that I probably deserve, so do it. He doesn't really fight it. He can't fight it. His legs [laughs] are obliterated. There's a level of acceptance in that moment, for sure.