'Industry' season 4 made HBO heads deeply 'uncomfortable', but why?

In HBO's hit show Industry, there is a loudmouth character, Rishi Ramdani, portrayed by Sagar Radia.

He was a confident, often aggressive trader on the Pierpoint floor who relished making quick money.

Yet, what began his arc from a trader yelling 'baloney' took a dark turn when season three ended.

But in season four, it got worse to a point that executives from HBO asked the creators to cut a few disturbing scenes of him.

In an interview with GoldDerby, Mickey Down explains, "The decision to bring Rishi back has always been driven by our love for Sagar and his performance as much as anything else."

He continues, "In Season 1, he was a secondary actor who came to life via ADR that we did after we shot." 

"In Season 2, we gave him his own storyline," Down shares.

"And in Season 3, we gave him his own episode to see if he could carry it — and he could."

"He's a fantastic presence, one that felt very organic, but also quite novel for television in that it’s a brown man who acts depraved.'

Season 4: Rishi in decline

Then in season four, his high-finance world crumbled.

"In Season 4, he was out of the finance game. We made that huge decision at the end of Season 3."

However, the character like Rishi, who has "sociopathic tendencies," does not walk back on his mistakes.

"What does a person like that do to make quick money? Probably sell drugs."

"Would he have a bit of self-reckoning about his wife? Probably not, given who he is," Down notes.

HBO told Industry creators to soften Rishi's scenes

In season 4, a few scenes of Rishi were so deeply uncomfortable that even HBO executives had a hard time watching them.

Down says, "HBO said to us that it was incredibly unpleasant to watch—even more so in the director’s cut version that was 15 minutes long."

His co-creator Konrad Kay reveals the executives at the network asked them to shorten or to some degree soften those scenes.

Regarding this request, the maker joked he cut a negligible frame from the scene, assuring them the cuts had been done.

"They kept trying to get us to take time out, and we kept trimming two frames out of it and saying, “There you go!”

Industry is renewed for season 5, which will be its last.