Industry Season 3 Episode 1 “Il Mattino ha L’Oro Bocca” climaxes with a pep talk that may do more harm than good. After a shaken Robert Spearing (Harry Lawtey) bursts into tears on the Pierpoint trading floor, manager Eric Tao (Ken Leung) pulls the young man aside to put him in his place. Soon, Eric snarls at Robert, “I AM A MAN AND I AM RUTHLESS!” Robert repeats the words and immediately gets to work monitoring Lumi CEO Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington). Eric then fires his colleague and friend Kenny (Conor MacNeil) in order to appear strong to the rest of the board.
The “I AM A MAN AND I AM RUTHLESS!” scene is what makes the HBO series so addictive. It’s a high-octane performance, full of nuance and pure bombast.
“We wanted the big moment at the end of the episode. We wanted something that felt bombastic,” Industry co-creator Mickey Down told Jugo Mobile during a recent interview. “We wanted something that felt bombastic.”
“And a nice moment between Eric and Robert, who, you know, have shared very few moments throughout the series.”
Of course, before you make “I AM A MAN AND I AM RUTHLESS” your new personal blanket in the workplace, you might want to zoom out a bit and see how this proclamation of power is actually a show of weakness. Robert, of course, has just arrived at work after waking up next to a dead Nicole Craig (Sarah Parrish). Robert visited the older woman in secret for an encounter that was half lust, half emotional purging. Though she died of natural causes, Robert believes she swore. So much so that he can’t articulate what happened beyond telling Eric simply that he “lost a client.”
Eric, on the other hand, is in the midst of a growing midlife crisis. His new promotion at Pierpoint gives him more power than ever, but the pressure to be even more ruthless. He has to fire someone from his team so as not to appear weak. Instead of firing Yasmin (Marisa Abela) or Robert, he fires Kenny… because Kenny helped Eric immediately after their split. Thus, Kenny has seen Eric at his worst.
Down explained that he and co-creator Konrad Kay wanted Robert and Eric’s moment to be a “rampant display of machismo in the wake of probably the most vulnerable thing that happens on the dance floor, which is someone breaking down in tears.” The entire scene is the intersection of emotional vulnerability and pretensions of masculine power.
“The show has always been about showing your vulnerability at the door to Pierpoint, because it’s not a place where vulnerability is the currency,” Down said. “In fact, showing how vulnerable you are can be detrimental to your career.”
“So the fact that Robert is crying on the floor makes us all, in a way, wonder: ‘What the hell is going on?’”
Down noted that Eric is also in a vulnerable moment. He shows up late to work smelling of alcohol, fresh out of jail and having been in a relationship with Yasmin’s friend. Down explains that over the course of this scene, Eric is also working on his way to being less vulnerable.
“Think, ‘What kind of person do I want to be? The weak version of myself is not the person who could get ahead. And I’ve gone too far. I’ve done too well to go back to that weak version. So you know what? I’m going to bounce back and just give this guy the worst version of what he needs. ’”
So what does What does Robert really need? “He needs someone to put their arm around him and say, ‘Actually, everything is going to be OK. Go back to your desk,’” Down said. “Instead, [Eric] “He calls him a coward and makes him angry, and he makes himself angry to do the next thing he needs to do.”
One more time, Industry The film’s success comes through most in exploring the dichotomy of what it takes emotionally to be emotionally unflappable. No one who is truly unflappable needs to shout, “I AM A MAN AND I AM RELEVANT” to get their job done.