‘Industry’s’ Ken Leung on growing up in Chinatown and learning to speak finance

After decades of success as a character actor on shows like "Lost" and "The Sopranos," Ken Leung's career has taken a star turn with his lead role on HBO's "Industry."

It's a prestige drama about a group of Gen-Z strivers at a London investment bank called Pierpont. They're mentored by an intimidating managing director Eric Tao (Leung), who humiliates junior staffers and betrays his protégé, Harper (Myha'la).

After two quiet but critically-acclaimed seasons, the show took off this summer, propelled by fans craving quality Sunday night fare in the wake of "Succession" ending. Vox called "Industry" the " soapy, sleazy spectacle prestige TV is missing " and the New Yorker called it " prestige TV for the Tik-Tok era ."

The show's third season, which ended Sunday, has seen a huge spike in viewership, with the premiere up 60% compared to Season 2, according to "The Wrap." HBO has already renewed the show for a fourth season.

Its dialogue, full of intricate financial industry jargon and plot points, has sparked a slew of think pieces and online discussion threads, analyzing its accuracy and deciphering the language for non-industry professionals.

Though the show is filmed in the U.K., Leung lives in Brooklyn. He was born and raised in New York City, living on Catherine Street in Chinatown before moving to Midwood, Brooklyn at age nine.

Gothamist's Ryan Kailath caught up with him on his old block to walk through the neighborhood discussing his old haunts, and how life in New York has informed his high finance character on "Industry." An edited transcript of their conversation is below.

So "Industry" has taken off this season, and gotten a much bigger audience. Does that change your life in New York when you're here?

I've noticed, I think it has. I've developed a great kind of peripheral awareness of double takes, or when somebody's walking and they suddenly stop walking.

Did you see that couple just now stop and take a picture of you on Mosco Street?

It's funny you say that, 'cause I don't really notice it in Chinatown. These guys [gesturing at a group of card players in Columbus Park], they're not gonna watch "Industry."

But there's also a thing in the culture, maybe, that starts off very unimpressed. There's an expression, I say it a lot and my son now has learned it. And it's "che." It can be used in so many ways, the meaning depends on the context, but it's basically "big deal." Like, "so what."

I've read you saying that the financial jargon in the show throws you, but you can put that aside because you're coming from a character motivation standpoint.

It doesn't throw me in that sense. It's that it's new — when you first read it on the page you don't know what's happening, you don't know what the stakes are, you don't know how big a deal this or that is. But we have consultants – primarily [show creators] Mickey [Down] and Konrad [Kay] – so we get a basic sense, enough to play the stakes or to personalize it in some way.

And at some point I made a shift that was like: Eric is coming from a place of power and confidence and his own made-up reality. He knows what he wants to know, and doesn't what he doesn't.

Does being in New York help you understand that world better?

So we're fortunate enough – and I mean just unbelievably fortunate – to send our son to an independent school. They are crazy expensive. Consequently, a lot of our fellow parents are in finance. And for a period he'd go to school with a friend of his whose dad was in finance, one of the families we were close to at the time.

A few mornings I went with them, and the dad was sitting in front having his morning meeting with his team. It was the same dynamic, the people in the meeting were younger and he's kind of a mentor, to echo Eric's thing. It gave me a sense and a texture of what a meeting like that is like.

Kailath: You asked to meet here at Catherine and Monroe streets. What's the significance of this place?

This was my daycare center, and I lived right across the street, that red building. We lived on the top floor, railroad apartment, all through the '70s. I went to school here at St. Joseph's – we had recess down this block, which was blocked off for us to run around. My first time on a swing was here in this playground.

I remember during the blackout in '77, my dad and I were sitting on our fire escape playing "I Spy." And the fallout shelter sign on the housing projects here, I remember that being one of the things I spied. That was the '70s. There were gangs in Chinatown, and movie theaters, none of which survive today.

Chinese gangs?

Chinese gangs. The Pagoda Theater was two blocks down. I remember one night they had a live variety show visiting from mainland China, different acts one after the other. We were sitting center orchestra and suddenly the doors opened behind us and there were gunshots. Everybody hit the ground.

But then they [the people firing guns] left, and we didn't leave. Nobody left. Everyone just got back into their seats, and the show went on, and I fell asleep. Because nothing could compete with that in terms of excitement.

It's wild to think of Chinatown that way. Now there's a wine bar and a fancy dessert place around the corner.

One more gang story, exactly where we're standing. I'm walking home from college late at night, I was a freshman [at NYU]. And two guys, a short Chinese guy and a tall Black guy, approached me. Short Chinese guy doesn't say anything. Tall Black guy speaks, in perfect Cantonese: "Where are you going? Who are you? Where are you off to?"

I was so scared that I didn't know what to say, I didn't say anything. And they just concluded that I couldn't speak Chinese, and then suddenly they changed. They had no use for me, they were like "Oh, so sorry, you can go. Go on your way." I think they wanted me to be their sherpa.

You've talked a lot about discovering acting almost randomly at NYU, through an intro speech class. And how acting "gave you something that wasn't in your upbringing." What was that thing?

Practice being a person in all manner of situations. I realized I can try to learn how to be a different way, while what I am naturally is naturally there. I can learn to be part of this world. You're fluid, you can learn to be all kinds of things, play all different kinds of characters. And through that, I can find myself.

What would have happened if you hadn't found acting? Who would Ken Leung be now?

Yeah, I don't know. I majored in pre-physical therapy at NYU. It was hard, I think maybe I took three years instead of two years. And then when I finally made it out of pre- and into physical therapy, I remember sitting in orientation just feeling that I do not belong here, I can't even sit through this orientation. It was visceral.

This must be around the time that you came home and told your parents you were going to pursue acting. Your father wouldn't face you, and your mother just cried.

Yeah.

Has that gotten better at all, over the years?

It's unchanged. We don't have a talking relationship, really. We don't really have a relationship to speak of. And they've never asked me about it. Presumably they know I'm still doing it?

Che.

Che! [laughing] Brilliant pronunciation, usage, application. Amazing.

When you're thinking about Eric's backstory, do you think about your parents and your family, when you're thinking about who Eric's parents are?

Completely. Yes. Just doing the math, I figure Eric's parents lived through the Cultural Revolution in China, and maybe they escaped that and ended up here because of that. And that they brought with them a kind of protective, distrustful-of-authority personality. And he grew up with this kind of inward-turning hidden DNA.

Yeah. There's so much, especially in these last two episodes, where you're looking at Eric and wondering what he's thinking.

Yeah. Which chess moves is he playing? How deliberate? He keeps things close to his chest. But I also think it accounts for how showy he has to be to make it in this business. He must have really had to go the other way from hidden and be showy and aggressive, just in a way that maybe he ordinarily is not in his nature. And it's too much — it kind of explains how he got to be where he is.

Anything else you want to talk about? Your stories of growing up are so much more interesting than my questions.

Well, a lot of people ask about my dream project, and I usually say I'd love to be in some kind of romantic drama, like "Scenes from a Marriage" or "Past Lives." Because I never get to explore that kind of relationship.

But sitting here [in Columbus Park], I'd love to be in something where I speak nothing but Cantonese. Cantonese is so expressive, it's like the Sicilian of Chinese. You talk with your hands, there are more tones and levels, so many hilarious sayings and different slang.

I don't know enough about Mandarin to know if they have that or not. I don't think so. Whenever people say, you know, "Chinese people, they always sound angry when they're talking." It's not that they're angry, it's that they're speaking Cantonese.