Behind the Scenes of Industry’s Wild, Shocking, Violent Accra Episode

The fifth episode of Industry wades into uncharted territory, leaving the British banks of London behind and landing on West African soil. In “Eyes Without a Face,” which aired early on Friday ahead of the Super Bowl, SternTao traders Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche) and Kwabena Bannerman (Toheeb Jimoh) head to Ghana on a hunch that the business operations of payment-processing start-up Tender, which has become the primary target for SternTao’s shorts-only fund, might not be entirely above water. In Accra, the pair discover the true depths of Tender’s corruption, complete with fabricated profits, empty office buildings, and bribes to Ghanaian officials. It’s a massive departure from the days of Harper (Myha’la) and Yasmin (Marisa Abela) being locked to their desks as junior traders on the floor at London-based investment bank Pierpoint.

“There’s no point coming back to a season of Industry if it’s not going to feel different to the last one,” Industry’s cocreator and showrunner Mickey Down tells me over Zoom about the decision to leave Pierpoint behind for season four. “We could have just written five seasons of season one, which is just vibes on a trading floor. The grads could turn into associates, then they could get to VP, but we just felt like the show needs to expand and reflect what me and Konrad [Kay] are interested in.”

Cocreator Konrad Kay chimes in, echoing the sentiment and the duo’s goal to “keep making the canvas broader…. It’s a reflection of our ambition as filmmakers and writers to see if we can not betray the small character moments that made the show what it is, while also having a bigger, more globe-trot-y, geopolitical hook for people to enjoy the plotting of.”

But before they could trot the globe, they had to get out of the office. At the end of season three, Kay and Down made the decision to effectively shut down Pierpoint, selling the British bank to Al-Mi’raj, an Egyptian sovereign wealth fund, which closes the London trading floor where much of Industry’s action took place. “Season three really felt like a kind of detonation of the show,” says Down. But burning bridges leaves plenty of room for growth—which was what the pair intended. “Our interests became more mature as we wrote the seasons,” Down continues. “It would feel dishonest to continually keep the show small as the characters’ perspectives began to grow, and as the characters accrued more power, and as the show became an interrogation of the world in which we live and was breaking away from the hermetically sealed box of the trading floor.”

This meant taking characters to places they’d never been before—like Austria and Accra. Down had a personal reason for sending Industry into Africa. “My mother’s Ghanaian and I’ve always wanted to put it onscreen,” says Down. But much in the same way Industry’s London-based series is primarily shot in Wales, they shot the Ghanaian scenes in a different African nation: South Africa. And neither Down nor Kay was able to be on location for the shoot. “Unfortunately, because of the punishing schedule that we have, we weren’t able to go,” laments Down.

Nevertheless, production forged on, with director Luke Snellin shooting the Ghanaian scenes in three days in Durban, South Africa, with what Down calls “a skeleton crew.” Turning South Africa into Ghana in a few days was no small feat. “The production designer did a great job of trying to make stuff like Ghana, because Durban doesn’t feel necessarily like Accra,” Down says. “He found really good places that felt more like it than I’d seen on TV before.”

Kwabena’s Ghanaian background was crucial to the formation of the episode. “Kwabena is a very particular British Ghanaian character with a certain class background,” says Down. But Kwabena is not Industry’s first Ghanaian series regular—that would be David Jonsson’s Gus Sackey, the gay Ghanaian British trader who quit Pierpoint at the end of season one and ultimately left the series after season two. Exploring Ghana via Kwabena provided an opportunity to explore “the whole gamut of society,” says Down. “We’re seeing corruption there. We’re seeing enterprise there. We’re seeing rich characters. We’re seeing poorer characters.”

In “Eyes Without a Face” Down and Kay wanted to intentionally challenge preconceived notions and stereotypes those in the West may have about modern life in Africa. “They think of sub-Saharan Africa in a very particular way, and it has a very particular depiction on TV,” says Down. “I think people have this depiction of Africa as this kind of voodoo culture, which is really scary.” In Accra, Sweetpea is punched in the face by a man in a public restroom in an intimidation attempt to get her off Tender’s tail. It’s a frightening moment to be sure, but as Down notes, “Anywhere can be scary.” It’s a fact Industry has proven time and time again from a haunted posh country estate, an Austrian suite with some disconcerting artwork on the walls, or, most recently, an afters gone wrong in a London apartment.

“The Ghanaian aspect of this story was obviously incredibly important for the thriller, financial-fraud element of it,” says Down. “It’s also an incredibly vibrant, interesting place full of really contradictory people who want the same things as people in the West,” says Down. “Seeing it through the eyes of a character like Kwabena, who has this idea of being a prodigal son but is actually quite distinct from [Ghana] and really a product of his environment in the UK, was interesting.”

Industry’s Ghanaian detour proved fruitful for Kwabena and Sweetpea. When they have to return to England, despite their newfound information they realize the odds are still stacked against SternTao in its quest to short Tender as the David to Tender’s Goliath. “Hierarchy is something we constantly were writing about on the show, by accident almost,” says Kay. He points back to the early days of Industry. “The trading floor is such a hierarchical structure. You could literally see the progress: analyst, associate, VP. It’s a bit like the rules of the jungle in a really basic, reductive way.”