Here’s why ‘Industry’s Trump nod is so important

HBO Industry has never shied away from current events, from Season 2’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic to Season 4’s focus on online age verification in the UK. However, in the season 4 premiere, Industry goes even further by calling on a real political figure: President Donald Trump.

The show’s version of Trump, played by a Trump lookalike, makes a brief appearance during a scene in which now-retired Eric Tao (Ken Leung) visits the golf course. He and his fellow millionaire retirees spot Trump from afar, sporting his usual red MAGA hat, and exchange a wave with him.

“Has 47 ever let anyone play?” asks one of Eric’s friends.

“Not in this life,” replies another.

It’s a surprising allusion, the ultimate movement IndustryA portrait of a world of wealth, access and power that the vast majority of its viewers will never see. But more than that, it’s a pivotal moment for Eric’s character, pinpointing exactly where life has taken him after Pierpoint.

For starters, the routine of the golf course is a far cry from the high-stakes, high-pressure, high-speed trading floor that Eric used to rule. He stagnates, while Eric prefers to monitor the slightest changes in the market – the last thing on his golf companions’ minds.

“He’s surrounded by these older white men who have made a lot of money. They have this passive wealth that’s constantly accumulating, so they just play golf and go to the same restaurant over and over again,” Industry co-creator Mickey Down told Mashable over Zoom. “Eric tries to convince himself that this is the good life and that he doesn’t feel the pull of the old life he lived in the first three seasons.”

Trump’s presence on the golf course is actually reminiscent of Eric’s “old life.” It’s not his time as a leader IndustryThe first three seasons of , but its first days on the trading floor.

In IndustryIn the second season of, the series explores Eric’s relationship with his own mentor, a man named Newman. The audience never meets him before his death, but in a key scene in Season 2, Episode 4, Eric spends time in his New York office, which has remained untouched since his death. On the desk is a MAGA hat, a symbol that speaks volumes not only about Newman’s ideologies, but also about what his relationship as a white man as a person of power might have been like with his Asian subordinate.

“You go under [Eric’s] hood a little more in season 2, we realize that he has this background where he [experienced] kind of racial abuse from the trading floor in the 90s,” Down said.

Eric’s interaction with Trump in Season 4, although from afar, feels like the “climax” of Eric’s complicated relationship with his mentor, according to Down. He remembers adding a reminder of Newman’s racism into the premiere’s storyline to really drive the moment home.

“In the scenario [Industry co-creator Konrad Kay and I] wrote, [Eric’s] the mentor was this person. Now here he is, waving at number 47,” Down said. “It was like a real moment of, ‘Where the fuck am I?’ How did I get here? How did a kid like me, where I come from, end up greeting the president, who represents all of these things?'”

New episodes of Industry Season 4 premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.