Sagar Radia Found Peace in Industry’s Chaos
In its third season, Industry has delivered perhaps the best (or worst, depending on your perspective), most anxiety-inducing downward spiral of all time. Rishi Ramdani, the Pierpoint head trader whose briskly delivered quips are as witty as they are horrifically vulgar, crashed out in a bottle episode focused on his character’s gambling addiction and rocky relationship with his old-money wife.
Despite how accurately he embodies Rishi, Sagar Radia is nothing like his character — when he meets me at Nine Orchard for a chat about that absolutely bonkers episode of television, his demeanor is rather gentle. Sipping a black tea swirled with milk, he reflects on the winding path that brought him here and how special it feels to finally get to act his ass off on a show he loves working on. “It’s a gift,” he says. “It’s the type of episode people go their whole careers trying to get.”
In his mid-20s, he nearly quit acting, feeling burnt out from constant auditions that seemed to lead nowhere and working retail jobs that made him feel inadequate. For six months, he tried out a job at a media-planning agency. If he hadn’t absolutely hated it, he says, he might never have come back to acting. But thankfully for us all, he left that job, starred in a play on the West End with Jesse Eisenberg (The Spoils), and soon got his big break on the ITV network medical procedural The Good Karma Hospital, which eventually led to Industry. “I get to play this super-alpha, front-footed head trader who’s always coming from a position of strength. People who look like me don’t get to play those types of characters. We’re always the terrorist, the taxi driver, the best friend,” he says. “So to be who Rishi is — just super no b.s., work hard, play hard, he’s sexualized in a way that you don’t get to see South Asian actors get sexualized — it is a dream role.”
How much did you know about Rishi’s arc this season before filming?
I was reading it as the scripts came in. Season one, Rishi admittedly is quite a functional character. So I nearly didn’t come back. It was a conversation with the creators, Mickey and Conrad, and I expressed why I wasn’t sure. There’s a lot of real estate in the show — is there space to grow this character? And if there isn’t, I respect that. It’s about the grads. They were really lovely about saying how they want to grow the character and how the audience has taken to him. I’m so grateful I came back, because here we are.
So you didn’t know about his gambling addiction?
A friend had asked, “What would you love to see for Rishi in the future?” I told them I felt like there’s an addictive personality there, maybe gambling. That’s so surreal, because I never mentioned it to Mickey and Conrad. There’s something nice in that, to be reassured, like, “Oh, I think we’re on the same wavelength about who this character is.”
Did you change your approach in how you portrayed Rishi this season?
Yes, inevitably. It’s a bottleneck episode, but it’s its own thing. I worked with our director, Zoe Whitaker, on plotting the emotional beats of what that episode looked like. Everything is shot out of sequence, so it’s not like I get a chance to start Rishi where he is at the beginning and then finish at the end. I think my first day of filming was the roulette table stuff. That’s a really tough place to start. It’s Uncut Gems vibes. It was a different process from seasons one and two. And, actually, one I relished — I loved every minute of it.
More than in previous seasons, we really see Rishi wrestling with his racial identity and his relationship to whiteness — and the way that microaggressions can weigh on a person over time. How did it feel to tell that story?
It’s difficult. There’s this deep-rooted complexity around immigration and second-generation immigration and what that looks like and where you fit in the world, and there’s a lot of othering and code switching. I think Rishi embodies that in his experience. As Sagar, I can sometimes feel that. I’m lucky, because London is very multicultural. But you still have those moments, and I think Rishi has these moments of when you step out of that comfort zone ever so slightly, you can feel that difference immediately. So he goes to the countryside where he’s now living, and his wife’s family are all there, and suddenly it’s not so cosmopolitan. It’s very white and upper class.
Rishi does code switch; he has to. He’s a different guy at work from who he is at home with his wife, so then, inevitably, his voice ever so slightly changes with his wife’s parents. I think it comes from this immigrant mentality of making other people feel comfortable because you don’t want them to feel threatened in any way. There’s so much going on. So you take all that complexity and you try to put it into a character in some of these scenes. And when the writing’s so good it makes it so much easier.
How did you approach your portrayal of Rishi’s gambling addiction? Do you think it’s been there since we first met him or that it developed more recently?
When the script came, I thought of Michael Jordan when he retired. Here’s a guy who was at the top of his game. He was still considered the GOAT, but people spoke about his alleged gambling addictions, and the minute he retired from all professional sports — I think that competitive edge doesn’t go away. That’s still instilled in you, because you’ve had it for such a long time. I think for Rishi, he’s probably always been a city boy. He likes being in that concrete jungle; work hard, play hard. I think he decided to get married maybe a little early. So he then moves out to the countryside, and I think there’s an itch in him — a literal itch that’s not quite being scratched. I think at that point, work’s just not quite doing it enough. He’s trying to hit those dopamine levels. And then, obviously, he gets himself into some deep trouble. You know what’s really strange? That moment where he makes the money back and he goes back in, he’s not stupid. I think he knows what he’s doing, but I think he’s turned on by the thrill of it, because he feels untouchable in those moments. Like, no, no, no. I can go and double it. That’s the addiction. I think that’s the feeling that it gives you.
What was your research for the role like?
It was more trying to find and formulate a character who demonstrated this demeanor and attitude. I watched Margin Call again, one of my favorite finance films, and The Big Short, another one of my favorites. At the start of season one, Jeremy Strong was a big inspiration for Rishi. He plays Steve Carell’s No. 2 in The Big Short. Steve Carell is the boss of this hedge fund, and Jeremy Strong is actually a very peripheral character, but he’s his head trader. He’s his main confidant. He’s the guy who Steve goes to for big decisions to figure out their next move. It’s Jeremy Strong like you’ve never seen him before. He’s alpha, he’s brazen, his voice drops a little bit. I was able to take that and apply it to Rishi. And then we ended up name-checking him in season two, Kendall Roy.
I was also really affected by the dynamic between Rishi and Anraj — particularly by how differently they each perceive the same relationship. What’s your view on it?
It’s a really interesting relationship. Anraj was actually in episodes one and two of season two. I remember when they were casting that role, and Mickey and Conrad spoke to me, they said, “We’re gonna bring in a mini-me for you.” And in my head, I went, okay, cool. He’ll be young, he’ll be a grad, it’ll be like — did you ever watch Suits? It’ll be like a Harvey and Mike thing. They’re so smart because they went the opposite way. They got someone who’s larger than life. Anraj is taller than me; he’s a big presence. The dynamic, then, is amazing, because he’s taller than me, so he’s talking over me most of the time, but I’m coming back with my energy. And he’s like a teddy bear in that sense. He’s such a lovely, nice guy. It works so well. I loved working with Irfan, the actor who plays Anraj. He does a lot of theater in London, just superb.
There’s a mentor-mentee thing here, but I think Rishi is just trying to toughen him up. I think he’s like, “Listen, if you want to survive in this world, you can’t go about it just being the nice guy, because you’ll get walked all over.” And I think Anraj innately is just not that guy. I wonder if he joined the bank thinking, I want to be Rishi, and then very quickly went, I don’t want to be Rishi. We see that at the end of episode four, where they have that sort of intervention and Anraj is like, “You make me feel like I don’t want to come to work.” Rishi is genuinely hurt by it. It’s a sort of brotherly relationship. I’d love to see more of that.
What was it like to watch season three?
There’s a deep root of confidence. We know how funny it is. We know how dramatic it can be. We know the stakes. So in a weird way, there’s an ease about it that wouldn’t be there if it was season one. Watching it this year, the different experience for me was knowing what I was lucky enough to have with episode four. It was a really peaceful moment for me.
It’s funny to hear you say it was a peaceful experience.
Peaceful for Sagar, who’s been in the game for a second, who gets to sit back and go, “Whoa. I can’t believe I’ve been given this opportunity.” When you’re watching, it is stressful, because you’re looking at what take they used and what angles they chose. As an actor, you’re looking at ten different things. But there was a really strange, peaceful moment, to be like, “I’m so glad someone gave me the chance to do this.” People who look like me don’t get these opportunities very often. HBO did The Night Of with Riz Ahmed. They did Station Eleven with Himesh Patel, another British South Asian actor, as the lead. And then I get to do something like this on Industry. It’s a small circle, and I’m so fortunate to be in that, and I hope we can see more of it.
Where do you think Rishi goes from here?
I think they love the character, they like what I’m bringing with it, and they like pushing boundaries for themselves. We’ve had some tentative conversations, just spitballing. Nothing’s been commissioned. We haven’t been told if the show is renewed. I personally think it can go one of two ways. I think he either goes completely off the rails or he completely fixes up. I think an experience like that can send you in either of those directions, those extremes.
The boys love coming out swinging, to be like, “We’re gonna give you something that you don’t expect,” and I think it’s that mentality that allows us to get to season three and still keep people going, “We want more.” We’re just so grateful we get to celebrate it.
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