“It’s almost like we’re friends,” Leung says, before catching himself. “That’s a funny thing to say, but it’s almost like weWhile his relationship with Herrold is solid in real life, their power struggle is the driving engine of“We dug into Harper and Eric’s relationship in the writers room, and we were like, What is it about?” Kay says about writing season two. “It’s okay for it to be this, like, ineffable thing that we can’t quite put our fingers on.
In conceiving Eric’s beefed-up arc for season two, Kay and Down hearkened back to a monologue Leung delivered in episode four of season one, in which Eric shared that his mentor, whom he admired, often called him racist slurs. “We went back and we thought about that monologue he tells about his own mentor and were like, Okay, this is a guy who’s obviously come up in a certain time. He’s Asian American. He had this white boss. He would’ve experienced all of this racism.
Unfortunately, he loses. In his attempt to keep his job, Eric offers Danny up as a sacrificial lamb. But in classicfashion, it’s then revealed that Danny has been one step ahead of Eric the whole time, having already orchestrated Eric’s exit from the trading floor via a “promotion” to the cushy client services division. Eric has taken a big swing and struck out.
Down and Kay can’t think of an actor better equipped to take on this tragic arc than Leung. “[Eric] doesn’t know what to do with the idea that his best days are behind him. His story is kind of about a guy wrestling with the fact that he’s going to die,” Kay says. “Because we had Ken and we knew he could pull it off, we really dug into that stuff.”
mmyhala You guys are perfect in your roles. The chemistry is electric. Best show in such a long time. hbomax
In Lost he had a great line, “I don’t believe in very many things, but I believe in duct tape.”