‘Pachinko’: Showrunner Soo Hugh Breaks Down Her Historical Asian Epic On AppleTV+ [Interview]

“Pachinko,” Apple TV’s sprawling historical epic adapted from Min Jin Lee’s acclaimed novel, has just wrapped up its first eight-episode season. An ambitious drama that spans four generations of a single-family, the series examines the lives of the ethnic Koreans of Japan through the throes of heartache and perseverance. Starting with the annexation and colonization of Korea by the Japanese empire in 1910, “Pachinko” paints a measured dichotomy between past and present by surrounding its narrative around one woman: Kim Sunja. The thread that connects the disparate timelines of this multifaceted narrative, Sunja’s story, is summed up powerfully and succinctly by the series’ opening text: “People endured. Families endured.” “Pachinko” slowly reveals the hidden stories of a forgotten people, anchored by bold visions and astounding performances.

With the parallel announcement of its second season renewal with the release of its season finale, “Chapter Eight,” we had a chance to speak with Soo Hugh, the executive producer, showrunner, creator, and writer of “Pachinko” about her groundbreaking series. We discuss key differences between the novel and the series, working with directorial talents such as Justin Chon and Kogonada, and the universal resonance of its very specific story of a very real people.

I wanted to ask you about this fascinating contradiction within the show because before reading the novel, I had no clue that these people — or this story of these perpetual foreigners — even existed. It’s such a narrow and specific milieu, but it strikes at a very universal throughline: the idea of survival, endurance, who gets to tell our stories, and how our stories get told. Obviously, this is tackled in the novel, but how did you balance these two opposing forces for the show? Giving this voice to the Zainichi people (Koreans living in Japan), who have been largely forgotten in history, but also finding the power in that narrative that a general audience can relate to?
What we tried to establish as our guiding force was the reality of the historical truth. I think human nature doesn’t change that much throughout history. We were doing very, very specific research, for example, what happened in 1923 with the Kanto earthquake in Japan? Or when you came over in 1931, what kind of world did you come into? In some ways, by limiting our field of vision by being very, very precise about what we needed to know, it allowed us to work backward and then say, okay, how does this experience or story then reach broader audiences?

How do we then get to a 10,000-foot point of view from there? Whereas in most shows, it’s the other way around. I’m doing another show right now, and I’m working in the completely opposite way. You start at 10,000 feet up, and then you go down, right? Usually, that’s generally the way you think of narrative. With this show, we couldn’t do that. You have to start on the ground, you have to start with the close-ups, you have to start specific, then sweep up. What’s interesting about this approach, is that that’s when the universality comes in. But you know, this is the diaspora. This is an immigrant culture, absolutely. But the difference with “Pachinko,” I think, is that when Koreans move to Japan, they look Asian, they fit in, and it’s not until they open their mouths that they reveal how different they are. Then you realize that’s a different story than when my family came over to America. Because our differences stood upon how we just looked different from the get-go. And it became a different kind of narrative, which was one really interesting challenge for the show.

As an Asian American myself, the show really speaks to a very specific feeling of being stuck between two cultures grasping at anything that can help ground my identity. Did your personal experience and upbringing fold into the narrative at all and influence how the story was told?
Yeah, without a doubt. How could it not, right? I mean, one of the reasons why I went for the cross-cut of past and present was because of that. At some point, everything we do is a biography. I believe your reviews and your work as a journalist are a biography. Every show I make is a biography. And maybe it’s just the way I can’t imagine doing it otherwise. So I knew this show was going to be in some way a biography of my life, and that’s why Solomon’s story needs to come earlier. And it was a story that, I think has to have been told at much more of a slower pace, because what we’re doing is watching two different coming of ages: Sunja’s coming of age and Solomon’s coming of age. And they have completely different stakes. Without a doubt Sunja’s stakes are so much bigger, there’s so much more urgency. And Solomon’s stakes can feel almost indulgent. And that’s the exact point of the show. As someone who grew up as an immigrant, it felt like my life’s stakes were smaller than my parents and my grandparent’s, and how do you live with that?

And speaking of the cross-cutting, I just really want to praise the reconfiguration of the story with the different timelines, because it’s so elegantly and gracefully done. You have all of these wonderful emotional juxtapositions that aren’t in the book, not that it’s a bad thing, but it’s so much better for a visual medium. And I just can’t imagine what your writers’ room whiteboard looks like trying to configure all these moments together to get those poignant moments. It must be so daunting. The moment that I think of the most is probably when Sunja is doing laundry with Kyunghee, and they wash the smell out of her clothes, and she breaks down. And that’s juxtaposed with the older Sunja spreading Kyunghee’s ashes. And I thought that was such a beautiful scene with absolute powerhouse performances. With the novel’s steady procession through time, you can’t really do something like that.
Thank you! What’s beautiful about the novel and inherent in its form that the visual that the TV and film mediums don’t have is that time works completely differently in the novel. And I get the question a lot: “Did you ever consider telling this chronologically?” I think it would have been a beautiful show. But I really think it would have been Masterpiece Theater. I really do. If you translate this to the visual medium and told it chronologically, I think the show would be too small at first. And I wanted it to still feel like a Marvel show or a superhero show in terms of the size of the canvas. And maybe it’s this sense of wanting to make our stories feel just as important as superhero stories. To me, Sunja is a superhero. And there was perhaps an anxiety on my part, but I really do believe the cross-cutting helps us.

Absolutely. And related to that, I think it’s also a big risk, right? Because if you tell it chronologically, you can have a self-contained story in season one, but doing it this way, you’re almost banking on a second season when that’s never a guaranteed thing. And I think that really paid off because the story is so beautifully told and you obviously did get a second season. But how did you balance the risk and reward portion of how fickle streaming and television are right now?
Yeah, I mean, that’s a really good question. And I wish I was that savvy, Jeff, that I had a very sophisticated answer as to the master plan, but I just have to say, believe in everything you do, and you have to go for broke. And what I mean by that is I have no control anymore of anything. Because there’s too much TV out there. Because the industry is changing so fast and the players are changing. The only thing I can do is say: This is all I have, and I have to go for it.

I want to talk a little bit about working with Justin Chon and Kogonada, who are just phenomenal filmmakers and storytellers in their own right. How was it working with their distinct visual styles? And how do you make everything conform across the season as a cohesive story? What was it like working with them? I’m just curious because I love their work as well. “After Yang” was one of my favorite movies this year, and there’s a fun little throughline between “Pachinko” and “After Yang” with the musical introductions, both of which I love.
“After Yang” is my favorite film of the year so far. It’s just going to be very hard to think of what’s going to top “After Yang.” Well, maybe “Everything Everywhere [All At Once]”, that’s a very, very, very close second for me. And to talk a bit about Kay and Justin — because they are so different — what was very intentional was the episodes they were given. Kay opening the series with a pastoral Wonderland. The Homeland. That’s Kay’s aesthetics and philosophy to a tee. And then having Justin do the move away from home, the de-centering and dislodging of the psyche. That’s his forte.

And one thing I always say is you never hire people to change them, right? Like, what’s the point in hiring the best people at what they do to only rein them in? So, I knew Kay and Justin, I knew they were very different. And I think you know, in terms of keeping an identity the center of a show, I didn’t worry about that. You let them be who they are. Be the visionaries they are.

And to talk a little bit about the cast. The cast that you assembled is just astonishing. You have screen legends, like Yuh-jung Youn, a pop superstar in Minho Lee, Minha Kim who’s a relative newcomer, and Jin Ha is an American actor. What was the casting process like? Especially for Minha and Yuh-jung because they’re just such centerpiece characters for the series.
Casting was very stressful, especially because we’re trying to bridge two very different processes: The way they cast in Korea versus the way we cast in the States is very different. And, for me, especially, I come from the point of view where I really think the last few years, something terrible has happened in television with the idea of “offer only,” because what happens is, especially when you create an ensemble cast like this, if you don’t know the chemistry between the characters and the actors, I really do think you’re taking the biggest risk, which is why I asked for a very extensive audition process. And it’s not because I trust the actors at all. It has nothing to do with trust. It’s like, is this the right chemistry?

That was something that was very hard for Korea to understand. This is not their process. And once we explain why we have to believe this person is the mother of so and so, and why we put people together in combination, then it becomes very freeing. It’s so funny. You know, Minho hasn’t auditioned in 13-15 years, right? One of the biggest stars in Asia. And in the end, he said he hasn’t had that much fun in a really long time because it really felt like exercising different muscles. YJ was the only person who did not audition because she’s YJ.

I mean, speaking of Yuh-Jung and Minha, they’re just so phenomenal because watching the show, I don’t feel a distinction between them at all. They are the same person to me. And I think that’s just a testament to the storytelling there and the power of these actors and actresses.
Yeah, I agree. I think this cast is phenomenal.

So let’s talk a little bit more about Minho’s character, Hansu. You know, he’s played with this facade of sinister cool, but then you have the seventh episode, where we get to dig underneath his veneer a bit and look at his own hardships. What was the decision-making like to decide to break from the main narrative of the first season to dig deeper into this character?
We’ll first talk about Hansu in general. It’s so funny the way Hansu is talked about, he’s probably the most alluring character from the book. And yet, I sometimes felt like people read a different book than I read. People like to say: “Oh, he’s the romantic lead.” And I’m like wow, that’s so strange. Is that what you got from this character? Because I think I agree [with you]. I think Hansu is very sinister in the book. And I think I’m surprised he’s not more controversial, because there are some very questionable things he does, especially to a young woman. So when I’m passing him as a character, we really said, he’s not a human, he doesn’t exist. He’s not three-dimensional. He’s sort of the archetype of a romantic lead slash villain, but who is he?

And so in trying to figure out who Hansu was, I just think about: What year did he come to Japan? What happened to his mother and father? All these questions that make up our own biography. And I came across the research for the Kanto earthquake. And it really did rattle me in terms of learning about what happened to all those people in Japan, but then also to the Koreans in the aftermath, and it really was this lightbulb. We talked about those moments of inspiration that happen rarely, but do happen. And that was one of them, and this is where Hansu came from. And once that light bulb went off, everything he did in his life — whether or not I’m saying is justified — was understandable. I do think of television as a visual novel, and as a result, I do think characters need to have a past, present and future. I think they need to have fully-constructed emotional DNA. And whether or not the audience needs to know it, I need to know it. It was very, it was very helpful to unlock that.

And the placement of that episode as the seventh episode. I mean, obviously, it was a deliberate choice, but what kind of decision-making went into placing it in that particular spot right before the finale? Before the end of this first chapter?
That’s a great question. No one’s actually asked that before. So you can easily move that episode anywhere in the standalone. What happens though, if you move it — let’s say — after episode three, episode three is the episode Hansu tells Sunja: “I’m married and I can’t marry you.” And she realizes she’s been betrayed. She’s devastated. If you move that departure episode right after episode three, what happens is that he’s softened right away, completely. And then every time you see him afterward, you’re going to feel some level of sympathy for him.

But there’s something about keeping his edges a little bit sharper and harder so that you can be more with Sunja. Because Sunja doesn’t know that history, Sunja doesn’t know Hansu’s backstory. And so I’m much more interested in Sunja’s subjective point of view of feeling: “How could you have done this to me?” On a practical level, we also make the biggest time jump from episode six to eight. Episode six ends in 1931 and episode eight starts in 1938, and that standalone episode was just a nice break to justify that huge time leap. For those two reasons, I think it’s in the right place.

The one pivotal element of the “Pachinko” story we didn’t really get to meet this season is the character of Noa. Considering how crucial the character is to the novel, what went into the decision to delay his actual introduction to a later season?
So, because I broke this as being four seasons, I knew we couldn’t possibly tell this book’s story in one season. And one thing I knew from the very beginning was that the last scene of the season was going to be Sunja at the kimchi market. So because that was the very final scene, we knew that we wouldn’t be able to get into the second generation in detail; we get a glimpse of Noah in season one as a young child, but the second generation story was always set to be season two.

The one trick is I never want to be coy with the audience, but obviously, there’s a huge character missing. So how do you make that natural without feeling deceptive? And in episode six, when Sunja’s with Hannah, she says there was another one. And it’s the first hint that there’s some great tragedy that has befallen Sunja that we aren’t aware of. So really for season one, it was just wanting to do justice to all our storylines, and I really wanted to focus on Sunja moving to Japan and really being in her shoes. And for Noa’s story, it just wasn’t time yet.

And how is season two progressing? How far along are you guys in planning and producing everything?
We are deep in the writer’s room; we have this amazing, amazing writer’s room, and we have season two broken out. We’re about to start getting into scripts. Season two is enormous which terrifies me. And the reason why it’s enormous is not for the sake of being enormous. The nature of this show is that more and more generations come in. Not only in season two do you have Solomon’s storyline, and not only do you have Sunja’s storyline in the past, but now we have moved on to the Noa storyline, right?

So it’s this idea that our show is growing and growing exponentially. So it’s just about making room for everyone and making sure that we don’t do a disservice to any one storyline. I’ve always said in a pitch to Apple and all the buyers that season two was my favorite season by far. It feels like a crucible season.

It’s also maybe where we get even more of Solomon’s arc because, in the first season, we see him just come out of his naïveté a little bit grappling with his family’s history. What was it like working with Jin Ha, on that character, on Solomon’s progression?
Yeah. So I always described Solomon — when people ask who Solomon is — as a Shakespearean character, but watching paint dry. You know, by the end of the fourth season, you will realize what an epic story Solomon has that he should feel Shakespearean at the end. But that is the slow-moving disaster if that makes sense. It’s a human tragedy in slow motion.

And I think when Jin and I talk about Solomon in that way, it’s about nuance. It’s about little microcurrents. And Jin is so good at that. I think, Jin — and I’m not playing favorites when I say that — has the hardest role in this entire series. It’s not just about language, you know, to speak three different languages and different levels of fluency with different levels of accents. But I also think Jin as Solomon has to play the most mask-wearing character. So in every interaction, he has with every different character, he’s a different person. Very difficult to crack.

I just want to say, I think he portrays the habit of code-switching so well. Obviously in terms of culture, but also language. And I think the mix of the languages is so interesting and that feels so authentic to me. I mean, I don’t speak Japanese or Korean, but when I’m at home, it’s a different dialect of Chinese depending on who I’m talking to. And if I don’t know the words, I’ll use a word in Shanghainese or in Mandarin or in English, you know? And I think that’s so authentic to me. And how did you guys drill down to that specificity for the show? Did any of the actors actually know both Japanese and Korean? Or was there a lot of coaching and training involved?
A lot of coaching and a lot of different dialogue coaches. Perhaps the person who was most anchored into this was Soji [Arai], who plays Mozasu. His native language is Japanese, but he’s actually a third-generation Zainichi. Japanese is his most comfortable language, but because he had spent some time studying abroad in Korea, he did have some language skills. But for the most part, everyone else had to undergo extensive language training. Including eight-year-old Noa, that little actor. Oh my God. Like in episode eight when he’s translating for Sunja, that kid knows not a lick of Japanese

So it was learned all phonetically for him?
Yeah. Oh, my God, I thought this kid would never be able to do it, you know. And he did. He did such an extraordinary job.

I want to talk about your decision to use the documentary footage of the Zainichi women at the end of the first season. I think it’s so poignant to see the real-life people behind the stories we tell. Was that always a decision for an end cap to each season? Will we be seeing more of that in future seasons?
It was originally meant to be at the end of the entire series. But thinking of the fourth season when we would meet these women, there was just this anxiety about whether or not we would get four seasons, and how many of that first generation would be with us then. So then I decided to move it to the first season. Because I knew how extraordinary these women were, the one thing I really worried about was whether or not people would think it was cynical, or manipulative, right?

Because that’s so not the intent of that piece. But I simply thought it was important to remind audiences: Although this is a fictional story and Sunja does not exist, her view is built on a foundation for these women who did. And tonally, I wanted it to feel a little bit jarring, meaning that this rousing, rousing swoop up in the kimchi market, of Sunja selling kimchi. And you get this feeling of triumph, but you know what? It felt weird to just end on that triumph. It felt a little bit Disney-fied, I’ll be honest.

Which is why then when we see the women at the end, you understand that that triumph was really, really hard-won. I worked with this amazing historian Jackie Kim-Wachutka, who has been a true friend to the show and has dedicated her life to recording these women’s oral histories and making sure that they aren’t forgotten, and it’s all a reminder that these women, they never thought their stories were worth telling. That’s why the final line of the documentary is: “Thank you for listening to my boring story.” I think that line just breaks my heart because if only she knew that it was anything but boring — her life is extraordinary.

“Pachinko” is available on AppleTV+ now.