Pachinko creator Soo Hugh faced plenty of challenges in bringing an adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s novel to life in the first season from the trilingual story-telling to the periods of Sunja’s life featured in the show.
Season 2 of the Apple TV+ drama series will expand on Sunja’s story as she raises her two sons in Osaka, Japan after moving there with her husband Isak (Steve Sang-Hyun Noh). Last season ended with Sunja stepping up to be the breadwinner for her boys when Isak got arrested for a political crime.
“I think we established the heart of the show, the emotional heartbeat of the show, and it was really important that, going into season two, we made sure that heartbeat was still strong and beating,” Hugh told Deadline of last season. “We are so lucky that we have a character like Sunja, who was established so beautifully in the book. Sunja is very much the foundation of our show. When you have that beacon in a character, it makes it so much easier for everything else to fall into place with other characters, other storylines, whether it’s past or present, she just keeps our show driving forward.”
In the below interview, Hugh also discussed the show’s new title sequence, the opening of episode 1 and what is in store for key characters in Pachinko Season 2.
DEADLINE: The intro and opening credits have a different song and different sequence from Season 1. What made you want to switch it up?
Hugh: [With] the season one title sequence, which we love so much, half those actors are not in season two. That’s the nature of the show. As life moves on, we’ve always said, characters come in and out. So we knew that we would have to recut something and drastically, because we had to take those characters out. So we [thought], “Let’s just do a new title sequence. “And this time, one of the fears always is, when you’re trying to outdo something, what you do is just dilute it, right? So instead of outdoing Season 1, how to just bring it more into the DNA of our show. So we really wanted all of our characters in it, and so a lot more actors appear. It’s the same band, so you still have the same feel and look of the season one song, but it will still be different. I think it feels still like that celebration that we wanted.
DEADLINE: You mentioned Sunja as the anchor of the show. Episode 1, opens with a train light coming towards the camera, and Hansu is the first person shown. What tone does this set for Season 2?
Hugh: That’s such a good question. The reason why the show starts with that light coming at us is we wanted to mimic that light a few times in the season. So if you look at the Nagasaki bombing, that light comes at you. This season does feel like the stakes have exponentially increased, that life has gotten harder, the world has gotten harder, but through it all, this family will endure. So we really want to just open with a bang on season 2.
DEADLINE: What does the shadow of World War Two add to the perspective of American history books that only really emphasize, like you said, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, when there were families that were just caught up in it?
“It’s interesting. We talk about World War II, and yet our show never goes to the battlefronts because none of our characters actually fight in the war, and yet there’s still a fight. This is what happens on the home front to those who are left behind. And what you see is war has such a tremendous damaging effect on not just soldiers, but the families. I thought I knew a lot about World War II. I studied it. I took a World War II class. And what was shocking, when we were doing research for Season 2 and World War II, was just realizing how much of the history we learned comes from an American perspective.
I think I learned in one sentence in a history book, Japan was bombed by American planes, but I never really thought about what that meant. And then learning about the fire-bombing, it was enormous. It was huge. The number of Japanese lives lost, the number of cities destroyed. I never realized the devastation on that scale. I wish we could spend more time on that in our show. Hopefully one day someone will make a show about that because it’s such an important story.
DEADLINE: How did you envision the arcs of Sunja’s sons and their growing up?
Hugh: You have both Noa and Mozasu, who were born in Japan. What’s really interesting is they’re really the next generation after Sunja, who question, “Am I Japanese? Am I Korean? Am I a mix?” How do you even answer such a complicated question like that? And what’s been so much fun about switching — we have two actors play the younger Noa and Mozasu, and then two actors who play them in the older ages —we did not want to cast based on looks. We always said the best performance should be cast. And yet, when I watch, Eunseong [Kwon] who plays [8-year-old] Mozasu, right, and Mansaku [Takada] who plays [14-year-old] Mozasu, for some reason I forget, “Oh, wait, it’s not the same actor.” And it really is a testament to all four of those boys that they achieve that natural effect.
We have met a father version of Mozasu (Soji Arai), but do we get to meet an equivalent of Noa this season?
We meet a college-age Noa at the end of the season.
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