The Intimate and the Epic: A Conversation with ‘Pachinko’ Creator and Showrunner Soo Hugh

Epic in scope and intimate in tone, the story begins with a forbidden love and crescendos into a sweeping saga that journeys between Korea, Japan and America to tell an unforgettable story of war and peace, love and loss, triumph and reckoning.

It seems like a very rare occurrence when you watch the first season of a new television series that hits it out of the park on every level from storytelling, acting, visuals, the score, and the list goes on - and the only thing you can do is wait patiently for the second season, praying to the TV gods they’ll hit out of the park again. And when that second season does come around and it exceeds your expectations, that’s a rare phenomenon. So, ladies and gents – if you haven’t already binged (and wept through) Season One of Pachinko, do so now and get ready for an unforgettable and mesmerizing second season as Pachinko returns to AppleTV+ on August 23, 2024.

Creator and showrunner Soo Hugh recently spoke with Script about diving into Season Two, the biggest challenges and wins, why working backward from the end to the beginning helps break the episodes, putting the show's characters through the blender, the importance of music and setting the tone, and so much more! 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Building off the foundation of season one and going into season two, what were some of the biggest takeaways for you as a showrunner and writer?

Soo Hugh: It's interesting because people are always like, 'Oh, season two, you've set the show-up, it must be so much easier now that you have the world built.' And for better or worse, with Pachinko, that's not the case, because of the time jump, you're sort of doing a whole new show in some ways. And one of the amazing things is that we have our actors back, or most of our actors back, which is such a blessing. But because it was a time jump, it was a new period, all the sets had to be built, there were no sets that returned, except for Shiffley's that returned, Mozasu’s parlor returned, and Mozasu’s house. But other than that, it was all new design work for locations, and we switched cities. We moved from Vancouver to Toronto, and we kept Korea and Japan.

I wish I could say, ‘Oh, Season Two was so much easier. We go to enjoy the process more.’ It wasn't the case. And the time crunch, because once Season One aired, the clock starts ticking of how long you're off the air, not wanting the audience to wait so long. The one amazing thing about this coming back was, especially with the actors, everyone felt so much more ownership of their characters, because they owned it in Season One. And those discussions were really lovely.

Sadie: In terms of tracking multiple generations over multiple and very specific timelines, wow were you able to map all that out and was there a thematic anchor for you and your writer's room to make sure it was streamlined?

Soo: I always find it much easier to work from the end and go backward. So, with Season One, we knew the end was Sunja selling kimchi at the market after Isak disappears. So knowing that that was the end of Season One, you're able to fill in the blank spaces. Similarly season two…I knew the end of Season Two, so knowing that that was the end again, filling forward, just to me, that makes so much more intuitive sense. We always just start at the end and go to the beginning.

Sadie: That's so interesting. And having the book kind of as your Bible, how often were you going back to that while also taking creative liberties?

Soo: The book has always been something foundational for us, but in Season One, I would say, there was much more reliance on the book. Some of the storylines, the book takes more time in the beginning, and then once Sunja gets middle-aged, the book just goes much faster so there's less detail.

I felt like by the time Season Two came around, there were some wonderful tentpole moments in the book, but in terms of detail, it wasn't there for us as much. So especially, like the World War Two stuff is very fast in the book, and then post World War Two again, the book feels like lightning speed through their lives. And what's wonderful is you see all the characters grow up. And it's really what's complicated about the book. But by doing this as a television medium, we had to slow things down. We couldn't go that fast. So definitely, in the writers’ room was filling out a lot of those blank spaces.

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Sadie: I've been rewatching The Sopranos, obviously, very different shows, and in one of the episodes in season four there’s a moment between Tony and the character with one leg and their discussion or say observation about Americans versus the rest of the world, and made me think of Solomon and Sunja and their trajectory, especially in this new season. They have such different lives and different worlds, but there's some parallels. While slowing things down and looking into these characters with a magnifying glass, what were some of the qualities or things that you were bringing to the top to really dramatize those emotions for all the characters?

Soo: That’s a good question. Because Sunja is the character, the heartbeat of the show, we always talk about, What would Sunja do? The danger of that question is, then your characters never surprise you. And the reason I bring that up is because this season, we really wanted to challenge our characters as well. So, in addition to saying, what would Sunja do, what would Sunja not do? And why?

An exercise we love playing in the writers’ room is a sliding doors exercise - let's give our characters a choice. If they go down this road, this happens. If they go down this road, this happens. And the writers go, ‘But our character would never do that.’ It's like, ‘Wait, but let's just go down that road.’ Because once we've already shut down those roads for our characters, then what's the need in telling the story? There's no surprise.

So, I think when you talk about how for Solomon does he make his life feel as worthy, he doesn't have the same hardships as Sunja did. And the question that we always challenge in the writers’ room was, ‘Why do we make that assumption? Is that kind of suffering that you're not putting food on the table, the only kind of suffering? So, we really try to test Solomon this season in terms of what is hardship for him and Sunja as well. A long way of answering your question, we sort of put our characters through the blender, we really, really try to work them and see how far we can go. And hopefully that comes through.

Sadie: It definitely does. The use of music in this, there is a wonderful propulsion. And there’s one ear warm score that's in there that is such a great I think, link between the timelines, especially with Sunja and Solomon, I see a lot of parallels there. As a writer and setting that tone, especially using music and period music from the 40s to the late 80s, how much of that is written in the script or is that something you are discussing with your composer and your music team as a whole?

Soo: I'm trying to think, in Season Two, how much of that was scripted. There's moments like, for example, in Season One, the finale song by Neutral Milk Hotel, the cover was scripted, it was in the script. But in Season Two, I think what was scripted was not always used. For example, the title song is different than in Season Two, than what was scripted in the script. But one thing Nico [Muhly], the composer and I talked about in Season Two…the first piece he composed was a dragonfly piece from Season One with little Sunja and her father, and that has flutes and cello and little bit of piano. And that sort of became the bedrock of the score for Season One. And so, in Season Two, we want to keep what was there, but then keep adding it to it, to sort of show how much this world is growing. And so, we added a lot more brass instruments in Season Two.

First of all, I never thought I was going to like the trombone. Nico was like, ‘Just trust me.’ And he played this one piece with the trombone. And it felt so Season Two. It felt like this huge musical exhale that we talked about for Season Two. And that really was this really great conversation before we started shooting - Nico and I always talk about the score so that it really helps pace out the scenes, like talking to the actors about, like, ‘So, imagine a piece here where the score is much more percussive, that's the rhythm. Go with it.’ Music is really important to the show.

Sadie: There is a very poignant visual language from Season One, nicely set up by director and producer Kogonada and going into Season Two, it also stands on its own. What were those creative conversations like with your key directors in Season Two?

Soo: Those conversations are just crucial, the conversations with the DPs and the directors. With Season, the biggest change in Season One and Season Two is we changed aspect ratios - it was 2:3:5, which is very, very wide, and we switched it to 2:1 in Season Two. And the reason why was because Season One felt…we always say that it should feel like this Asian scroll, those landscape scrolls, and like this landscape really stretching out. Season Two, because the events felt so big, like war and the themes felt big, let's try to make our canvas a little smaller so that our characters weren't lost within the epic storytelling.

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We always talk about the close up and the wide shot, that's the language of the show that those two extremes, the intimate and the epic. And so, I feel like the language that all the directors and DPs bring to the show, in their own way, really embraces that epic-intimate mandate that we started out with in beginning.

Sadie: Let’s take a quick step back and just talk about your own writing journey and what inspired you to get into writing for TV?

Soo: I've always liked writing from a very young age. I always thought I was going to be more of a journalist figure. And then I discovered film at a really early age. I think I was at 12 or 13 when I saw The Godfather. When I was little…they did this thing…where they actually edited The Godfather one, two, and three together. And it would play on Saturdays on TV. And I didn't know till I was much older that there are actually three different films. [laughs] So for a long time growing up, I thought Godfather was a nine-hour film. It's like, ‘Wow. It's so crazy that he made a nine-hour film.’ [laughs] But it was sort of that moment of this is real storytelling in a visual format I didn't know you could do. And I always thought film was that medium where you could say huge things, but again, in an intimate way.

And I didn't really know much about TV, and I was very much a TV snob. I was like, ‘Oh, I don't have any interest in doing TV.’ And it wasn't till I started writing, and it wasn't until I started getting work as a writer, that more and more TV was just, like you mentioned The Sopranos, when you watch shows like The Sopranos or The Wire or Mad Men, in the language of what can be done cinematically, I didn't know TV could do that. 

And so, when I did my first staff job on a TV show, and it was like, ‘Wow, I get to go on set with an episode I wrote working with actors and directors.’ It was incredible. It really is a writer's medium. And so, as someone who loves television now and who really defends the art form, I can't imagine doing anything else. I do love movies, but I think television is, I will say, I think television is by far the superior art form of the two.

Sadie: Where do you hope to see the landscape of television five years from now?

Soo: We're going through a weird transition time now in the industry. Whether you use terms like 'the bubble bursting,' or whether you use terms as 'market correction' - I always say that's above my pay grade - all I know is this, I know there has been some terrific television that's been made in the last few years and shows like Pachinko that would never have been made, never, 10 years ago. And I just hope that we don't say it can't be made now, because it feels like so much of the progress that we made, not just in the art form, but in terms of just people working in the industry who weren't given shots before, I hope we don't claw that back.

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So, I'm really optimistic, and I think five years from now, we will still be making really good, compelling television. The one thing I do wish, that conversation between what is prestige and what is entertaining disappears. I find that to be the most useless conversation. I think that distinction is just lame. It's either good or it isn't, and whether or not it's prestige or not prestige, or highbrow or lowbrow, or broadcast or cable or streamer - I just don't think that it matters.

Sadie: Any general advice for writers who are adapting a book or maybe just starting out in television?

Soo: I would say if it's a writer that's starting out in the industry, this may sound ridiculous, but I do think it's the way to go now, is if it's someone who's new to the industry, and they're starting their careers as a screenwriter, I would say, write the novel. Meaning, I think nowadays that differentiating between forms, like screenplay, short story, comic book, novel, podcast - that's going away - so create your IP and then be the one to shepherd it to the screen. I would recommend that for people breaking in.

I think for established writers who've already created shows before, every IP sort of, what I always say, has its own halo, in terms of what's sacred and what's not. And I think it's not being scared of what's sacred, being really inspired by it, but also being able to say, ‘I'm going to break that spine,’ is just as important.

Season Two of Pachinko premieres exclusively on AppleTV+ on August 23, 2024.