The Apple TV+ showrunner adapted Min Jin Lees sprawling epic with an eye for intimacy.
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Spoilers follow for the first season of the Apple TV+ seriesPachinko.
From its first frame,Pachinkois unabashed in its ambition, scale, and intentions.
Families endured, reads the text thatopens the period drama.
Onscreen, the adaptation of Min Jin Lees best-selling novel is a whirlwind of historical detail and emotional authenticity.
Youve discussed the experience of makingPachinkoas building a world that is extremely subjective.
We wanted to check that the characters didnt feel distant from us despite the period.
Thats what I mean by subjectivity.
Were constantly within our characters points of view without resorting to a traditional point-of-view shot.
You really understand their experiences and joys and heartaches.
That connects to splitting up the timelines, which is different from the structure of Min Jin Lees novel.
You get into a rhythm.
What was so powerful about this dialogue between past and present was that were also comparing and contrasting stakes.
Solomon doesnt have the life-and-death stakes his grandmother had, and in some ways, its whats debilitated him.
But in some ways, am I cursing them?
This is a universal conversation for parents.
A lot of the dialogue about the past and present inPachinkohappens over food.
Immigrants often talk about how food becomes their one connection because sometimes we lose language.
For me, theres something really telling in that when Im sick, I crave my mothers cooking.
That is very primal, and in some ways, the palate cant lie.
At the same time, there are certain tastes Solomon doesnt recognize because of losing that.
Its a way to show that without that expositional line of, I dont understand my past.
Food became a really great canvas.
Food is also the way we bring people together.
Theres a reason the dinner table is emotionally iconic.
Its where families who are too busy can at least have one meal and reunite spiritually.
Its also what you think of when you think of holidays.
The dinner table is representative of connection.
I knew I wanted to end with the big liftoff and you still heard her voice.
You never lose her voice.
Because I knew that, I got to work backward and forward.
I dont know how you end this season with something other than that.
That visual liftoff reminded me of Sunja walking into the water after her fathers death in Chapter One.
That was something I knew pretty early on.
The reason I moved it up to the first season is I started getting really anxious.
Who knows if were going to get four seasons?
Also, theyre at an age where we dont know how much more time they have with us.
Theyve lived these incredible lives.
I felt this urgency to bring it up earlier.
I felt really conflicted about bringing these interviews into the first season.
I wasnt sure if we had earned that trust with the audience to do this.
I didnt want it to feel manipulative.
BeforePachinko, you worked on various genre shows includingUnder the DomeandThe Terror.
If you approach horror as if youre doing horror, youre limiting your narrative toolbox.
Their reactions feel more authentic and the scares feel more deserved and earned.
At the end of the day, I do character studies.
Dont you want the same thing for this show?
The stakes are the same.
We are part of a generation that didnt have to fight in a war, right?
We havent seen, up close, true devastation.
Some of this goes back to the shows use of different languages: Korean, Japanese, English.
You wrote the scripts in English, and you worked with a team to translate them.
Its vocabulary limitation there are some words I dont know in Korean because theyre more complicated.
That was the very first pass of the script.
He wouldnt be able to know this.
Lets switch that around.
The third level is with the actors.
All of our actors were so vigilant about their lines.
But we had such smart, caring, passionate people on this show.
This was an army.
It would have worked.
We finally introduce Hansu, who is played by Korean superstar Lee Minho.
Why did Sunja catch his attention?
What I loved about Sunja in both the book and our show is she is not the traditional beauty.
Innately, shes our heroine.
Theres an inner spirit to her that has to emanate from that performance.
It was the realization ofAh, no.
She has to do something that makes him look back twice.
That is the clincher.
All of a sudden, it became more explosive between them.
That moment of recognizable fortitude is what draws him back.
K and I talked about this.
InRomeo + Juliet, I thought they were separate in the entire dance ballroom scene.
I thought it was just from his point of view and we never went to her point of view.
I loved this idea of being on his side for most of it.
Its the first time we get to see our heroine from another perspective, and she is glorious.
I was shocked that Isak was an organizer and an agitator.
Politics were part of the canvas of this time period.
That had to feel visceral.
Our characters would not have been immune to it.
I didnt even make that connection.
In what universe do they even share the same breath?
And yet, what I find so impressive aboutMad Menis that its a very literary way of storytelling.
There was such an assured hand in lines and shots.
It has just seeped into my very being.
Maybe somehow it seeped into it in that scene as well.
Id love to talk aboutChapter Seven,which diverges from the novel and is entirely unique to the series.
In showing it so late in our season, we get to subvert it and skew it slightly.
Now, with 107, why does Hansu even need a backstory?
He could always be that character that dips in and out of Sunjas life.
But when I saw that character presented visually, I didnt quite understand why she still cares about him.
What is the essence of this person who keeps her so interested?
By being able to fill in the backstory and explain the ABCs, hes more of a human being.
Americas going to solve all his problems.
Americas a place where you go and they throw gold coins at you.
And then, of course, we unpack those myths.
Hansu wonders who he could have been if he had gotten to America.
In some ways that what-if question is a cop-out, right?
Im wondering if you think nostalgia is dangerous or useful.Both.
Love it if nostalgia was controlled by the audience, though.
That doesnt mean it cant be a beautiful show.
I think sometimes we confuse a period show; if its too beautiful, it becomes nostalgia.
Thats what nostalgia is:Ah, this made me think of this in my past.
But I dont want this show to feel like it was working on the crutches of nostalgia.
But bigger than that, this is a show that takes place over 80 years.
I cant wait until we bring in the French New Wave when we get to the 60s.
Is that part of what inspired the decision for the different aspect ratio in Chapter Seven?Yeah.
Thats why its so monumental for Sunja to go back to Korea in the present day.
We talk a lot about homeland.
What does homeland mean, and how is it different from the notion of home?
All our characters are at different stages of their lives.
For Solomon, he thinks those are not interesting questions to explore.
Pachinkois an incredibly global show.
Thats why the research was so crucial.
I wanted to verify we were constantly gut-checking and fact-checking our emotional registers.
This show says: Certain things happened and we cannot erase those things.
The first line of the book is, History has failed us.
History has failed these characters, right?
That is not something the show questions or wants to question that atrocities happened.
Judgment has to come person by person, and context matters.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
