EP Soo Hugh on Noa’s Father, Blackpink’s Rosé Coldplay Cover

SPOILER ALERT: The following interview contains spoilers from “Chapter 16,” the Season 2 finale of “Pachinko,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

The Apple TV+ drama “Pachinko” has delivered another emotionally charged season finale.

The time-warping family drama about Korean immigrants, based on Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel, focused the season finale primarily on college student Noa (Tae Ju Kang) in 1951, as he not only experiences college life and his life, but also first serious girlfriend, but also finally gets to the point we’ve been waiting for all season: his discovery that the wealthy and corrupt businessman Koh Hansu (Lee Min-ho) is his biological father.

The 1989 storyline also sees older Sunja (Youn Yuh-jung) end her budding romantic relationship, while her son Mozasu (Soji Arai) must confront someone from his past while trying to convince his ambitious son Solomon (Jin Ha) to keep him from following a dark path he knows all too well.

“Pachinko” showrunner Soo Hugh spoke with Variety about what all these culminating storylines mean for the characters, how she got Blackpink’s international pop star Rosé to cover a Coldplay song for the episode – and the future of the drama, as a renewal of season 3 is yet to come.

First, by the time we reach the end of Season 2, where are we with the way the book unfolds?

I’d say it’s all quite new for the current storyline, as we already caught up with the book in season 1. For the previous storyline, I feel like the foundation and a lot of the outlines are still there. We are still in the book’s timeline for this past.

This is a really big episode for Noa. How much do you think he actually knew about his father, even if he didn’t admit it?

There is a sentence that Hansu says to Sunja [Minha Kim] that he is a smart boy and that he will find out. I think he has an inkling that something is wrong, but I don’t think he can even comprehend in his mind that it is possible that his mother had a child out of wedlock. For him, those definitions don’t exist. He knows something, but he has no idea what it is.

In the scene where Hansu is confronted by Noa, Hansu has the choice not to tell him, but instead he tells him everything. Did you ever consider that he didn’t tell him, or did it have to be done?

I definitely wanted that moment. The camera lingers on Hansu’s face for a minute, and if you look closely, he even tears up a bit in that shot. Part of him knows he’s cursing his son at that moment by telling the truth, but he’s been waiting so long for it. He waited twenty years before he said to him, “I am your father.” It really looks like “Star Wars!”

How much do you think Noa resembles Hansu? We see some flashes of Noa’s anger in this episode that are similar to Hansu’s.

Well, it’s interesting how he reacts as Akiko [Kilala Inori] says, “Noa, Hansu is your father,” and his first instinct is this huge, violent push. Then, afterwards, you see this fear in his eyes. I think he realizes, “This blood that runs through this man, this blood that has that propensity for violence, might be in me too.”

When Noa goes back home to see his mother one last time, he doesn’t tell her that he knows. Later she says that was his mercy. Is that how you see it?

It’s funny. When you’re shooting scenes, you always want to give yourself as much room as possible to reinterpret those scenes in the editing room, right? But you have to make decisions and in the editing room we had to do that too. The editor and I had to choose the moment when Noa decides he is going to leave. ‘When is he going to give up his name? When is it?”

There is one cut where he decides with Hansu before. If you look closely, when Hansu says: “I will make them crawl at your feet”, you see a look in which Noa is breathing very hard – and suddenly you see him breathing calmly, he is catching his breath and he is really still getting. In the editing room we said, “That’s the moment.” So when he goes to Sanja, he has already made up his mind, and there is no need to argue because his decision will not be affected. He really comes to say goodbye.

I’m just glad he’s alive in the end, as this show has its tragedies. I was afraid he would commit suicide, or really disappear, but then we see him in Nagano.

There was discussion about whether or not we needed the Nagano scenes at the end. Some people thought, “Why do we need this?” And it’s exactly for your reason. It felt like crap not to have it.

We See Sunja is destroyed by Noa leaving, but how will this affect Hansu?

Just a moment. He’s so affected because he’s wanted to be the father for so long, but there are ways of dealing with it that will be very different. We’ve always said that these are two very different worldviews of how they view the rules of the world. In the final shot of Hansu in the episode, he looks straight into the camera and it’s almost as if he’s looking at us and saying, “Okay, this is who you want me to be.” I will be your monster.” If there is a season 3, we will see this spiral continue.

A monster of his own making, right? He orchestrated a lot of this.

That’s really interesting. I don’t know if Hansu would say it was, in a sense, of his own making. I don’t know if he would, but that’s interesting.

As soon as we see Noa in that Nagano scene, he not only changes his name, but also says he’s not Korean. How important is that to the story you’re telling, since the show is so much about the identity of Koreans in this Japanese world?

What’s interesting is that if you took a picture of people walking on the street in Japan, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish who the Koreans were because it’s a homogeneous country. Koreans look the same within the group of Asian people. Maybe it’s only when someone opens their mouth or when you hear about their families that you understand, “Oh, you’re not Japanese.” But Noa was born in Japan. He speaks Japanese like any other Japanese kid, so in his mind he just becomes who he is meant to be. Which could have tragic consequences for him.

The narration of the final scenes with the dialogue about shadows is truly beautiful and fitting for all these characters. Is that from the book?

It’s not from the book. It was originally in season 1, but we removed it. When Sunja goes into the water after Hoonie [Lee Dae-ho] dead, we hear Hoonie’s voiceover say, “Dear Sunja…” This was dialogue that was supposed to go there and it didn’t work. It was too abstract at the time. We wrote it so that Hoonie addressed Sunja more directly, but I’ve always loved this dialogue. I’ve always loved this metaphor of the horses. And I thought, ‘Try it again here. Let’s see if it works.” And for some reason it worked better here.

In the 1980s timeline the older Sunja becomes close to Kato (Jun Kunimura), but ends their relationship because Mozasu thinks he only wants the family’s money. But you give Kato a chance to tell his own tragic story. Why was that important?

Maybe this was just completely naive of me, but it wasn’t until we created his character that we realized that any Japanese man in that age range would have been in World War II, so every man that age has some kind of story. . It’s almost like the ordinary becomes extraordinary, which is really so important to this show. He tells this moving story, but I love his performance because he is very businesslike. It’s been fifty years since he’s dealt with it and dealt with it. It just felt very honest.

Let’s talk about Solomon and his father, Mozasu, who doesn’t directly tell his son not to go down this dark path in his business, but instead goes to Mamoru Yoshii (Louis Ozawa), Solomon’s boss, with whom he has a history has, is going to stop this. What does that say about this father-son relationship?

So many families I knew came from the Asian immigrant community, and I feel like I’ve heard this from a lot of immigrants too, not just Korean or Japanese, but it’s amazing how so many things can be solved if you just talk about it . As if this whole Thanksgiving dinner didn’t have to be so dramatic: If only someone had just said what was bothering them, and communicated!

I think it’s so much more part of this period, especially this generation. Mozasu feels like a failed father when he says it out loud. One of the things we said about the show was that as the seasons go on, the past and the present will collide, so we get more of that backstory and why Mozasu is so haunted as we go along.

The last we see of Solomon is when he receives news of the death and possible suicide of Katsu Abe (Yoshio Maki), for which he is indirectly responsible by calling in his loan. What does that mean for Solomon’s progress?

I always find it funny that you strive for something, and when you get it, why doesn’t it taste so sweet? And we as humans know that it will never work that way. And then we just put another rung on the ladder to reach in the hope that this will be the sweet bite of the apple. Salomon, he is 28 years old. At the age of 28 I didn’t have anything figured out yet, so we shouldn’t expect him to have figured it all out at the end of the season. But he starts to suspect that it wasn’t right.

It’s also a big deal that Rosé from Blackpink sings the Coldplay song “Viva La Vida” at the end of the episode. How did that come about?

I knew a needle was going to drop there. And very early on I thought it was going to be the Coldplay song, but I really resisted that. I loved that when you listen to the lyrics of that song, they really say something about our show – and Noa in particular. But I was worried that it was just too familiar and that if we put that in, it would draw people out.

We tried, I think, 200 songs, but then I went back to the Coldplay song and realized that Chris Martin’s voice is so familiar. What happens if we don’t use Chris Martin’s version? We were looking at different covers, and then Rose’s name came up and said, “Hey, do you think she’d ever do a cover of it?” I thought it was a pipe dream, but it turns out she really connected with that song. The whole song is beautiful. We recorded and mixed the entire song as a single, so we hope to drop it soon.

With this show talking a lot about the past and present, what’s next for “Pachinko?” Should we be hopeful for a third season?

You call and ask them. We have so many more stories to tell. One of the things we struggle with is there are so many shows, right? Our fans are the best fans, and we are overwhelmed by how generous the critics are. But I think it’s just really hard to make noise in this time and space.

This interview has been edited and condensed.