Inside ‘Pachinko’, The AppleTV+ Hit From Soo Hugh That Captured Hearts

15.06.2022 - 19:19 / deadline.com

The journey from page to screen for Pachinko began in 2017, on a plane ride from London to New York.

The transatlantic flight was a typical commute for Soo Hugh, who at the time served as executive producer and co-showrunner on the first season of AMC’s The Terror. Nearly seven hours in the air provided an opportunity for Hugh to finally—though somewhat hesitantly—dig into Min Jin Lee’s recently released New York Times bestseller. Theresa Kang-Lowe, Hugh’s former agent and friend, had sent it her way.

“I felt very ambivalent about reading it just because I knew it was going to be very personal,” Hugh says. “I knew that it was going to be this beautiful story and I also was just finishing up another big international show, so I was in a very particular headspace at that time.”

While fellow passengers scrolled through in-flight entertainment options and shifted in their seats to find optimal nap positions, Hugh immersed herself in the life of a young Korean woman in a rural fishing village on the coast of Busan, South Korea, during the era of Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. As she flipped from chapter to chapter, Hugh encountered Lee’s meticulously crafted words about protagonist Sunja’s boarding house duties, laundry routines and her secret love affair with a mysterious fish broker. From Lee’s specific descriptions of adolescence, maternity and Korean customs, Hugh says she connected “on an internal core level” to Sunja, despite her own vastly different experiences as a Maryland-raised Korean American television writer.

“I was really jolted by that shock of recognition. I wasn’t expecting it to be that visceral,” she recalls.

Several hours and scores of emotional pages later, a bowl of white rice brought Hugh to