We were recently joined on the Popternative show by Jin Ha and Anna Sawai who star in Apple TV+‘s highly anticipated series, Pachinko, premiering March 25, 2022. The series chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they leave their homeland in order to survive and thrive. Starting in South Korea in the early 1900s, the story is told through the eyes of Sunja and her grandson, Solomon, in the 1980s.
Pachinko stars Academy Award-winning actress Yuh-Jung Youn as Older Sunja, Lee Minho as Hansu, Jin Ha as Solomon, Minha Kim as Teenage Sunja, Anna Sawai as Naomi, Eunchae Jung as Young Kyunghee, Inji Jeong as Yangjin, Jimmi Simpson as Tom Andrews, Junwoo Han as Yoseb, Kaho Minami as Etsuko, Steve Sanghyun Noh as Isak, Soji Arai as Mozasu, and Yu-na Jeon as Young Sunja.
In our interview, Jin and Anna discuss their roles in Pachinko and the mindset they had portraying their characters. When discussing speaking 3 languages in the series, Jin Ha explains the difficulty behind it: “It was so hard, I had to work on Korean with a slight Japanese accent, even my English I worked with a coach of mine from grad school to develop this slightly different New England perhaps, upper middle class sound.”
Anna highlights that she hopes audiences walk away from watching Pachinko with “hope and courage […] even in the worst situations there is always a light and you that will get through it as long as you have that fire within you.”
Watch the full interview with Jin Ha and Anna Sawai below.
Pachinko contains 8 episodes with the first three episodes available to stream on March 25, 2022, followed by new weekly installments each Friday, on Apple TV+
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