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

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

Once we see Noa in that Nagano scene, he doesn’t just change his name, but also says he’s not Korean. How significant is that to the story you’re telling, given the show is so much about the identity of Koreans in this Japanese world?

What’s interesting is if you did a shot of people walking on a street in Japan, you would not be able to pick out who the Koreans were, because it’s a homogenous country. Koreans look similarly within the band of Asian-ness. It isn’t until, perhaps, someone opens their mouth or 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 child, so in his mind, he’s just becoming who he’s meant to be. Which could have tragic consequences for him.

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

It’s not from the book. It was actually in Season 1 originally, but we cut it. When Sunja goes into the water after Hoonie’s [Lee Dae-ho] death, 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 that time. We wrote it so that Hoonie did a more direct address to Sunja, but I’ve always loved this dialogue. I always loved this metaphor of the horses. And I was like, “Try it again here. Let’s see if it works.” And for some reason, it did work better here.

In the 1980s timeline, the older Sunja has been getting close to Kato (Jun Kunimura) but is ending their relationship since Mozasu thinks he just 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 totally naive of me, but it wasn’t until we were conceiving his character that we realized every Japanese man in that age range would have been in World War II, so every man of that age has a story of some sort. It’s almost like the ordinariness that becomes extraordinary, which really is so much of the heartbeat of this show. He tells this really harrowing story, but I love his performance because he’s very matter of fact. It’s been 50 years that he’s dealt with it, and he’s processed it. It just felt really 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, who he has history with, to stop this. What does that say about this father-son relationship?