Growing up, Soo Hugh loved watching epic tales, movies like Lawrence of Arabia and The Godfather. Today, as a TV writer, creator and showrunner, shes still drawn to those kinds of ambitious stories, such as her stunning adaptation of Min Jin Lees historical epic novel Pachinko. Premiering on Apple TV+ this Friday, the eight-episode series spans nearly a century, features a star-studded international cast, is told in three languages and was filmed on two continents.

When approaching adaptations, Hugh starts by thinking about whether theres a thesis statement that can be told visually, and if there are blank spaces that suggest something may have been left out, as she explained in a recent interview. If theres anything thats been left out of the book that is just undeniable, then I know I have something.

With Pachinko because man, its such a long period of time the blank spaces were really, really exciting, she continued. Huh, I wonder what happened in these years. Oh, I wonder what happened to this person who disappeared. Often the I wonder... grows a show. That really inspires the eureka moment.

Lees extraordinary novel follows multiple generations of a Korean family, whose matriarch, Sunja, immigrated to Japan as a young woman during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 1900s. Each generation encounters racial and class discrimination in Japan while trying to survive and carve out their identity.

What Hugh sees as the shows thesis statement is that every generation, whether directly or indirectly, is in dialogue with the ones before and after them. That puts some of the shows primary changes from the book into perspective. For example, while the book unfolds chronologically, the series starts at both the beginning and the end. The first episode opens in 1915, with Sunjas mother Yangjin (Inji Jeong), pregnant with Sunja, hoping for her daughters survival after having three babies who didnt live past infancy. We then flash forward to 1989, when Sunjas grandson Solomon (Jin Ha), an investment banker in New York, gets passed over for a promotion. He returns to Japan to work on a potentially career-changing real estate deal at his banks Tokyo office, and visits the now older Sunja (Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung). The series moves back and forth between time periods, showing the parallels between each character and generation.

Every generation in this dialogue is either refusing whats been given to them or accepting of it, Hugh said. Thats a complicated way of saying that we are all very much following the footsteps of those who have come before us. The question is some people want to veer on their own paths, and dont want to follow in those footsteps, and some people do. In this show, I wanted to figure out who are the characters who understand that those footsteps were made with great sacrifice and love, and who are the characters who say, No, I tread my own path. That was really intriguing.