‘Pachinko’ star Minha Kim often asks herself, ‘What would Sunja do?’

Though she had a two-year break between shooting seasons 1 and 2 of Pachinko — the acclaimed Apple TV+ drama based on Min Jin Lee’s historical novel — star Minha Kim thought about her character every day.

Kim stars as Sunja, a young woman in 1930s Korea who falls for wealthy businessman Koh Hansu (Lee Minho) and becomes pregnant with his child. Rather than live as his mistress, she leaves her home country and heads to Osaka, where she marries kindhearted minister Isak (Steve Sang-Hyung Noh) and tries to build a new life. Both innocent and fiercely determined, Sunja proves to be a phenomenal survivor — and she became a chief source of inspiration for the actress who plays her.

“She’s so smart. She has just natural-born wisdom in herself,” Kim tells Entertainment Weekly‘s The Awardist podcast. “I think of her every day as my routine, because she’s the one human being that I really wanted to be. So when I was having a very hard time in my real life, I tried to think in her way. There were a lot of times that I was thinking, ‘What if it was Sunja’s choice? What if it was Sunja’s life, what would she choose?’ I tried to follow her thought and her path. It was naturally just absorbed in my DNA.”

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Pachinko’s second season picks up seven years after the season 1 finale. As part of her preparation for the second season, Kim started keeping a diary as Sunja, to help herself imagine how her character’s life and emotions changed over that seven-year period. “At first, I just did it for fun, but I figured out that it helped me a lot. So while I was writing for the diaries, I wrote a lot of things about my emotions towards Hansu and Isak as well. During the shooting of the series, it really helped me figure out how I actually felt.”

Speaking with EW from Korea, Kim also explains why she never watched the first season of Pachinko — “Why do I talk that way? Why do I walk that way? Oh, my God!” — plus, she reveals that she actually learned to operate a stick-shift car for episode 4, when Hansu teaches Minha how to drive, and chats about her hopes for a third season.

Also on the podcast, EW Editorial Director Gerrad Hall and I break down that action-packed White Lotus finale, and preview the cameo-packed fourth season of Max’s Emmy-winning comedy, Hacks.

Listen to the full Awardist episode below.