Jin Ha on Reveals What It Was Like Working with Selena Gomez in 'Only Murders in the Building' (2024)

Major spoilers ahead for the finale of Pachinko season two, as well as spoilers for Noa's storyline in the novel Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.

Ahead of returning for Pachinko season two, star Jin Ha rewatched season one. "It felt like I was watching a documentary about my own family," he tells T&C. Ha plays Solomon in the 1989 timeline of the Apple TV+ drama, the ambitious grandson of Sunja (Yuh-Jung Youn in his timeline; Minha Kim in the earlier one). Watching the earlier timeline, he said, felt like he was watching Sunja's memories.

In season two, Ha's Solomon tries to reclaim his success as a businessman, navigating what it means to be a Zainichi Korean (a Korean resident of Japan). His performance alongside Youn, Soji Arai (who plays his dad, Mozasu) and Anna Sawai (his love interest, Naomi) grounds the present-day timeline, and is a marked contrast to his comedic role in season four of Only Murders in the Building, where he plays director Marshall Peepope. "I've been a fan of that show from the beginning, so to have a minor part in it has been a joy and it's really exciting," he says. Pachinko and Only Murders are "such different genres and such different roles, and I'm so glad I got to play in both."

Ahead of the season two finale of Pachinko (now streaming on Apple TV+), Ha spoke with T&C all about going from Pachinko to Only Murders in the Building, Solomon's journey this season, and what he hopes to see in a possible season three.

Before we dive into Pachinko, what it was like for you to get your own Only Murders episode in this season? [Ha's character Marshall narrates episode five.]

A pinch me moment, fully. The idea of the fake beard was something they had decided prior to casting the role; hilariously, a lot of East Asian people can't grow full beard, but for whatever reason, my genetics has that predisposition. It's just funny that it worked out because, in the earlier episodes, it's my real beard. I remember the first time I met Marty [Martin Short], he comes up to me, and he is like, 'This is fake?' And I was like, 'no, no, this is real!' The pre-production discussions that went into Marshall's beard and fake beard was incredibly way more extensive than they had planned for because they were like, okay, maybe we can shoot things out of sequence.

What was your production timeline with Pachinko and Only Murders?

Thankfully, I didn't have to balance both of those roles simultaneously. Pachinko, we shot the first half of last year and then Only Murders, we shot at the first half of this year—they're able to bust out the episodes within a couple of months of wrapping, it's pretty remarkable. It's really the ideal situation. I remember talking to my team as we were wrapping season two of Pachinko and telling them, 'Hey, I know as an actor, it's not an issue of choice, but I'd really love to do a comedy, after having been steeped in this world of historical narrative drama, which is so deeply fulfilling.' Having come from that world, [I wanted] to do a little funny, physical humor, comedy. And then it miraculously, it worked out that way to be in my favorite comedy at the moment, to work with comedy legends like Steve Martin and Martin Short, and Selena [Gomez], who's the nicest person, too. It was really best set I've ever worked on. Everyone talks about that, but it's true.

Is there anything you carried with you from playing Solomon that shows up in Marshall?

No, actually, quite literally, maybe no connection between the two characters at all. Ambition, perhaps. They both, I think, have ambition that drives them, but in every other way, they're so different. I love that it kind of makes me feel like even though these are both TV shows, it does make me feel at home, like in theater, because the acting is the thing—the character transformation, the costumes and the hair and glasses, they do the work.

How did you approach Solomon's arc this season?

It was really helpful for me coming back into season two to remind myself of where we had left off with Solomon at the end of season one. Because with the 1989 timeline, there's only about a month in between the two seasons versus the earlier timeline, there's about seven years that passed. That was a gift, because then I had season one as a reference point for myself to tap back into that world. But for me, Hana's passing was one of the strongest foundational through lines for the season. The scene at the end of season one and the hospital bed when Hana essentially plants the spark in Solomon; she reminds him, 'no matter how hard we try, no matter what trappings you may put on whatever achievements you may have, they'll never quite accept you. They'll never quite accept us.'

In the beginning of season two, you find him paralleling the beginning of season one where he's pitching himself to possible investors. But even though the confidence is there, we understand that the underlying energy behind that facade of confidence is actually fear and terror and anxiety and desperation. And once that fails, as we see within the first episode because of Abe's machinations, then Solomon feels like, 'oh, I am in rock bottom.' I don't know that other people would see that for him, but in his own world, he has struck rock bottom and he thought he was just about to claw out of the whole, but Abe against stymies his efforts.

And for me, that's when Hana's voice comes back loud and says, 'Oh, okay. Right. I'm trying to win by their rules. I'm trying to play the game according to their rules and be exceptional in that field, but what if I forget all the rules entirely?' Abe, in that encounter in episode two, reveals to [Solomon] how emotionless this industry can be and how ruthless we have to be in order to succeed and stay successful. That combination of failure and loss and desperation is very much the drive throughout the rest of the season for Solomon in terms of exacting revenge on Abe in terms of gaining ground for himself. Then, obviously with the influence of his grandmother, Sunja, along the way, it's the slaloming throughout of determining when is it moral, when is it amoral? What are the sacrifices that Solomon's okay with taking versus the moments where it feels like he's gone too far?

Another large part of Solomon's story this season is his romance with Naomi, which ends in the penultimate episode when Solomon discovers she's engaged to be married. What do you make of how he navigates that relationship?

I love that relationship, it's heartbreaking. It's the most heartbreaking when two people who genuinely connect and genuinely see each other otherwise find themselves in circumstances where it's difficult for them to stay together. That relationship and how it developed and grew and then ultimately sort of splintered—all of us, Sang-il [Lee], the director, Soo [Hugh], the writer, and Anna [Sawai, who plays Naomi] and I both really cared deeply about it and were constantly working on the scene up until the point we were shooting. We really wanted to get it to make it feel right. We wanted to earn the chemistry that they had and the relationship that they build, but also the realness of, and this is why we can't stay together. The details may be different, but that kind of heartbreak is so understandable and universal.

Do you see any future for Solomon and Naomi?

I mean, I genuinely don't what's to come if we have a season three. One would have to imagine the harm that Solomon did to her in her career is unforgivable. That's one of the main turning points for Solomon, where he chooses his own personal ambition over the wellbeing of somebody he cares about deeply. I don't know where Solomon's headed to in the future, but that will be a significant point for him to refer back to in himself, always. As heartbreaking as it was, I think in his mind, he's like, 'Well, if I just shut that part off and I just focus on the business of it and the deal that's available, I can succeed.' As we see at the end of season two, he does, in a way. We see him climbing back up to the top with his golf club idea, but at what cost? That seems to be the lingering question as we see him in his full salesman mask.

I wanted to ask about that scene—when Mozasu shows up at his press conference, it feels like Solomon had a real sense of foreboding.

Towards the end of season one, Mozasu and Solomon have that confrontation in the hallway of the hospital where it kind of comes to a head where [Solomon] says, 'Look, your dreams are too small for me, and I have bigger ambitions, which is why I'm working with Mamoru Yoshii.' So similarly, Mozasu has the confrontation with the Yoshi, which I think is amazing, and I'm like, 'Oh, what's going to happen next season?!' And also that they have history and we see them meet, too, when they're young—that's so exciting that the older timeline and the 1989 timeline are finally starting to mix a little bit more, which will only happen more in the future of seasons. For Solomon, in seeing Mozasu at that moment, it's a reminder of what and who he is abandoning for his own personal gain and pursuits.

It's the folly of generations, too, thinking that, 'Oh, well, this is going to be different.' We don't want to be repeating the cycles of our parents or our grandparents, but in many ways, we often do, especially when things are un-investigated. Solomon, he feels a lot, but I don't think he's taking the time or the effort to pause and actually reflect. He's young and ambitious!

In the finale, Solomon learns about Abe's disappearance and the implication he died by suicide. As viewers learn that Noa disappears in the earlier timeline, book readers obviously know what's coming, but that parallel is very striking.

That was the last thing we shot sequentially, that was the last thing for Solomon's story: hearing the news about Abe's—as he understands it—suicide. It's brilliantly setting up whatever may happen in the next season because it feels like this is the point of no return, in a way. It is a private moment, and so he's able to feel and experience the deep sense of guilt and shame of clearly having been one of the main causes, if not the cause of this man's public humiliation and therefore prompting him to jump.

It was never the intention of Solomon, but suddenly he's been thrust into this position of 'I took his advice and I went way too far.' One would hope that would be sobering for him to remember, oh, this has suddenly become a life and death issue. It's not just about business. It's not just about moneymaking. I'm now dealing with people's humanity and wellbeing and sense of purpose, and my actions have effects on that. Maybe he's starting to understand more the consequences of his actions.

Do you think Solomon knows what happened to Noa?

I think he knows he had an uncle who disappeared, and I have to imagine he knows that his uncle had also killed himself. I don't think the family talks about it a lot, and I think Solomon knows not to ask because also even within Solomon's life—which hasn't come up yet—but he lost his mother at a very young age, and so loss of family is not something he's unfamiliar with. I don't think it's often discussed.

If Pachinko does return for season three, where do you hope Solomon's storyline goes?

I don't know. Personally, I hope that he understands the cost of blind ambition or cost of rampant ambition, and that maybe there are things more important in life than success. Rather, I hope that he can redefine his understanding of what success looks like in the ways that I think his grandmother and his dad are trying to convey to him, because we see the train wreck coming. We're like, well, if he continues on this path, there can only be hardship and pain and harm, and everyone around him is trying so hard to prevent that from happening again.

It's a similar type of pressure that was placed on Noa as the first of his generation, the first of his family, to have access to certain opportunities to go to university, to go to Waseda University, et cetera, et cetera. Similarly, just one generation apart, Solomon, we've seen him feel the same type of pressure as well of like, oh, the first two go to America to get educated, the first to have a job abroad, to access a type of wealth that was very new, one generation before. It's odd because that ambition of his grandmother and his father to give those opportunities to the next generation has so much to do with 'just look forward,' as Hansu says, but with the advice of always looking forward, there's a disconnect from the past. That disconnection of the past is what makes characters feel super lost and untethered–like Solomon.