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Jin Ha is currently treading the boards in Broadway’s Proof, following his recent stint back as Aaron Burr in Hamilton. But, before his return to the Broadway stage, the performer spent some of 2025 gearing up to film Season 2 of the Apple series, Sugar. Ha plays up-and-coming boxer Danny Moon in the new season, a part that required intense physical preparation for the actor— especially because he had never before done this kind of work.
“I had about two months after I booked the job and our first day of shooting, which happened to be that Episode One boxing scene,” Ha recalled during an interview with BroadwayWorld. To get ready for the scenes, he spent time training at Gleason’s Gym, a well-known Brooklyn-based boxing gym. Over the years, it has been frequented by many actors also looking to train, including Hillary Swank when she prepared for her Oscar-winning role in Million Dollar Baby.
“There’s no frills there. It’s just people who are there to box. I love that immersion because it was the training, the fundamentals, but also the world in which amateur and professional boxers exist in.” Despite having minimal experience with fight choreography, Ha was reminded by another kind of choreography he knew very well: Andy Blankenbuehler’s Tony-winning movement for Hamilton. “Even though it feels like it exists in such different worlds, it… engaged a similar part of my brain, which I wasn’t expecting,” laughed the actor.
Raymond Lee plays Danny’s brother, Ji, who is also a boxer. “There’s a certain physicality,” he explained. “Boxers move through space in a different way and their bodies are built a little bit differently. So I wanted to make sure that there are some echoes of the fighter that used to be, even though he’s kind of in a more strung-out frame at this point…”
Having been raised in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, Lee was passionate about the opportunity to honor his own background with his character. “I rarely get to play characters that are from here who get to inherently embody that. I had a lot of touchstones in my life, and a part of myself I brought into it. It was sort of a melding of the fight experience that I’ve had and then just being this kid who grew up in Koreatown.” Check out the full conversation with the actors in the video interview.
A contemporary take on the detective genre, Season 2 sees John Sugar, once again played by Colin Farrell, back in the City of Angels as he takes on a new missing persons case: tracking down Ji Moon, the troubled brother of local boxer Danny. Meanwhile, Sugar continues to search for his sister.
In addition to Farrell, Ha, and Lee, the second season of Sugar introduces a brand new cast, including Laura Donnelly (The Ferryman), Tony Dalton, Sasha Calle, and special guest star Shea Whigham. The first episode of the new season is now streaming on Apple.
