Photo: Lucas Michael for New York Magazine<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n With a little encouragement, and after a bit of sake, Isa Briones will pull out her party trick at karaoke. We\u2019re in a private room at Sing Sing on the Lower East Side around 6 p.m. \u2014 a place where, we both admit, it\u2019s strange for anyone to go before 11 p.m. Once I\u2019ve proven I\u2019m game enough for this assignment by singing a song of my own (I go with Natalie Imbruglia\u2019s \u201cTorn,\u201d a classic safe choice), Briones takes the helm. She has an expansive and agile voice, a sharp sense of humor, and a karaoke champion\u2019s love of ABBA. \u201cThe best I\u2019ve ever felt was doing karaoke with my girls singing \u2018Chiquitita,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a video of us going around in a circle, just chanting \u2018Chiquitita!\u2019 It\u2019s like, this is why being a girl is so important.\u201d<\/p>\n The party trick is that she\u2019s taught herself to sing \u201cThe Winner Takes It All\u201d with all the same mannerisms as Meryl Streep in the film version of Mamma Mia! <\/em>\u201cI can do the whole performance, beat by beat,\u201d she says. We cue up the song. The synthesizer riff starts to clink. \u201cImagine Pierce Brosnan is following me,\u201d Briones says, before shifting into Streep\u2019s liquid vowels and aquiline posture. It\u2019s a studied impersonation, down to the way she keeps fiddling with an imaginary scarf \u2014 in an instrumental section, she pretends to run along a Greek coastline with it. \u201cThat\u2019s the performance of a generation,\u201d Briones says afterward. \u201cEvery time she goes, \u2018I<\/em> don\u2019t wanna to talk,\u2019 that shit is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n Tonight is a moment of downtime for Briones, who\u2019s in the middle of wrapping up the second season of playing headstrong resident Trinity Santos on the HBO Max series The Pitt<\/em> while joining the hit Broadway bio-musical Just in Time<\/em><\/a>, about the mid-century crooner Bobby Darin, in which she plays singer Connie Francis. The jobs are miles apart for Briones in terms of tone and genre. Just in Time<\/em>\u2019s a sparkling, upbeat throwback, and Francis is a first-act love interest. It\u2019s the kind of role that requires a lot of gusto in a short amount of stage time \u2014 \u201cprincess track\u201d is the theater term she uses for it. Meanwhile, on The Pitt<\/em>, Briones is accustomed to shooting long hours in a simulated but high-intensity hospital ER as a character whose own intensity is supercharged to the point of abrasiveness. In the first season<\/a>, Santos gets into a conflict with a rival doctor, Patrick Ball\u2019s golden boy Langdon, that was intentionally written to challenge audience expectations \u2014 he turned out to be stealing drugs, while she was in the right.<\/p>\n On the show\u2019s second season, which Briones describes as Santos\u2019s \u201cno good, very bad day,\u201d Santos chafes against the menial tasks of doing her paperwork and continues to butt heads with Langdon, now back from rehab. Her character tends to view her co-workers as competition and rub people the wrong way. \u201cI\u2019ve always said that Santos is probably the most closely aligned with my own personality,\u201d The Pitt<\/em>\u2019s creator and showrunner R. Scott Gemmill told me. \u201cWhen everyone was hating on her, I was like, What\u2019s wrong?<\/em> She\u2019s just a little sarcastic.\u201d Still, he said, as he worked with Briones and returned to the character for a new season, he saw opportunities to shape her around the performer. Briones, 27, is, like Santos, remarkably self-possessed, but she\u2019s also self-aware and emotionally astute. This season, we see her character be vulnerable in her situationship with a fellow doctor, treat her colleagues like actual friends, and sing a Filipino lullaby to a baby. The scene was Gemmill\u2019s idea, devised after he had learned about Briones\u2019s musical talent, though the song choice was left up to Briones (her father<\/a> suggested it). \u201cI thought it worked,\u201d Gemmill said, \u201cbecause you didn\u2019t expect to see a soft side to Santos.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: Lucas Michael for New York Magazine<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Before karaoke, Briones proposed we meet up for hot pot at Shabu-Tatsu in the East Village and showed up with a bag of thrifted clothes in hand before happily getting to work offering advice on the menu. Briones lived in the neighborhood the last time she was in New York, during a run in Hadestown <\/em>in 2024, and is enjoying checking in on her old haunts. Later this evening, she has to slip on her heels, slap on makeup, and get to the premiere of a play at the Public Theater nearby. \u201cYou know where I just realized we should have done this interview?\u201d she tells me. \u201cMarie\u2019s Crisis.\u201d Once, after losing out on a job, she went to the piano bar and sang her heart out \u2014 \u201cJust being in a sea of older gay men screaming Cabaret<\/em>, it was the best, most healing feeling in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Alex Timbers, the director of Just in Time<\/em>, knew Briones\u2019s essential brio made her right for the role of Connie Francis. In the show, Bobby Darin, originally played by Jonathan Groff<\/a>, is now performed by Matthew Morrison (the fact that Morrison\u2019s former co-stars have shown up in the audience<\/a> has delighted Briones, who had a Glee<\/em>-themed 11th-birthday party; she dressed as Brittany Pierce) before it\u2019s handed off to Jeremy Jordan. When I saw Briones perform in April, the crowd\u2019s energy lit up every time she came onstage and, with a mischievous wink and a smile, laid into a standard; a clip of her applying brassy force to Francis\u2019s big hit \u201cWho\u2019s Sorry Now\u201d<\/a> has been praised on Broadway-adjacent social media. \u201cConnie Francis needs easy charisma,\u201d Timbers says. \u201cIsa\u2019s nervy and sardonic in the way the role is.\u201d<\/p>\n Briones\u2019s funny, frank, and firm manner is shaped by her experience growing up in a theater family. Her parents, Jon Jon Briones<\/a> and Megan Johnson, met onstage while performing in the ensemble of a German production of Miss Saigon<\/em>. Isa was born in London in 1999, where her dad had joined the show for the last portion of its West End run, eventually taking over the role of the hustler-pimp the Engineer, a half-Asian character originally played by white men like Jonathan Pryce. Miss Saigon<\/em>, regardless of its complications, was a recurring \u201csaving grace\u201d for Briones\u2019s family. Jon Jon, who had found it difficult to land work as a Filipino actor in New York in the late \u201990s, returned to the show in various iterations for decades and was \u201coff and on touring the whole beginning of my life,\u201d Briones says. The family eventually settled in Los Angeles when she was 9, where her parents did TV and theater work while Jon Jon also worked as a massage therapist to pay the bills. Much of what Briones learned about acting came from hanging out backstage after shows, hearing a cast dish about what did or did not work each night. Soon, she wanted to join the family business too.<\/p>\n Briones searches through YouTube on her phone to find the video of her early-career glory, a commercial for a Furby-knockoff product where she excitedly announces that the toy has \u201chands!\u201d (\u201cThese other girls have so many lines,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat the hell?\u201d) By 17, she\u2019d pivoted from an arts high school to homeschool, then landed a part in a local production of Next to Normal<\/em>. \u201cIt has been nonstop since then,\u201d despite some bumps along the way, says Briones. She moved to New York in 2017 and spent nine months auditioning for Hamilton <\/em>while working at Balthazar \u2014 \u201cThey would say I\u2019m too young, then call me in a month later and say, \u2018You\u2019re still too young.\u2019\u201d Finally, she booked its national tour. She also appeared on Star Trek: Picard<\/em> and Goosebumps<\/em> but recalls auditioning for one role she didn\u2019t get: Nini in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series<\/em>. Sitting in the waiting room, she watched Olivia Rodrigo and her eventual ex-boyfriend Joshua Bassett meet each other. Briones remembers looking over at Rodrigo, wondering which of them would end up on the Disney+ show, and thinking, \u201cIt\u2019s gonna be one of us, baby girl<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cConnie Francis needs easy charisma,\u201d Just in Time <\/em>director Alex Timbers says. \u201cIsa\u2019s nervy and sardonic in the way the role is.\u201d Briones was skeptical of having Santos sing twice in a season \u2014 \u201cI believe she was like, again?<\/em>\u201d The Pitt<\/em>\u2019s creator and showrunner R. Scott Gemmill remembers \u2014 but she enjoyed the catharsis of doing fake karaoke in a fake bar on the Warner Bros. lot. Gemmill knew he wanted Briones for The Pitt<\/em> early on, but the studio hemmed and hawed about Briones\u2019s potential unlikability after seeing her as Santos. \u201cThat\u2019s the character,\u201d Gemmill insisted. Briones remembers auditioning remotely (she was still doing Hadestown<\/em> eight shows a week) and being told she had the role, but then that one executive wasn\u2019t convinced and she needed to tape another scene going \u201cballs to the wall.\u201d \u201cI was very upset at that point,\u201d Briones said. \u201cDon\u2019t offer me a job and take it away.\u201d Gemmill wrote her a new scene, which appears in the show, where Santos threatens a child abuser in his hospital bed. She went all out. Then they called and told her she really<\/em> had the role. \u201cI had already celebrated and mourned,\u201d Briones says, with a shrug of her shabu-shabu tongs.<\/p>\n Since then, The Pitt<\/em> has blown up in an unlikely way for any cultural object in the 2020s, much less a gruesome medical drama. The show became a runaway hit on HBO Max, won a bevy of Emmy Awards including Best Drama, and looks like a surefire contender again for its second season. Your parents watch it, and maybe so do your Gen-Z cousins. Initially, Briones took a detached approach to the reaction her character provoked. As the first season was airing, people would come up to her on the street and tell her they hated her, a reaction so strong that she found it funny. \u201cIn real time, you got to see people grapple with their biases,\u201d she says, \u201cso I was having fun with it.\u201d But as some of that hate continues, Briones has found it difficult to process.<\/p>\n In The Pitt<\/em>\u2019s second season, we see scars on Santos\u2019s thighs, and there is a scene where she grabs a scalpel off a cart, indicating that she is struggling with self-harm. Briones worked closely with the show\u2019s writers as they developed the story line, giving notes on drafts. She\u2019s pleased that some audience members were moved by the depiction and that Santos\u2019s scars weren\u2019t sexualized. But as someone who has had her own mental-health challenges, she says, she finds it trickier to engage with people who still loathe Santos after being exposed to that side of her. \u201cI know it\u2019s about the character, but when it\u2019s your face and it\u2019s things you\u2019ve experienced in your own life, it becomes harder to separate,\u201d she says. \u201cSome people have really stayed hating her. I used to give a lot of grace. If you\u2019re still this critical of her and not critical of Langdon, I think you\u2019re just a misogynist.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a see-sawing feeling, Briones adds, between wanting to engage with the fun alongside fans of her work and trying to find a boundary when the attention on the character gets messy or dark. The Pitt<\/em> now has a fandom that is often at odds with some of the show\u2019s choices or simply argues with each other, causing a level of noise online that has become a dominant part of the discussion of the show\u2019s second season. \u201cI have to keep it in check how much I interact with it,\u201d Briones says. \u201cBut I love a good meme.\u201d Returning to Broadway for Just in Time<\/em>, she\u2019s adjusting to doing theater with a level of celebrity several degrees bigger than when she was in Hadestown<\/em>. The show is performed in close proximity to an audience, and when I talk to Briones two weeks into her run, she\u2019s already had to post an Instagram Story in reaction to an unruly audience member. \u201cIt would be one thing if it was a kid who can\u2019t control themselves,\u201d she says. \u201cBut it was an old man being like, \u2018Great job, Dr. Santos.\u2019 If you\u2019re going to disrespect the theater, at least learn my actual name.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s found support among the rest of The Pitt <\/em>cast, three of whom, including Ball and Sepideh Moafi<\/a>, have shows this spring in New York. It feels like a throwback to the days when network TV stars would do theater in their downtime. (\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to be Laurie Metcalf<\/a>,\u201d Briones jokes when I bring up the comparison.) Even the Pitt <\/em>stars who aren\u2019t doing theater are in town. A crew of them went together to Ball\u2019s premiere in Becky Shaw<\/em>, including Supriya Ganesh<\/a>, who plays Dr. Mohan and was recently announced to be leaving the series. Ganesh has become a good friend of Briones\u2019s. \u201cI can\u2019t really speak to it,\u201d Briones says of Ganesh\u2019s departure. \u201cBut I\u2019m really bummed, because I think Mohan was a wonderful character and there was way more to explore with her.\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8f926f4e799551ba21724b0332a087b42b-Isa-Briones-secondary.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
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