‘The Pitt’ Star Isa Briones on Santos and Langdon and Fan Feedback

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ometimes, the physician must heal thyself. Isa Briones, who plays Dr. Trinity Santos on HBO’s hit medical drama The Pitt, is calling from a Midtown Manhattan apartment, and she’s not feeling great. She’s currently starring in the Broadway musical Just in Time, and the schedule is about as grueling as an ER shift.

“I’m definitely feeling it right now,” she says. “I woke up this morning was like, ‘I think I’m getting sick.’ So the panic is not awesome. But I still love it.” 

Just In Time is a jukebox about the life of singer songwriter Bobby Darin. Briones plays Connie Francis, the “Pretty Little Baby” singer who topped radio play in the 1950s and had a brief relationship with Darin before his breakout success. (The role of Darin was originated by Jonathan Groff; Jeremy Jordan is set to take over on April 21.) But her best-known role is as the caustic young resident Santos. 

In Season One of The Pitt, Santos makes an immediate impact — and not for the best. On her first day, she accuses the well-liked and respected Dr. Frank Langon (Patrick Ball) of stealing drugs. She’s guarded, gives her co-workers obnoxious nicknames, and is always ready with a snarky comment. She’s also right about Langdon having a drug problem. Season Two, which concluded Thursday night, stretched this tension even further, showing Langdon’s return to the ER after a leave of absence for rehab. But it’s also a deeper exploration of Santos’ simmering past traumas. 

While it’s clear that Santos was created to be an unlikeable character, Briones says that an unintended byproduct of the show’s success is people equating her with her character. She’s also had to get used to occasional shouts of “Santos!” while she’s walking down the street, getting groceries, or even, once, while she was performing in Just in Time. 

“When [The Pitt] started becoming big, I was like, ‘Oh, God, I think I’m that person with the hat and the sunglasses.’ I used to laugh at that,” Briones says, holding her hands up to mime giant, face-covering shades. “Now I kind of get it. It’s so annoying. But I’m figuring it out.”  

Rolling Stone spoke with Briones ahead of The Pitt finale to talk about misogyny in fan spaces, the real reason Santos and Langdon hate each other, and why all of the Pitt’s doctors need a good therapist. 

What appealed to you about Santos at first? And how has your understanding of her changed or grown over two seasons?
I’ve played the girl next door before and there’s a time and a place for that type of character. But I think there’s something really awesome about not being palatable, especially as a woman. This character is not for everyone. Sometimes in my everyday walking through the world, I’m like, “Sorry… Little old me, I’ll make myself smaller.” And Santos simply will not do that. She’s like, “I am going to take up space.” And I think that’s a really refreshing character to see and powerful to play. It’s also a reminder for me to stop apologizing for existing. My god. 

There’s a not small subset of diehard Pitt fans who hate Santos. What do you think drives that? 
So much of the discourse is very Langdon-versus-Santos, and that’s just misogyny. [Those two characters] are actually kind of the same, but one of them is a woman. When women are going through something that is not explicitly said all the time, a lot of people are like, “I don’t like her.” Why is it when, when a woman has a lot going on, people are like, “Oooh, scary”? A lot of people don’t have the patience for that with a woman. But I also get that Santos comes in hot. When you first meet her, she’s got a lot of these prickly walls up. She has a “doesn’t play nice at recess” vibe. But also, I think it’s very clear to see in the nuance of her character there’s something going on. 

Talk to me a little bit about how Santos’ own experience with addiction and self-harm colors her relationship with Langdon.
You hate in other people what you hate about yourself. They’ve only spent a day together and they hate each other. But in that one day, he embodied so many of the things that she does not like about herself. Even though she likes to put up this facade that she doesn’t care if people like her, she’s working really hard to be there. And when someone completely invalidates that, that can be really triggering. Even if it’s not fully conscious, she knows that they are connected and that’s why they’re so reactive to each other. Langdon coming back and fighting to be reformed, taking the steps to recover, is a reminder that she is maybe not doing everything she can to recover herself. And that just brings up a lot of guilt and shame for her that she doesn’t want to feel. So then she just screams at him. She just needs therapy. Actually the whole crew does. 

How does her relationship with Whitaker work so well, with such disparate personalities? 
[Whitaker] is just himself. He’s always trying to help everyone. He is trying to be her friend and trying to be there for her. She wants it, but she also doesn’t know how to [accept it]. She has lost people. She talks in Season One about how one of her best friends took her own life. Since she has a history of abuse by an authority figure, she thinks “anyone I let close to me is either gonna hurt me or leave me.” The quality of their friendship is her being like, “Shut up and go away.” But that’s their love language together. So when she finds out that he’s leaving, I think she’s scared to be alone. Now, everything would all be solved if they just talked. That’s the moral of The Pitt. Everything would be solved if everyone had a real conversation and went to therapy. But that’s not happening. So it triggered her to think, “Oh, so you’re leaving me. I was right. Everyone’s gonna leave me. I’m just gonna put my walls up. Fuck you and bye.” [Santos] just wants a friend and doesn’t know how to approach it. You know when you have a puppy and they’ve got to be socialized with other puppies in a little pen? She needs to be put with all the other puppies and just forced to play.

With such a strong ensemble cast, how have your on-set relationships added to the final product? 
Everyone on this show is just so fucking talented and has crafted their character in such a specific way. It’s been really awesome to watch the difference in how everyone operates.  Everyone has their own routine and style and how they approach things, and that’s been such a cool learning experience. Patrick and I have become real friends, and it’s very funny, because obviously our characters are so not that. But I think that’s what makes our scenes so special. There’s a real trust there. And Supriya [Ganesh] and Shabana [Azeez, who play Dr. Mohan and Dr. Javadi, respectively] are my girls on set. It really bums me out that they didn’t put us in any scenes together [this season]. I think they knew, they knew we’d be too powerful if we were all together. They’re trying to keep women apart! They knew we’d be inseparable. 

How do you navigate being on a show with such a robust online fandom — especially when that focus means a lot of people equate you with your character? 
That’s so classic. That always happens. A lot of people have a hard time separating the actor from the character. It’s definitely gotten to an extreme degree for me. I’ve never experienced this before, because I haven’t been on a show this massive before. And it can be troubling. We shoot the show for most of the year, and get locked into that. Then to go out into the world and people are like, “I hate you. You’re a bitch” — that’s crazy. For someone who already struggles with mental health issues and with dissociating and thinking “I don’t know what’s real anymore,” it’s hard and a little strange. It’s like “Am I not a real person?” But I also understand that is the one way that people are connecting with me and what they see onscreen. They’ve connected with this character in some way. And that’s very special. 

With that in mind, have you had to change any personal habits or social media intake to adjust? 
It’s a very out-of-body experience a lot of the time. I’m currently trying to adjust my social media habits. When I did Star Trek [Picard], there were so many awful things said about me online. Sci-fi fandom can be a very scary place sometimes, and a lot of older men have a lot of gross things to say about you when you’re a 20-year-old girl. So I had to get off of it. And then with The Pitt, I was so curious. And I was proud of myself at first, because it wasn’t hurting me. I was like, “People hate my character and that’s hilarious because it means I’m playing her correctly.” But then, at a certain point, it started to shift. Now the misogyny has become kind of impossible not to see. And that just makes me sad. So I’ve been thinking maybe I need to take a break. 

Several family members of Pitt actors have had cameos. Any plans for one of your family members to make an appearance in Season Three? 
Well, I would love to. I love for my dad [who’s also an actor] to be employed. That would be awesome. I try to get my family employed as much as possible. But, we’ve joked about how if my family were on the show, they’d have to be [playing] my family, because we look so alike. If my brother were on the show and he wasn’t supposed to be my brother, people would be like, “What’s happening here?” Because we look like twins, even though we’re not the same age. But hey, maybe next season. I’ll be campaigning. 

What nickname do you think Santos would give you? 
Sad-ass bitch? No….. [laughing]. That’s hard. I immediately thought of something so mean. This is why I need to get off social media. 

Most people don’t take breaks by jumping into rigorous Broadway schedules. Why say yes to Just in Time? 
It’s so fun. I’m really having the time of my life. Theater makes me so happy, and I love getting to take a break from TV and from The Pitt to do something that feels so different and so joyous. I love theater people. It’s just my favorite place to be. I was raised around theater people my whole life and it’s the best, best community in the world.

How do you go from making a fictional character your own to having to portray such a famous musical figure — and voice — like Connie Francis? 
I guess I can’t spoil the show for people who haven’t seen it, since it’s [based on] real life. [Connie’s] in a very brief portion of the show, but you see years of growth. From her being a young kid trying to make music to being the superstar of the time, that all happens within 20 minutes. What I latched onto most was that journey’s suddenness. In the public eye, she’s on top of the world, but she’s going through something so sad in her personal life. She can’t be with Bobby and she has a father who is semi-abusive and saying, “You’re gonna work your ass off.”

We see Connie performing through the sadness when she sings “Who’s Sorry Now.” Her father shot a gun in the dressing room right before she was going to perform. It’s this really traumatic moment and then she has to put on a smile and perform. That’s something I can connect to right now in this weird time. I have amazing success I’d never even dreamt of. And also, I’m going through my own stuff. But I’m gonna perform through the sadness. 

Have you seen the Pitt Season Two finale?
No, they don’t show us anything. On Thursday [when it premieres], I’ll be performing. When I stage-door on Thursdays, the audience will be like, “We’re about to go and watch The Pitt right now. Double feature!” I don’t know [when] I’ll watch it. It’s nice being in an eightshow-a-week grind, because I don’t have time to think about how the [TV] show’s being received. I’m doing my own thing right now. I’ll think about The Pitt when I have to go back in a month.

We get a small, fun scene at the end where Santos and Mel [King, another doctor] follow through on a plan to shake off their shift with a round of karaoke. What else do you think would be on her setlist? 
I’m Filipino. Santos is Filipino. She’s got to have some classic Filipino karaoke songs in there. Maybe she does “My Way” [by Frank Sinatra]. But I often do Whitney Houston. It’s my crowd pleaser. I also love, if I’ve got my girls around me, to do “Wannabe” [by the Spice Girls] or [Fergie’s] “Fergalicious.” Then a lot of Gaga. “Marry the Night,” “Judas,” I’ve got a whole set. 

Is there anything you can share about Season Three? 
I wish I could tell you something. They don’t tell us shit. We don’t know until we are on set. Drives me crazy. But I would like to see some growth. I would like to see Santos give in to some friendships a little more. I want to see some interesting growth with her and Langdon. Maybe they’re not at each other’s throats anymore. There’s this moment in [Episode 14] where he laughs at my joke behind me. Clearly, they should be friends. They should be at the club.