From the emergency department to the stage.
Isa Briones, who stars in “The Pitt” as resident Dr. Trinity Santos, joined the Broadway production of “Just in Time,” a jukebox musical about the life of Bobby Darin, on April 1. She plays Connie Francis, a pop singer who Darin got his start as a songwriter for. They also had a romance before he married Sandra Dee in 1960.
Francis rose to fame for her 1957 cover of “Who’s Sorry Now?,” originally released in 1923.
Briones belts out her rendition of Francis’ spin on the ’50s track on stage eight shows a week in “Just in Time,” currently playing at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre.
“Theater is just kind of where I come from. Theater feels like home,” Briones tells TODAY.com. “I think anytime I do TV for a long stretch of time I always feel the pull to go back to my roots.”
In an exclusive clip from the recording booth shared with TODAY.com, Briones nails its rousing and passionate chorus.
She says in the context of the show, this song comes after a “really tragic moment,” where her character has to say goodbye to someone she loves due to her father’s control over her life.
“It’s this tragedy of circumstance and the time she lived in and and it’s saying goodbye when you really don’t want to,” Briones says. “It’s such a powerful release in in the show.”
Briones says her goal in playing the role of Connie Francis is to bridge the gap between the music of the 1950s and ’60s to now.
“It’s a balance where we’re bringing music from a different time, and also telling a story of a different time that I think a lot of younger people may not know. They may know some of her songs, like, I feel like people know ‘Stupid Cupid’ or on TikTok, ‘Pretty Little Baby’ became such a big thing recently,” Briones says. “So people know this music, but they don’t really where it comes from.”
“We’re not impersonators,” she adds. “We are just telling stories from then, now, and as best as we can and with our own flaires.”
Briones, currently performing opposite “Glee” star Matthew Morrison as Bobby Darin, took over for Sarah Hyland. The role of Connie Francis in “Just in Time” was originated by Gracie Lawrence, who earned a Tony nomination for best featured actress in a musical for the performance.
Briones, the daughter of Broadway actor Jon Jon Briones, is no stranger to the stage. Isa Briones has performed in a Los Angeles production of “Next to Normal,” starred as Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds in the U.S. national tour of “Hamilton” and made her Broadway debut as Eurydice in “Hadestown” in 2024.
“When you start a show, sometimes it takes a second to feel comfortable and like, really have fun while you’re doing it, because you’re so nervous and you’re getting into the groove of things,” Briones says. “But everyone who I was working with was like, ‘Oh my God. After your first show, it already looks like you’re having fun with it.'”
“It’s such a gift, especially when I’m usually doing ‘The Pitt,’ which is a lot more traumatizing material,” she adds with a laugh.
In 2025, Briones was introduced as Dr. Santos on the hit HBO Max drama. In Season 1, Santos, brash and competitive, correctly accused senior resident Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) of stealing drugs from the hospital on her first day of work. So far in Season 2, Santos has especially seemed to struggle through the Fourth of July shift, constantly behind on charting, anxious about her romantic situation with Dr. Yolanda Garcia (Alexandra Metz), and resentful that Dr. Langdon was allowed back to the Pitt.
Briones says there’s similarities between filming “The Pitt” and performing theater.
“We will shoot sometimes, like, six pages all the way through, spanning throughout the entire emergency room,” she says. “We rehearse it so many times before cameras even get in the room. And then when we do it, it seems like we’re just doing mini-plays all the time.”
Briones’ Broadway turn in “Just in Time” begins just weeks before “The Pitt” airs its Season 2 finale on April 16.
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