From the emergency division to the stage.
Isa Briones, who stars in “The Pitt” as resident Dr. Trinity Santos, joined the Broadway manufacturing of “Just in Time,” a jukebox musical in regards to the lifetime of Bobby Darin, on April 1. She performs Connie Francis, a pop singer who Darin acquired his begin as a songwriter for. They additionally had a romance earlier than he married Sandra Dee in 1960.
Francis rose to fame for her 1957 cowl of “Who’s Sorry Now?,” initially launched in 1923.
Briones belts out her rendition of Francis’ spin on the ’50s monitor on stage eight exhibits per week in “Just in Time,” at present enjoying at Broadway’s Circle within 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 sales space shared with TODAY.com, Briones nails its rousing and passionate refrain.
She says within the context of the present, this tune comes after a “really tragic moment,” the place her character has to say goodbye to somebody she loves because of her father’s management 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 objective in enjoying the function of Connie Francis is to bridge the hole between the music of the Nineteen Fifties 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 provides. “We are just telling stories from then, now, and as best as we can and with our own flaires.”
Briones, at present performing reverse “Glee” star Matthew Morrison as Bobby Darin, took over for Sarah Hyland. The function of Connie Francis in “Just in Time” was originated by Gracie Lawrence, who earned a Tony nomination for finest featured actress in a musical for the efficiency.
Briones, the daughter of Broadway actor Jon Jon Briones, is not any stranger to the stage. Isa Briones has carried out in a Los Angeles manufacturing of “Next to Normal,” starred as Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds within the U.S. nationwide 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 provides with amusing.
In 2025, Briones was launched as Dr. Santos on the hit HBO Max drama. In Season 1, Santos, brash and aggressive, appropriately accused senior resident Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) of stealing medication from the hospital on her first day of labor. So far in Season 2, Santos has particularly appeared to wrestle via the Fourth of July shift, consistently behind on charting, anxious about her romantic scenario with Dr. Yolanda Garcia (Alexandra Metz), and resentful that Dr. Langdon was allowed again 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 flip in “Just in Time” begins simply weeks earlier than “The Pitt” airs its Season 2 finale on April 16.
