Isa Briones says Dr. Trinity Santos has changed in a way that The Pitt viewers can feel. The actor, who plays Santos on the medical drama, said the character is one of the show’s most divisive and most discussed figures, and that Season 2 has pushed her into a far less forceful place ahead of this week’s finale.
“What she really needs is a friend,” Briones said of Santos, adding that the character is also one of the show’s most damaged. The actor said Santos reacts badly when Whitaker is going to be house-sitting for Robby during Robby’s sabbatical, and that reaction fits a season in which Santos has become more guarded, more vulnerable and less willing to rush toward the chaos around her.
Briones said Season 2 feels “very different tonally” for Santos than Season 1, when she was “very headstrong, full steam ahead, trying to just really prove herself, and jumping on every case that she could.” Now, after 10 months working in the ER, Santos is not jumping on traumas in the first few episodes, and Robby is confused about why. Briones said that shift comes from the grind of doing the job every day, where she is no longer trying to prove herself because it is now simply her work. “Sadness has set in a little more,” she said, and the character still has sarcasm but “there’s a lot less bite than she had Season 1.”
That change also tracks with the season finale mass casualty, which Briones said left everyone different and made the job feel like the reality of what Santos does. The actor said the return of Langdon and a string of bad situations destabilize her, but the emotional center of the performance is not ambition anymore. It is exhaustion, and the way repeated trauma wears down someone who is still trying to keep going.
Briones said Santos’ sarcasm and meanness are “all defense mechanism,” and Season 2 shows a great deal more of that vulnerability. She said Whitaker has become the one person Santos is most comfortable with, and that he has gotten close to her “against all odds” because Santos usually does not let people in that way. Briones was blunt about the dynamic: Santos actually loves Whitaker, and “Girl, go to therapy!” is how she sums up the character’s need for help. Briones, who is currently starring on Broadway in Just In Time, has helped make Santos a lightning rod because she plays her as both abrasive and wounded, which is exactly why the character keeps getting talked about.