Isa Briones has stepped onto Broadway in a role that asks her to sing history night after night. She joined the production of Just in Time on April 1, taking over as Connie Francis in the jukebox musical about Bobby Darin’s life at Circle in the Square Theatre.
Briones performs her version of “Who’s Sorry Now?” eight shows a week, a song that helped make Francis famous in 1957 after its original release in 1923. The number lands after a “really tragic moment” in the show, and Briones said it gives her a chance to let the audience feel the loss behind the romance and the era itself. “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,” she said. “It’s such a powerful release in in the show.”
The performance also carries a personal pull for Briones, who said theater is where she comes from and feels like home. After a long stretch of TV work, she said she has felt drawn back to the stage. In a clip from the recording booth shared with TODAY.com, she sang the chorus of the tune, trying to bridge the distance between the music of the 1950s and '60s and the audience sitting in front of her now.
That balance matters because Just in Time is built on a real-life triangle: Francis was the pop singer Bobby Darin first wrote for, and the two had a romance before he married Sandra Dee in 1960. Briones is playing opposite Matthew Morrison as Darin, and she said the goal is not imitation. “We’re not impersonators,” she said. “We are just telling stories from then, now, and as best as we can and with our own flaires.”
Her arrival also came with a handoff. Briones replaced Sarah Hyland in the role after Gracie Lawrence originated Francis and earned a Tony nomination for best featured actress in a musical. It is the kind of Broadway turn that arrives with expectations attached, but Briones has already shown she can move between stages and screens. She made her Broadway debut in Hadestown in 2024, played Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds on the U.S. national tour of Hamilton, and worked in a Los Angeles production of Next to Normal. In 2025, she was introduced as Dr. Trinity Santos on The Pitt.
That TV role has helped sharpen the contrast. Briones said the stage gives her a different kind of lift from the hospital drama, which she called “a lot more traumatizing material.” In The Pitt, Santos first made waves by correctly accusing senior resident Frank Langdon of stealing drugs from the hospital on her first day of work, and so far in season 2 she has been struggling through the Fourth of July shift. On Broadway, by contrast, Briones said she needed only one night to feel the room loosen around her. “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,” she said. “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.'” That is the answer Briones seems to be giving on stage: theater is home, and for now she is back where she sounds most at ease.
