‘She Just Needs Therapy and a Hug’

Spoilers follow for the first season of The Pitt through season finale “9:00 P.M.”

Of all the interns on The Pitt, Dr. Trinity Santos gives the audience the wildest ride. As the most eventful shift in the world begins, the show presents the first-year as a cocky try-hard who’s eager to show off, go over her superior, and shuffle away what she feels are less exciting patients. She also has a penchant for doling out harsh nicknames to her fellow students: “Huckleberry” for Dr. Dennis Whittaker due to his rural background, “Crash” for Dr. Victoria Javadi while witnessing a procedure.

For the opening stretch of the Max medical drama’s first season, she’s set up as a light heel who’s begging to be knocked down a peg. And while that does happen somewhat, The Pitt additionally establishes her as a case study for nuance and complexity in how we read characters. One of her major threads throughout the season is the fomenting conflict she develops with Dr. Frank Langdon, a senior resident. The two butt heads from the get-go, and when Santos eventually begins to suspect that Langdon might be stealing drugs from the hospital, we’re placed in an ambiguous space. Do we believe her assessment? Moreover, do we trust in her motivations? Of course, Santos turns out to be right, leaving viewers to think through the thorny relationship between “likability” and “worth” — not to mention the internalized sexism of it all.

Santos also turns out to have, as actress Isa Briones puts it, a “real heart under all that barbed wire.” By the end of the season, The Pitt rounds out Santos as a fuller person, an arc that’s given a little cherry on top when, in the finale, she discovers that Whittaker had been secretly squatting in an abandoned floor of the hospital and invites him to stay in a spare room at her place. “It’s a natural progression to see that she’s not a robot,” Briones tells Vulture from her New York apartment, a few weeks before she heads out to Los Angeles to prepare for season two. “It also sets up a funny dynamic for them in the future. Who knows what high jinks they’ll get up to?”

We go on a real journey with Dr. Santos. How did the team talk to you about what they wanted to do with the character?

Our first two weeks of work was a medical bootcamp, where we were mainly learning from these incredible doctors about the basics of the procedures to make sure everything was going to look right. Throughout that, we also had one-on-one meetings with Scott Gemmill and John Wells to go over the character. I didn’t know the arc Santos and Langdon were going to have, but we did go into the background on who Santos is. She’s this ex-athlete, very competitive, very headstrong, ready to elbow people out of the way. And obviously, anytime you meet anyone like that, you know there’s something deeper going on. But the specifics of her storyline only came out as we got our scripts.

They’re so collaborative. They listen to us and watch our chemistry with everyone. I think there were things that developed along the way because they realized, Oh, these people are good foils, those people are good partners.

Do you have an example of a pairing that was figured out deeper into the process?

We’re not let into a whole lot of that. We can only infer. It’s more of us realizing, Wait, were those two supposed to be in as many scenes together? You can sense the deepening of some pairings. Like with Dr. Langdon and Dr. King, they clearly have an interesting working relationship because they’re so different. With Santos and Langdon, I think we really found just how similar they are. They’re so combative because they recognize in each other what they have in themselves, and that’s threatening to the both of them.

How do you psychologically interpret Santos?

We don’t fully go into this, because, again, the whole season is just one day, but you get a bit of this most obviously in episode seven, when you see her take this possible child-molestation case very seriously, and it clearly hits home. She never fully says, “This happened to me,” but you can tell it’s very personal. Obviously, in a work environment, you shouldn’t let your personal shit get in the way, but we’ve already seen how she can be very hot-headed.

So when she breaks, you start to see a moment of real vulnerability, and you get a sense of why she has these intense walls up and is ready to come back at anyone with sarcasm. Clearly, anyone who is that combative is trying to protect their heart. Of course, people can be like, “Oh, my gosh! She’s such a bitch, she has no empathy.” But I’ve met people like Santos before. She clearly just needs therapy and a hug. We all have trauma, we all come from someplace, and it helped to know her backstory has this kind of deep trauma for her that informs everything and makes everything a little more nuanced.

I’m getting the sense that there’s quite a big difference between Dr. Santos and yourself.

You know, that’s what I love about doing this job. Any character you play, even if they feel so different from you, once you’re in it, you’re always able to find things that you can connect with. I wouldn’t necessarily go about things the same way that Santos does. But putting up walls because you’re afraid of being hurt again, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t felt that way. I know I certainly have moments of lashing out. At the end of the day, we’re all just little kids inside who are scared.

One of the dynamics I found so fascinating with Santos is how she develops a flirtation with Dr. Garcia, but what she really seems to want is approval. How do you read what she’s looking for?

Their dynamic is so interesting! We would make jokes because it’s like, Oh, there’s clearly an energy between these two characters,” but also, damn, it’s day one, calm down! Garcia and Santos are very similar in a lot of ways. Garcia is not everyone’s friend. She has a hardened way about her as well; she likes to throw punches, but in jest and in playful ways. I think they recognize that in each other when they first meet.

For Santos, there’s also an element of, Oh, someone is taking an interest in me when a lot of other people are put off by me. So she sees an ally, right? Here’s someone who’s going to let me put in a chest tube. Here’s someone who’s going to let me do a thoracotomy. She’s always thinking of how to get ahead. Of course, there’s the attraction and whatnot, but she’s also so one-track-minded on trying to be the best and proving herself. And I think Dr. Garcia provides that opportunity.

Were you nervous that the show was building Santos up to be a little divisive?

Honestly, not at all. Audra McDonald recently posted a video; she’s doing Gypsy right now, and she was talking about how a mentor of hers told her that as an actor, your job is not to make people like you. Your job is to show what you do, and maybe make people understand. Which is so true. Santos is definitely not super likable, but maybe you can see why. Maybe you can empathize a little bit.

I do think it’s just fun to make people hate you in a way. It’s fun to elicit a reaction! It’s cool to see people have such visceral reactions to her. Some people are like, “Oh, my God! I love her! I can fix her.” But then there are the people who are like, “Oh, I loathe her.” That is my job: to make you feel something. If I’ve done it, then I’m proud of that.

Are you like one of those wrestling heels who feeds off boos? Is that something you can get fuel from?

Not usually! As a person, I’m more Do you like me, though? Personally, I’m very sensitive. I don’t read comments. It’s just too much for me. But with The Pitt, this has been the first time where I’ve felt okay to read some things because it’s not me. It’s about the character, and it’s cool to see people respond to her this way.

You posted earlier about that discourse. What did you notice about the evolution of the way people talked about Santos?

We’ve seen it a lot in society where a man who is beloved and charming can get away with a lot of things, while a woman who has evidence is not believed. Obviously, that can happen in much more intense circumstances, but this was a really great examination of the internal bias that we can have at different times. It’s been really cool to see audiences watch Santos be right and say, “Whoa! What does that say about me that I really didn’t want to believe her?” Of course, you don’t want to believe her, because she can be very mean. Kudos to the writers, because it’s a kind of mirror that’s held up very subtly. Even in the moment, I didn’t fully know if it was going to all come together.

Were you surprised that the audience went along?

Honestly, I’ve been so pleasantly surprised about the audience reaction. I’ve been a part of franchises before where the fandom can be really intense. Of course, there are very nuanced viewers, but there are also people who are like, I believe this and this, and I’m not gonna see anything beyond that. I think it speaks to how the writers trusted that the audience is smart enough to grow along with it instead of trying to spoon-feed any particular agenda. Really, you’re just watching a day play out, and you’re feeling the emotions, the betrayal, the discoveries, as the show progresses. The show is really structured as a guide for you to feel something. 

Because the season takes place over the course of one (extremely eventful) 15-hour shift, there’s a limit to how a character can be altered by the end of it. But Santos does have a clear arc of sorts. How did you feel about the way the season leaves her?

I thought it was really well done. I love how some audiences said, “All this could never happen in one day.” Yeah, sure, but it’s also TV. I thought they handled the growth in characters very well, because no one is a fully different person at the end. That’s just not what happens. Also, what would we have to do for season two if everyone was just better, you know? It also helps that it was day one for Santos, Whittaker, and Javadi. First days are always an impactful thing in our lives. We’re always going to leave the first day of something feeling different and being changed in some way.

The season does pepper throughout a sense that Santos has a real heart under all that barbed wire. We see that facade crack a little in the last episode. She clearly grew up with brothers. I always thought she’s the oldest sister of younger brothers. The way she treats Whittaker from the beginning, calling him a name out of the gate — that’s insane, but it’s also how you treat a younger brother you want to terrorize. There’s still a sweetness there, and when she realizes he is without a home, it’s kind of a natural progression to see that she’s not a robot. She clearly has feelings. It also sets up a funny dynamic for them in the future. They’re roommates. That’s gonna be great.

It’s more like landlord-renter, but I take your point.

Totally. Who knows what high jinks they’ll get up to? But it’s a nice full-circle moment. They have a nice brother-sister relationship going on.

I love the reveal that Dr. Santos is part pinoy, much like yourself, and that she actually understood Perlah and Princess’s gossip the whole time. But there’s also something so interesting about Dr. Santos being a largely white-coding person of color. How did that inform your development of the character?

Being mixed is complicated, right? All sorts of racial dysphoria comes with that. I’ve grappled with that a lot throughout my life. When I was cast, the character didn’t initially reflect my background, so I was like, “Could she have a Filipino last name?” Because I’m half Filipino, and it’s really important to represent pinoys in a medical show, because, unfortunately, crazily, most medical shows do not showcase Filipinos. And I’m sorry, if you go into literally any hospital, you’re probably going to find a Filipino nurse.

It’s so great. Immediately going into this show and seeing Princess and Perlah being such a staple in the cast — they’re the first people who speak at all — I started crying, because I’ve just never seen that before. I wanted to make sure I got to represent that in a small way as well, and to show a kind of variety to that. When you’re mixed, people love to tell you what you are. You’re told, “You’re not Filipino.” But it’s good to show the rainbow or the spectrum of what Filipino is, what Asian is, what anything is. There’s so much nuance in there.

And the writers were so collaborative about it. With that scene, they asked me, “Hey, do you speak Tagalog?” I don’t speak fluently at all, but I can understand some things. I grew up hearing it around the house. And they were like, “We were thinking of adding something about that,” because it feels weird to have these three Filipinos in the room and not address it. There’s something funny happening there, because Santos is so worthy of chismis. We were talking about it, and we thought it would be so funny if they were chismis-ing, and she understands it and does a little jab. There’s even a line in there where they describe her as mestiza, which wasn’t originally in the script.

That episode also had an Asian director, Quyen Tran, and she’s so wonderful. It was just so cool to build that scene together with all these Asian women in one room. She kept asking, “Is there anything else you want to say?” My whole life story is people commenting on how I don’t look Filipino, people being like, “that white ass bitch.” Even though it’s been a source of some pain and an identity crisis in my life it felt so good to have that experience represented on the show in a fun way. It’s yet another thing for her to prove. Every mixed person feels that whether they want to or not, to say, “I promise, I’m part of this community. I deserve to be there. I want to be there.” There’s always that kind of feeling, and I think that adds to Santos.

Despite the real-time conceit, this is a fairly straightforward medical procedural. Did you have much of a relationship with the genre growing up?

Not really. I never fully watched ER all the way through, though I had seen a few episodes because my mom would watch it. My grandmother loves it. My main exposure to ER was through Friends, because Noah Wyle and George Clooney were on an episode playing doctors, and my parents laughed really hard at that. I was like, “Why is it funny?” And they were like, “Because that’s what they do.”

But I’m not usually a medical-drama person. My friends think I’m crazy that I’ve never watched Grey’s Anatomy. I started watching the first couple episodes when I started doing the show because my friends said I had to see it. I have a healthy fear of hospitals. It’s the same way I feel about true crime. Some people love that. But I feel like that could happen to me, so I don’t know if I need to experience that.

The Pitt has helped me develop an appreciation, though. It made me realize how important it is to have a medically accurate show like this. Episode four, which was written by Noah, was so beautiful. Most people are going to go through a parent passing and needing to decide whether or not to take them off life support. Or with the birth sequence. That’s the process. That’s how it goes. The show is asking you not to turn away, saying that this is a human experience. Or how it displays what healthcare workers go through. They are so essential, yet they are so underfunded and underappreciated. The assault that happens, it’s not just for some dramatic effect — that happens at an alarming rate. It’s all so real, and we need to see it.

Do you have a favorite of Santos’s nicknames?

We came up with a few more when we weren’t filming, but I can’t recall them right now. She’s just so mean. I remember one of the background actors came up to me in the beginning — I think it was our first episode — and said, “‘Huckleberry’ is cold. That is so cold.”

The world has dubbed Langdon “ER Ken,” and that’s my favorite nickname. I don’t even give that one.

Both your parents are in the arts. Has working on this show made you consider what life would’ve been like if you went into medicine instead? 

It’s so funny. When I booked this job I called my dad and I was like, “Our ancestors are finally gonna be so happy.” I’m a doctor who sings. I’m the Filipino dream.

But no. In the third grade, I wanted to be an open-heart surgeon for a week because we read a story about it, but very quickly I was like, “I love to sing and dance!” I don’t know if I actually have it in me. But I will say, doing the medical boot camp, when you get something right, that rush when I successfully intubated a dummy without a camera — my God, I felt unstoppable.

Related

• The Pitt Was Testing Us