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Isa Briones as Dr. Trinity Santos on 'The Pitt'
HBO Max
MANILA, Philippines — Award-winning medical drama "The Pitt" continues to draw praise not just for shedding better light on the American healthcare system but also giving more voices to Filipino characters.
Filipino nurses make up a huge part of hospital staff in the United States, and on the show set in the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center they are represented by emergency room nurses Perlah Alawi (Amielynn Abellera) and Princess Dela Cruz (Kristin Villanueva).
In an intimate video interview with select media, Philstar.com asked another star Isa Briones — the Filipino-American actress who plays Dr. Trinity Santos in the series — how much input during production she, Amielynn and Kristin have in incorporating the Filipino identities of their characters.
"The production is really collaborative when it comes to stuff like that because a lot of progress has happened," Isa said. "There's still a lot more to be done in inclusion in the industry, but I think we get to see the outcome of kind of talking about that and realizing like, 'Oh, we need more visibility.'"
Isa even quipped there was need for individuals other than "the white people in charge" to sharing their voices, whether in front of or behind the camera.
As such, Isa credited the show's production for acknowlegding that as well as recognizing there's only so much that can be said about the Filipino experience unless actually involving someone from the community.
"They often will ask us whenever there's a kind of a specifically Filipino storyline or line, 'Is this okay? Or l would you say something else?', which is awesome," she added.
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The actress — whose father is theater star Jon Jon Briones — shared that there wasn't a language consultant during the first season of "The Pitt," so while she and Amielynn (who is also Filipino-American) are aware of some Filipino phrases but not particularly fluent, the two would seek the help of Kristin.
The show did hire a language consultant named Angelita for the second season, whom Isa shouted out, "She's amazing. That was so helpful because there's only so much we can do individually."
Isa also admitted it was fraught from the get-go for an actor to be labelled "the authority on being Filipino" when in fact doing so really takes a community where all its members have an input.
She cited the "chismis session" from the first season, where her character chimed in to a conversation between Amielynn's Perlah and Kristin's Princess as a scene they got to play around with, adding that the episode was directed by Quyen Tran, a Vietnamese-American woman.
"It was such a beautiful moment of Quyen being like, "I know what's on the page, but do what you would do [or] speak how you would speak," Isa continued. "So when Kristin says, 'Sobrang mestiza niya,' she added that because that's what Princess would say."
The actress also said it was cool to have free reign over how their lived experiences can inform a scene, hoping such practices continue and further as the show goes on.
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