Jon Jon Briones is recognisable to many as Dr Richard Hanover from the Netflix series Ratched, where the Filipino ancestry of his character—a dangerously enterprising doctor at an asylum—played a silent but pivotal part in the storyline. The same can be said about Briones’ career, sans the murderous ambition.

His entrance into the Ryan “Murphy-verse” (in Ratched, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, and American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace) might have lit up his name in Hollywood, but Briones is no novice performer. He landed a part of the ensemble in the original 1989 London production of Miss Saigon and would play various roles in the musical over the years. It wasn’t until 2014, a few years after he had emigrated to the United States, that his portrayal of The Engineer in the West End revival of Miss Saigon would earn him a Laurence Olivier Award nomination and, three years later, a Broadway debut.

In 2018, Briones was cast as Modesto Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and then as Ariel Augustus in American Horror Story; this was followed by Ratched in 2020. Briones lent his voice to the English dub of another Netflix production, the Filipino animated series Trese, in 2021. He is currently on set for The Last Voyage of Demeter, a chilling Dracula film targeted for release in 2023.

Briones’ wife, Megan, is a singer and a talent manager; two of their three children, Isa and Teo, are actors.