NBC’sBrilliant Mindspremiered on September 23 with new episodes airing weekly on Mondays. The show is inspired by real-life physician, Oliver Sacks, and sees Zachary Quinto (Star Trek,American Horror Story) play a neurologist who has a condition called prosopagnosia, also known as facial blindness. After being fired from his previous job, Oliver Wolf takes his long-time friend up on her offer to work at Bronx General Hospital.
Carol entrusts Dr. Wolf with a group of young interns, who are caught off guard by hisunconventional approach to care. However, despite Oliver’s initial resistance to being a teacher, Quinto feels that everyone has adapted to the new dynamic. The star explains that their different perspectives allow him to approach cases from all angles, which benefits the patient in the long run. In addition to Quinto, Tamberla Perry, Ashleigh LaThrop, Alex MacNicoll, Aury Krebs, Spence Moore II, Teddy Sears, and Donna Murphymake up the main cast.
Brilliant Minds Season 2: Latest News, Cast, Potential Story & Everything We Know
In a crowded field of medical dramas, NBC’s new series Brilliant Minds stands apart, but will the Zachary Quinto-led program score a second season?
ScreenRantinterviews Quinto about the real world-renowned neurologist, how Wolf’s prosopagnosia is a gift, and what he admires most about hisBrilliant Mindscharacter.
Brilliant Minds Is Contextualized To Take Place In A Modern-Day Setting
“To be telling this story now is really to explore how far we’ve come and what a different world we live in.”
ScreenRant: I’m a huge fan ofBrilliant Minds, and I would love to know your initial thoughts when the concept was first pitched to you.
Zachary Quinto: Thanks for saying that. I’m glad that you’re enjoying the show. I felt most interested in the fact that this was based on a real-life person, Dr. Oliver Sacks, who was a world-renowned neurologist, who lived and worked primarily in the middle of the 20th century, who made incredible, significant contributions to the field of neurology and also to the field of literature. He was a very prolific author.
He was considered the poet laureate of medicine by the New York Times, and he wrote inexhaustibly about his patients and about the uniqueness of their disorders and diseases and conditions and injuries. He was very driven by this pursuit of understanding and accepting the patients as people, not just as illnesses. And at a time when medicine has become so primarily diagnostic, it was very special, I think, to consider playing a character that was inspired by someone like that.
The show inspired me to read about Oliver Sacks. What aspect of his life do you feel are most heavily incorporated inBrilliant Minds?
Zachary Quinto: Pretty much every aspect of the character that I play is lifted directly from the life of Oliver Sacks. Oliver Sacks rode motorcycles. Oliver Wolf rides motorcycles. Oliver Sacks was a gay man. Oliver Wolf is a gay man. Oliver Sacks had prosopagnosia—face blindness. Oliver Wolf has prosopagnosia—face blindness. Oliver Sacks had a very complicated relationship with his mother. Oliver Wolf has a very complicated relationship with his mother, who also turns out to be his boss, so there are a lot of opportunities for them to confront the limitations of their relationship and evolve beyond them.
Oliver Sacks was celibate for 35 years of his life, and Oliver Wolf has his own complicated relationship to his identity as a gay man, but it’s contextualized in the modern world. We tell the stories of Brilliant Minds in modern day, present day, whereas Oliver Sacks was living and working at a time when identifying as a gay man openly was an impossibility because it would’ve absolutely limited his ability to make the contributions to the field of neurology and literature that he was so singularly and uniquely designed to make.
And so he decided to sacrifice this aspect of himself, and I find that such a tragedy. So to be telling this story now, today, is really to explore how far we’ve come and what a different world we live in now than the one that Oliver Sacks lived in. And so for that, I’m really grateful. And I would say that that connection to the real-life person, while still having the opportunity to create the character from my imagination and creative collaborations with Michael Grassi and our amazing team of writers was such a unique hybrid that it was a no-brainer for me once I put all the pieces together.
Oliver Comes To See His Condition Of Prosopagnosia As An Opportunity To Evolve
“He learns how to transform his relationship to it and see it more as a gift.”
How do you feel the different steps Oliver needs to take to connect with people help him as a doctor?
Zachary Quinto: In the first episode of the show, they talk a lot about—I think a lot of people would consider the condition of prosopagnosia a real hindrance, a real obstacle, a real challenge. But I think that the way Oliver Wolf comes to see it is as a gift, as an opportunity to adapt and to evolve. And so many of the cases that we examine on Brilliant Minds are cases for which there really is no fix.
There really is no cure. And the people that we’re meeting as patients on the show are people who are having to adjust to a new normal in their lives. And so our show really does become about adaptability and about evolution. And I think that those are two qualities that had to be embodied by Oliver Sacks and therefore have to be embodied by Oliver Wolf. He needs to be able to adapt and evolve himself.
And his condition of prosopagnosia is one of the primary, most tangible ways that he does that. And by the end of the pilot, that thing that he considers maybe a deficit in his experience, he learns how to transform his relationship to it and see it more as a gift and as an opportunity to have deeper and maybe more meaningful insights into people and their experiences.
Oliver’s friendship with Carol is so pure. What is most important to you when it comes to shaping their onscreen dynamic?
Zachary Quinto: Again, the relationship between Carol Pierce and Oliver Wolf on Brilliant Minds is inspired by the real-life relationship between Dr. Carol E. Burnett and Oliver Sacks. They were students together, they were colleagues, Carol E. Burnett was the first African American woman to graduate from the Einstein School of Medicine.
Oliver Sacks, obviously, had his own identity as a gay man to reckon with as it applied to his vocation and his career. And so I think that these two people found each other and found a common bond in the things that they had to work through and overcome to succeed. And so it’s a really wonderful homage to their friendship and their relationship that Michael Grassi put the dynamic between Carol and Wolf at the center of Brilliant Minds.
I love Tamberla Perry. She’s an absolutely phenomenal actress and such a great energy on set. She’s really such a positive force of nature, and I just adore her. It’s fun to work with her. She keeps me on my toes, she keeps me grounded, she keeps me motivated, she keeps me smiling, and I hope that that translates in the relationship between Carol Pierce and Oliver Wolf on the show.
Oliver Quickly Begins To See The Interns' Value In Brilliant Minds
“I think they make significant contributions to Oliver’s life, as well.”
Carol entrusts him with this group of young interns. How would you say Oliver feels about being a teacher, and do you think the interns have adapted to his non-traditional approach to care?
Zachary Quinto: Yeah, everybody adapts to everybody on this show. And initially, Wolf is very resistant to the idea of being any kind of teacher or authority figure. I don’t think he wants to deal with the questions and the administrative aspects of that role. I think what he wants to do is focus on his patients and only his patients. But I think what he comes to learn is that the different perspectives that the interns offer and contribute to the cases and to the environment at the hospital, in general, is something that he benefits from in the long run.
So everybody adapts to this dynamic, and I think pretty quickly, Oliver sees the value of these young people, and they help him, right? They support him, and they give him insights that he might not otherwise have. Part of the humor of the character is how disconnected he is from the modern-day contemporary pop culture world. And so the interns not only make significant contributions in the medical cases, but I think they make significant contributions to Oliver’s life, as well.
Jaden Walman portrays the young Oliver Wolf. Did you two have a chance to touch base and talk about this character’s childhood?
Zachary Quinto: I was around when Jaden was there, and he’s so wonderful. The flashbacks were the rare moments that I actually didn’t have to film, because although sometimes I am in them, we play with this idea of perspective and what these memories conjure in Wolf. And so we see the impact of some of the flashbacks on him in the present day.
But I feel like Jaden’s relationship to that story and the other actors who are involved in the flashbacks, their relationships to that part of the story really filtered through Michael Grassi, through our showrunner, and so I think it was more important for him to be overseeing that than for me to be involved in them. I wanted Jayden to have his own experience of the role. He’s telling stories from a different perspective and a different time in Wolf’s life.
It didn’t feel necessary for me to meddle in his interpretation, or his portrayal, of the character. Maybe I learned that from Leonard Nimoy when I took over Spock. There weren’t a lot of prescriptive conversations about how to play the role. It was much broader and much more creative collaboration with Leonard. And so I just tried to give Jaden his space, and I thought he did a really beautiful job, and I felt like Michael was the one who was orchestrating all of the different aspects of the stories.
We’ve seen how much Oliver cares about his patients, but what do you personally admire most about him as a doctor?
Zachary Quinto: His capacity to hold the experience that he’s having along with his patients. I think his capacity for compassion and empathy and this expanded consciousness that he’s clearly spent time and a lot of energy and resources in his own life cultivating. I think, to me, that’s the most satisfying aspect of the human experience in my journey so far. It’s really one of the most admirable qualities of this character as a reflection of the real-life person. I think it was one of the most admirable qualities of Oliver Sacks as well.
About NBC’s Medical Drama Brilliant Minds
Michael Grassi serves as creator, writer, and executive producer
Inspired by the extraordinary life and work of world-famous author and physician Oliver Sacks, “Brilliant Minds” follows a revolutionary, larger-than-life neurologist and his team of interns as they explore the last great frontier – the human mind – while grappling with their own relationships and mental health.
Brilliant Mindsairs Mondays on NBC at 10 p.m. ET.
Brilliant Minds
Brilliant Minds is a 2024 series about an eccentric neurologist with face blindness, offering a unique perspective on patient care. The story follows him and his team of young interns as they tackle complex psychological cases, all while managing intricate personal and professional relationships.
