‘Brilliant Minds’ gives real medical pioneer a modern makeover

When he started writing NBC’s medical drama “Brilliant Minds,” series creator Michael Grassi said he had only one actor in mind to play his show’s main character, Dr. Oliver Wolf, to play.

That would be Zachary Quinto, the Emmy nominee whose television credits include “Star Trek” and the anthology series “American Horror Story,” and who has appeared on Broadway in critically acclaimed revivals of “The Glass Menagerie” and “The Boys in the Band ‘. ‘Among other shows.

“I’ve never seen Zach play it safe during a performance. Everything he does, he always takes a big leap,” Grassi, whose TV credits include “Schitt’s Creek” and “Riverdale,” told HuffPost. “We’ve seen him play villains before. We’ve seen him do so much genre. But what Zach brings to the show – something I didn’t know was possible – is incredible humor and levity. I am happy that viewers can see how much warmth and humor he brings.”

“Brilliant Minds,” which premiered last week, is based on the life of Dr. Oliver Sacks, the world-renowned neurologist and author who was once called the ‘poet laureate of contemporary medicine’.

Like Sacks, Dr. Wolf is both a respected neurologist and a man of extremes. In the show’s pilot episode, he takes an evening dip in the murky waters of New York’s Hudson River in the midst of a professional crisis, as the real Sacks was known. to have done. The character shares Sacks’ love of motorcycles and indoor boat gardens, and also has prosopagnosia, a cognitive disorder also known as face blindness, which allows him to empathize with his patients in a way that some of his peers do not.

Although Sacks died in 2015 at the age of 82, ‘Brilliant Minds’ is set in present-day New York. To Dr. To make Wolf believable as a modern character, Grassi chose to update some facets of Sacks’ life. Most notably, Dr. Wolf is a gay man who makes no secret of his sexuality while working at the Bronx General Hospital, while Sacks remained celibate and closeted for much of his life.

“Finding someone who is a hero, who is so dedicated to his patients (and) who also happens to be gay, is exciting to me,” Grassi said. “Although Dr. Wolf has many walls and deals with many complex issues, I wanted him to live in today’s world. I wanted all of our business and relationships to feel urgent and in conversation with the things we are experiencing right now.”

To explore other aspects of Dr. To shape Wolf’s personality, Grassi developed a quartet of young interns (Aury Krebs, Ashleigh LaThrop, Alex MacNicoll and Spence Moore II) and two foil characters: Dr. Carol Pierce (Tamberla Perry) and Dr. Josh Nichols (Teddy Sears).

Pierce is loosely based on Dr. Carol E. Burnett, the first black graduate and one of the first women to graduate from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York in 1960, who was also Sacks’ close friend.

What Dr. As for Nichols, Grassi said he saw the character as Wolf’s “adversary who would have very different ideas about medicine and a different view of what is best for a patient, someone who would be a rival with whom he would go toe to toe could go. with.” It also gave Quinto the chance to reunite with Sears, with whom he co-starred in the 2011 premiere season of “American Horror Story.”

While reviews of “Brilliant Minds” have been largely positive, Grassi is aware that some viewers may dismiss the show as yet another entry into a TV landscape with no shortage of medical dramas, with “Grey’s Anatomy” entering its 21st season starts. last week and “ER” remains an enduring favorite 15 years after it last aired.

Grassi says he is “a big fan of all these shows” and expects “Brilliant Minds” to “honor” such predecessors as the season progresses. Yet he is quick to emphasize that his show “does something different.”

“What really sets our show apart is Oliver Sacks,” he said. “This is a love letter to a real doctor who treated real patients and told their stories.”

He further noted, “Many medical dramas are usually about the quick fix. We want the cure, the solution… we want everything to be okay and we want to move on. But the reality in medicine is that there is often no quick fix. You can leave the hospital and your problems are not solved. When you receive a diagnosis for which there is no cure, how do you find a way forward? How do you find purpose? That’s a theme we explore during our show and it feels unique.”

Watch the trailer for “Brilliant Minds” below: