NEW YORK – There's a great moment in the first episode of the new NBC medical drama “Brilliant Minds” when it becomes very clear that we're not dealing with a typical TV doctor.
Zachary Quinto is behind the wheel of a car barreling down a New York City parkway, packed with hospital interns, abruptly weaving in and out of lanes, when one of them asks, “Does anyone want to share a Klonopin?” — a drug sometimes used to treat panic disorders.
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“Oh, glory to God, yes, please,” says Quinto, reaching an arm into the back seat. The internthen breaks the pill in half and gives a sliver to the driver, who swallows it, as the other interns share stunned looks.
Quinto, playing the character Dr. Oliver Wolf, is clearly not portraying any dour, by-the-rules doctor here — he’s playing a character inspired by Dr. Oliver Sacks, the path-breaking researcher and author who rose to fame in the 1970s and was once called the “poet laureate of medicine.”
“He was someone who was tirelessly committed to the dignity of the human experience. And so I feel really grateful to be able to tell his story and to continue his legacy in a way that I hope our show is able to do,” says Quinto.
He's a fern-loving doctor
“Brilliant Minds” takes Sack’s personality — a motorcycle-riding, fern-loving advocate for mental health who died in 2015 at 82 — and puts him in the present day, where the creators theorize he would have no idea who Taylor Swift is or own a cell phone. The series debuts Monday on NBC, right after “The Voice.”
“It’s almost as if we’re imagining what it would have been like if Oliver Sacks had been born at a different time,” says Quinto. “We use the real life person as our North Star through everything we’re doing and all the stories that we were telling, but we were able to find our own flavor and our own perspective in the telling of those stories as well.”
In upcoming episodes, Wolf and his team deal with a biker friend whose brain tumor is affecting his memories, a mother who after surgery feels disconnected from her children, and a 12-year-old girl who gets seizures whenever she laughs.
Aside from the weekly emergencies, there is also a longer, series-long narrative exploring Wolf's personal life and his fraught relationship with his doctor parents, especially his late father, who had mental illness.
“I think over the course of the season, we see Dr. Wolf start to let his guard down a little bit by helping his patients and by mentoring the interns. And he’s learning from them as much as they’re learning from him,” says creator and showrunner Michael Grassi.
The series hopes to satisfy viewers who come for the complex medical mysteries — with delicious jargon like “elevated intracranial pressure” and “abnormal neurocardiogenic reflex” — but also the very human connections between patient and doctor.
“I always say if people watch our show and they see themselves and the stories that we’re telling, then we’re doing our job,” says Quinto.
‘A place of optimism’
This isn't the first time Sacks has been portrayed. His 1973 book, “Awakenings,” about hospital patients who’d spent decades in a kind of frozen state until he tried a new treatment, led to a 1990 movie in which Sacks was played by Robin Williams.
The real Sacks lived in self-imposed celibacy for more than three decades, only coming out late in life. But Quinto and Grassi were not interested in having their hero closeted.
“If we were going to be having a gay male lead of our show in 2024, I really wanted them to be out and proud and that not to be something that he was hiding,” said Grassi.
Grassi said when he was creating the show he always had Quinto in mind, being a fan of the actor's depth but also his humor. Grassi knew it was the perfect fit while filming the driving scene for the pilot when the intern offers her pill.
“Zach on that day ad-libbed like a million different responses,” says Grassi. "And they were all funnier than the last. Editing was so hard to choose which one. But that’s when I knew. I’m like, ‘This is going to be great.’”
For Quinto, “Brilliant Minds” offers a chance to play a charismatic, empathic hero. While Quinto broke out as Mr. Spock in “Star Trek,” his resume also includes some less savory characters — a serial killer who tore out the brains of superheroes in “Heroes,” the deranged Dr. Oliver Thredson on "American Horror Story: Asylum" and a demonic drifter in AMC’s “NOS4A2.”
“After all the dark and villainous characters that I’ve played, it’s really nice to anchor a story playing a character who is really operating from a place of optimism, hope, compassion and love and joy.”