“Brilliant Minds” gives a real medical pioneer a modern makeover

When he began writing NBC's medical drama “Brilliant Minds,” series creator Michael Grassi said he only had one actor in mind to portray his series' protagonist: Dr. Oliver Wolf.

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 acclaimed revivals of “The Glass Menagerie” and “The Boys in the Band.” ” among other shows.

“I’ve never seen Zach play it safe in a performance. He always makes a big splash in everything he does,” Grassi, whose TV credits include “Schitt’s Creek” and “Riverdale,” told HuffPost. “We’ve seen him play villains before. We've seen him in so many genres. But what Zach brings to the show – something I didn't know was possible – is incredible wit and lightness. I look forward to viewers seeing how much warmth and humor he brings.”

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

Like Sacks, Dr. Wolf is both a respected neurologist and a man of extremes – in the series' pilot episode, he swims in the murky waters of New York's Hudson River in the evening, in the midst of a professional crisis, as the real Sacks was said to have done. The character shares Sacks' love of motorcycles and indoor fern gardens and also suffers from prosopagnosia, a cognitive disorder also known as face blindness that allows him to empathize with his patients in a way that some of his colleagues cannot.

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

“To find someone who is a hero, who cares so much for his patients [and] “Whoever happens to be gay is exciting to me,” Grassi said. “While Dr. Wolf has a lot of hurdles and deals with a lot of complex things, I wanted him to live in today's world. I wanted all of our cases and relationships to feel urgent and in conversation with the things we are experiencing now.”

To view other aspects of Dr. To flesh out Wolf's personality, Grassi developed a quartet of young interns (Aury Krebs, Ashleigh LaThrop, Alex MacNicoll and Spence Moore II) as well as two supporting characters: 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 the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York in 1960, and who was also Sacks' close friend.

What Dr. As for Nichols, Grassi said he viewed the character as Wolf's “adversary who would have a very different idea of ​​medicine and a different perspective on what's best for a patient, someone who would be a rival that he could compete with.” It also gave Quinto a chance to reunite with Sears, with whom he starred in the first season of American Horror Story in 2011.

Although reviews of “Brilliant Minds” have been largely positive, Grassi is aware that some viewers may dismiss the series as another entry into a TV landscape that has no shortage of medical dramas since “Grey's Anatomy” The 21st season started last week and “ER” is still a long-running hit even 15 years after its last broadcast.

Grassi says he's “a big fan of all of these shows” and expects “Brilliant Minds” to “honor” such predecessors as the season progresses. Still, he's quick to point out 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 continued: “A lot of 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 in reality there is often no quick solution in medicine. You can leave the hospital and your problems will not be solved. How do you find a path forward when you receive a diagnosis for which there is no cure? How do you find meaning? That’s a theme we explore in our show and it feels unique.”

Watch the trailer for “Brilliant Minds” below: