Playing Doctor

In NBC’s new fall series Brilliant Minds, Zachary Quinto, best known as Star Trek’s stoic Mr. Spock, is getting a bit more emotional as Dr. Oliver Wolf, an unconventional neurologist based on the real-life British groundbreaker, Dr. Oliver Sacks. “Oliver Sacks dedicated his life to de-stigmatizing mental illness,” notes exec producer Michael Grassi (Riverdale). “And I think this show is taking things that might be invisible or scary and people having really interesting conversations and debates and arguments and talking about things that feel urgent.”

In the opener, Wolf acclimates to his new gig as Attending Physician at the Bronx General Hospital, where he has been brought in by longtime friend Dr. Carol Pierce (All American: Homecoming‘s Tamberla Perry) to work with a team of interns (The Kominsky Method’s Ashleigh LaThrop, Bad Monkey’s Alex MacNicoll, Leverage: Redemption’s Aury Krebs and All American’s Spence Moore II ) in the facility’s general neurology department. A motorcycle-riding, enigmatic genius, Quinto’s Wolf is both a rules bender destined to ruffle some feathers and the first openly gay lead character of a network medical drama played by an openly gay actor.

And even though the factual inspiration for Quinto’s character “came out very, very late in his life,” continues Grassi, that journey won’t be the fictional Wolf’s main drive. “One of the biggest things for me [was] if we were going to be having a gay lead at the center of a show like this, I wanted him to be out and proud [already],” continues Grassi, adding that his other goal was to not have Oliver’s sexuality “be a source of the drama.” It will be the source of some character growth, however. “When we first meet Dr. Wolf from the pilot, he’s a bit of a loner and I think this season’s story is [him] starting to let those walls down a little bit. Starting to let people in romantically as well.” So while there’s no word on what sort of dynamic develops between Wolf and hospital colleague Dr. Josh Nichols (Teddy Sears of The Night Agent), Grassi does hint that “there may be some love interest development in the season.”

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For the most part, though, Wolf will be busy dealing with a full battery of patients (as well as a few personal matters) pulled from the late Sacks’ own files, including an episode featuring Yellowjackets’ teen Misty, Samantha Hanratty, as a woman who makes quite the entrance. “I don’t want to spoil too much,” teases Grassi. “But let’s just say she walks into the hospital wearing a wedding dress covered in blood.” Among the other guest stars set to check in: Broadway icon André DeShields, who appeared on Grassi’s Katy Keene, will be featured as an Alzheimer’s patient Wolf helps reconnect with his family in his final days; his fellow Keene alum Julia Chan as one of Pierce’s therapeutic patients; Mandy Patinkin as a family doctor who joins the staff of Bronx General Hospital; Steve Howey as an injured mechanic facing a tragic choice; and The Continental’s Mishel Prada, whom Grassi says will “slam into” the world of the show as “a paramedic in the Bronx…with a really big storyline [that] explores really interesting themes that are so much in Minds‘ wheelhouse.”

And it’s those themes that Grassi hopes will resonate with viewers of all ages, especially given the increase in public discourse around mental health matters on social media platforms. “We talk about that a lot in the [writers’] room,” he says, agreeing that people have gotten more comfortable discussing depression, anxiety, and other psychological diagnoses since Covid. “I go to dinner with my friends and everyone’s talking about what SSRI they’re taking, like “Well, I’m on this or that.’ Those conversations weren’t happening five years ago, 10 years ago. And I’m very excited to be putting those conversations on a big medical drama in a way that feels really lived in and baked in.”

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“I think one of the things that I love about the intern characters is that they represent the way people are talking about mental health right now,” he continues. “They get to have really rich and complex point-of-views on this type of stuff and get to be in very real dialogue.”

Still, he knows this is not a cure-all for what ails the world. “I think as a society we’ve come a long way with mental health and we’re talking about it in a way that we haven’t before, but we still have a long way to go.”

Brilliant Minds, Series Premiere, Monday, September 23, 10/9c, NBC