[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Brilliant Minds.]

The Big Picture

Dr. Oliver Wolf in the NBC series ‘Brilliant Minds’ is based on real-life neurologist Oliver Sacks.
Series star Zachary Quinto appreciates knowing the big picture of the show’s plan.
Quinto was grateful for the opportunity to have Susan Nimoy guest star on an episode, and feels the possibilities for the future of the series are endless.

The NBC series Brilliant Minds, inspired by the life and work of physician and author Oliver Sacks, follows Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) as he explores and tries to understand the human mind with his team of interns. In episode eight, entitled “The Lovesick Widow,” June (Susan Nimoy) is brought in by her adult sons who are concerned about her sudden hypersexuality and the possibility she’s showing signs of dementia. While Dr. Wolf tries to understand whether there are underlying factors, he also encourages June’s sons to keep an open mind about her life’s choices.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Quinto discussed what drew him to Brilliant Minds and the opportunity to play Dr. Oliver Wolf, the wide array of source material he was able to dive into, the big life concepts that the series brings up, why he likes to know as much about the overall broad strokes of the story as possible, why this experience at NBC is different from his time on Heroes, exploring Dr. Wolf’s sexuality, why he wanted Susan Nimoy (widow of Leonard Nimoy) for this particular episode, and how stories involving the human mind seem endless.

Zachary Quinto’s ‘Brilliant Minds’ Character Dr. Oliver Wolf Is Based on Real-Life Neurologist Oliver Sacks
Image via NBC

Collider: I love how different this character is, but you never fully know what you’re signing on for when you decide to do a network TV series. What was it that drew you to this and made you want to do it? This is obviously not your first TV series, so what possibilities did you see?

ZACHARY QUINTO: First of all, I think it’s important to acknowledge that the character I play, Dr. Oliver Wolf, is based on a real-life doctor, Oliver Sacks. For those who don’t know, Oliver Sacks is a world-renowned neurologist who lived and worked primarily in the mid to late 20th century. He died in 2015 at the age of 83, but he was also a prolific author and he pretty single-handedly resurrected the art form of case studies. Before medicine became primarily diagnostic, the ways in which doctors learned about unique cases and different cases was by writing about them, and then reading one another’s writing, so there was a much more human element to medicine at that time. Oliver Sacks was fascinated by a return to that, or at least an inclusion of that in medicine, as it becomes more influenced by technology and the diagnostic aspect of it. He wrote and wrote and wrote.

He wrote the case studies, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat, Anthropologist on Mars, Musicophilia, and Awakenings. There were so many books that he wrote, but also a memoir, and he gave TED talks and interviews. There was so much source material for me, which is always interesting, as an actor, to be able to dive into that kind of stuff and use it as a springboard into a character that I’m able to create from my imagination. My creative collaboration with Michael Grassi, our showrunner, was another huge draw for me with his spirit of creativity and the way he likes to work. From the beginning, there were so many things made sense, with where I am creatively, personally and intellectually, what I’m curious about, mental health, and what is consciousness. These are all big concepts and life ideas that I’m really interested in anyway, so the idea of being able to show up to work and explore them is a no-brainer.

Related ‘Brilliant Minds’ Review: NBC’s Medical Drama Needs To Recognize Its Own Greatness While filled with amazing elements, the new series needs to stop trying so hard to be different.

Your showrunner spoke at TCA about how, when he pitched the show to NBC, he knew what the pilot was, what Season 1 would be, and what the plan for the series would be. How much of that plan are you aware of? Do you even want to know that much information?

QUINTO: I do want to know. I think especially when you’re telling long form stories that have unexpected turns, it’s good for me to know, as an actor, because then I can make choices that are informed by where the story is going and, in some ways, I can take care of the audience’s experience of how that unfolds. For me, it’s helpful to know. Not for everybody, I’m sure. But with Michael and I, there’s so much communication between us. I love talking to him and hanging out with him. Also, from a creative standpoint, there’s an overall conversation at the beginning of the season, and then we have a meeting about every script. We talk about how things are landing, and if I have any thoughts or ideas or questions that might help inform the next draft of the script.

I think it’s helpful to know where a story going because then you can help steer it in that direction. What I don’t always need to know so much about are the cases themselves because the character that I’m playing is trying to figure out the mystery as well. I do like to have the conversations about the cases as they’re unfolding in the episodes. We have an incredible team of medical consultants that work with us and that we have access to, so I love to have those conversations while we’re filming scenes about how certain procedures would actually happen. We’re always striving for a measure of authenticity in the medical aspect of the show, which I know little about in real life. It’s good to have people guiding me with that side of things.

‘Brilliant Minds’ Has Been a Different Experience for Zachary Quinto Than ‘Heroes’ Was
Image via NBC

You’re back on NBC, which definitely shaped your life and career with Heroes. How does it feel to be back on TV at that network, when the TV landscape has changed so much, in the time between just those two shows? How different do you feel, as an actor and as a person?

QUINTO: I feel there are no mistakes. My feeling of this experience has been very much a return, but with a new perspective. Coming back to a place that really changed the trajectory of my career and my life, but doing it at a time when I have continued to do a lot of work on myself and excavation within me. I definitely have a different perspective on it all now than I did back then, so I’m grateful for this to be a mirror of that. To see myself at that age in this experience has been really moving. It’s been, honestly, really healing and I feel really grateful for it. I feel very supported by the people who are at NBC now, who are an entirely different regime of people than were there 15 years ago. I feel the evolution in whoever they were then to who they are now, as well, so I do think that there’s a conversation about the work. The landscape has changed entirely, so to be back in a network environment at a time when there does feel like there’s a bit of a return to that kind of storytelling is really gratifying. None of it is lost on me. I’m really trying to be aware of this experience as it’s happening, rather than just letting it sweep me away. Maybe that’s a little bit of what happened 15 years ago.

Related The True Story Behind NBC’s ‘Brilliant Minds’ The upcoming series is already a standout.

It’s nice to see an openly gay character leading a primetime network TV show and I love that we get to see some bits of what his personal life might look like. Is that something you wanted to take the time to explore on this show? Did you want to find that balance of the procedural with the personal?

QUINTO: Oliver Wolf, as did Oliver Sacks, has a very complicated relationship to his sexuality and his identity as a gay man, the difference being that in Oliver Sacks’ time, that identity was really a single-issue definition of self. I think that Oliver Sacks was celibate for 35 years of his life. It wasn’t until very late in life that he found a relationship with someone that was sustainable and substantive and meaningful, on a profound level for them both. I think part of the reason for that was that he recognized the truth that, if he identified as a gay man, it would diminish his opportunity to contribute to his field in a way that he knew he was singularly designed to contribute. So, he denied and divorced himself of this aspect of who he was. The part of it that’s still significant, at a time when openly gay characters are not really a story anymore, is that it’s an openly gay character for whom that’s only one tiny aspect of his identity. It’s not the single defining aspect of who the character is, by any stretch of the imagination. And that’s true of me too, as a person and as an actor.

And so, to get to play a character for whom that’s true, in the context of this social conversation that we’re having now, as opposed to the social conversation we were having 15 years ago, when I first started my career in a public way, as opposed to the conversation we were having 20 or 30 years before that when Oliver Sacks was at the height of his career. There’s something that’s significant about the evolution of that conversation that me, as an openly gay actor playing the first openly gay lead of a medical series on a network in primetime, has. But it’s also balanced by the fact that the significance is the insignificance. It’s all happening at the same time, which I think is just like life experience. Hopefully, that’s what we’re aiming for.

Zachary Quinto Is Grateful He Was Able To Convince Susan Nimoy to Guest on ‘Brilliant Minds’

Yes, this is a procedural, in the sense that you’re exploring different cases every week, but these are cases that are so interesting that they don’t necessarily have an answer or a cure, which allows for possibilities of great guest stars. What was it like to have Susan Nimoy do an episode of this series?

QUINTO: I’m so grateful that I [got her to do it]. Susan and I have been dear friends. Obviously, I met her through my connection with Leonard, and since Leonard’s passing, our friendship and our bond has only deepened. I’m very familiar with where she is in her life and in her own journey. She’s an 81-year-old vivacious, beautiful, dynamic, curious woman who’s still asking herself all these big questions. And when I read this particular episode, I just knew, inherently, that Susan would connect to this character and bring her to life. She hasn’t acted in [many] years, but I reached out and said, “Is this something you’d even be interested in?” I knew that the answer would be yes, but I didn’t know just how many exclamation points would follow the word on the text chain. She was really, really game for this, and she does an absolutely beautiful job in the episode. I’m so proud of her, and I’m so grateful that I got to share that experience with her, which ties me back to the spirit of the great and phenomenally influential Leonard Nimoy. I hope she gets other work from it. I’d love to see Susan have an acting career because she’s so good.

And then, in terms of the cases themselves, the mind, the brain, and consciousness is the last real frontier of the human experience. There is an endlessness to the stories that we can tell. And yes, the guest stars that we’ve had and the guest stars that I think we could have, I hope that’s an indication that there’s a lot more story to tell and that we get to keep telling the stories. I love this exploration of the mind. It’s something that I’m really curious about and interested in, and I think a lot of people out there are. Maybe that will inform their experience of watching the show and keep them coming back for more. I know I want to.

Related ‘Brilliant Minds’ Pulled a ‘Memento’ in This Mind-Bending Episode Memory is sacred.

The show follows Dr. Oliver Wolf, a brilliant but eccentric neurologist inspired by the real-life work of Dr. Oliver Sacks. As Dr. Wolf and his team tackle mysterious and complex neurological cases, they also struggle with their own personal challenges and mental health.Release Date September 23, 2024 Main Genre Drama Seasons 1 Network NBC Expand

Brilliant Minds airs on NBC and is available to stream on Peacock. Check out this behind-the-scenes look at the series:

Watch on Peacock