<\/p>\n
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) \u2014 The first season of the NBC medical drama \u201cBrilliant Minds\u201d found a compelling blend of mysterious ailments with the angst and personal turmoil of the entire staff. No one suffered through more problems than Zachary Quinto\u2019s character of Dr. Oliver Wolf from dealing with the optical condition prosopagnosia, better known as face blindness, to meeting the father he thought died 30 years ago.<\/p>\n
Quinto wants to assure fans of the series \u2013 that airs 10 p.m. Mondays \u2013 there is more to come in the second season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe pick up season two in a really unexpected place, both physically and emotionally, for Oliver Wolf,\u201d Quino says. \u201cThere comes with that an inherent mystery to the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kick things off from a really unexpected point of view, and then that feeds into it. That leads us up to solving that mystery in the second season.\u201d<\/p>\n
The series \u2013 inspired by the life and work of world-famous author and physician Oliver Sacks \u2013 follows a larger-than-life neurologist, Dr. Oliver Wolf (Quinto), and his team of interns\u00a0as they explore the last great frontier \u2013 the human\u00a0mind.<\/p>\n
The blend of personal and professional woes starts in the second season opener as Dr. Wolf helps an MMA fighter with mysterious symptoms. At the same time, Dr. Pierce (Tamberla Perry), considers a career outside of Bronx General.<\/p>\n
John Clarence Stewart,\u00a0Brian Altemus, and\u00a0Bellamy Young are joining the cast.<\/p>\n
Quinto adds, \u201cYou\u2019re definitely going to see a character who is struggling at times to maintain balance and for whom his patience really reflects back at him, his own state of consciousness, his own state of being.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat line gets continued through the second season between the medical components of the show and the underlying emotional dynamics and psychological complexities that exist between all the characters that we know already, and the new characters that we\u2019re going to meet this season.\u201d<\/p>\n
The way Quinto describes the design of \u201cBrilliant Minds is that stories straddle an intellectual and an emotional line. The intellectual elements are rooted in the medical mysteries. He says the other is the emotional satisfaction of understanding the humanity of the people that are dealing with those mysteries.<\/p>\n
Perry\u2019s character is seeing how the emotional can impact the intellectual as her character has been put on leave at the same time she\u2019s going through a divorce.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has a lot of new territory to navigate at the beginning of the season. We see how she\u2019s going to do that, where she ended up, where she landed and how she\u2019s moving forward after the divorce. So that\u2019s going to play heavily into the opening episodes of the season,\u201d Perry says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrilliant Minds\u201d was originally called \u201cDr. Wolf,\u201d but the producers decided to change the name because there were several other shows with wolf in the name and they didn\u2019t want any confusion. \u201cBrilliant Minds\u201d became the title because everyone decided that it sounded more like a medical program.<\/p>\n
Quinto jokes that with his track record of working on sci-fi and fantasy projects viewers may have assumed he was playing a character who could change into a wolf.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this supernatural quality to roles that I\u2019ve played in the past. And I just agree, there\u2019s something really right about this title,\u201d Quinto says. \u201cIt\u2019s about the doctors on the show who are obviously brilliant and use their brilliance to help their patients, but it is also about the patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people who have minds that are unconventional. They\u2019re maybe not the minds that they wish that they had, the brains that they wish that they had, but our doctors are teaching them how to recognize their own brilliance. And that\u2019s something that I think is a throughline of the show, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because \u201cBrilliant Minds is a medical drama, the actors face the challenge of being able to rattle off technical words without pause. Before Quinto can talk about that challenge, Perry jumps in to say that Quinto arrives at work every day with his script under full control.<\/p>\n
Quinto calls Perry\u2019s evaluation as being very \u201csweet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to know what I\u2019m talking about as much as I can. We have a really wonderful on-set medical advisor consultant who we adore, and we have a number of doctors on our writing staff, so there\u2019s no shortage of people that we can turn to,\u201d Quinto says. \u201cI find part of the joy of the character is that I\u2019m playing somebody who has a secondhand intrinsic knowledge of what he\u2019s saying and what it means.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe audience doesn\u2019t necessarily need to know the specificity of it, as long as the character does, and so I understand that assignment. And it\u2019s something that I take to heart, as I\u2019m learning my text. It\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/i><\/p>\n