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SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from Monday night’s episode of NBC‘s Brilliant Minds.
On the heels of losing his last patient Roman, Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) gets a bit of a reprieve from his case in Monday night’s Episode 8, which tells a story of aging with grace and without losing a sense of vigor and vitality.
Quinto welcomed his friend Susan Bay Nimoy, the widow of his late Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy, to help him out. In the episode, Nimoy plays Dr. Wolf’s latest patient, an older woman named June, who is experiencing a bout of hyper sexuality that her sons find disturbing.
Wolf works to figure out the medical reason for her impulsive and somewhat reckless sexual decision-making, while also helping June retain her zest for life in her later years and convincing her sons that her desires are not only normal, they should be celebrated.
Treating June, Wolf is also once again reminded not to let his desires pass him by out of fear.
After his bold move kissing Josh (Teddy Sears) at the end of Episode 7, Wolf has to fight for their relationship when Muriel (Donna Murphy) inserts herself, pushing Josh away — yet again illustrating that tensions that Wolf was worried about when accepting the job at Bronx General in the first place. But, after confronting his mother, Wolf takes inspiration from June’s story and persuades Josh to continue exploring their connection.
In the interview below, Quinto breaks down the episode and working with Nimoy. He also teases what’s to come from the remainder of the season.
DEADLINE: What has been the most compelling case to you thus far?
ZACHARY QUINTO: I find them all compelling, to be honest. It’s difficult to narrow it down to just one. The landscape of the brain and the experience of consciousness is something that I’m endlessly fascinated by, and so this show and the stories that we’re telling this season allow me to dive into that and explore it in a way that is really exciting. Also, the connection Oliver Sacks and the origin of the fact that everything that we’re looking at is possible, is real. When I first started reading early scripts from this season, there were definitely times where I was like, ‘This can’t be real.’ And it always is.
I think, the second episode that we did about the basketball coach who loses her sense of perception. That, to me, is really probably the most interesting, because it’s the most terrifying in a way. That was our first episode back after we did the pilot. So I think there’s something significant about that story, and then also the story that just aired, the story about the the implant in the brain of Roman, who is unable to communicate. Then we give him the opportunity to communicate, and he communicates that he wants to die. There was something so impactful about that journey, too. So I think those are the two that stand out to me from the season. But I’m interested in them all. I love making the show.
DEADLINE: The tone is generally more hopeful than many of the other medical dramas out right now. How did that tone influence you when you were considering the role?
QUINTO: That is all motivated by Oliver’s Sacks and the way he saw the world and the way that he saw patients and treated patients, and so it did resonate, for me, specifically that aspect of it. I think the idea of acknowledging what we’re capable of, even in the face of unfathomable resistance or adversity has literally never been more salient than it is right now. I feel that I’ve played a lot of really dark, twisted characters in my career, and they’ve been incredible experiences, all of them, but to be a part of a show right now that is putting that message out into the world makes me feel like it’s lined up with my own personal journey and my creative Journey and my professional journey. So I’m really happy and grateful to be a part of that. And Michael Grassi, our showrunner, that’s how he leads, and that’s how he treats people…there’s a spirit around the experience, around the show that may sound a little ‘woo, woo’ but it’s actually something that I believe in, the lineage of consciousness. This is what Dr. Oliver Sacks was fascinated by and motivated by and inspired by. It’s what inspires me and Michael and other people to create and to explore the human experience.
The world’s changed a lot since the show premiered, and the messages that it’s putting out there, I hope, are somehow in their own small way, a little whisper, a little reminder to the people who are listening to themselves and understanding that what we’re seeing all around us is not a reflection of everyone, and there’s a whole collection of people who are looking for the path forward. There’s a lot of great and existential unknown, and that can be terrifying. But Oliver Sacks was someone who was driven by the curiosity and driven by the possibility of what happens if you lean into that unknown and into the place where it might be terrifying, and you move through the fear. So that’s really the essence of the story that we’re trying to tell here, because it is lifted from his life, and that’s what I mean when I talk about creative lineage. It comes from somewhere before us, and it lasts, ideally, after we’re here, and we all drop in and embody it at different points along the way, but it’s not ours. So I think that spirit of the show is really reflective of the times that we’re living in, and for that I’m really grateful.
DEADLINE: What made you think of Susan Bay Nimoy for the role of June? I saw you say that was your idea.
QUINTO: Well, I’ve known Susan for a very long time, and she’s a very significant person in my life. We’re very, very dear friends, and this actually kind of ties right back to the point that I was just making about this lineage of creativity with her husband, Leonard. Leonard came into my life, and we had this very profound experience working the Star Trek films together. I never would have known at that time that part of why he was coming into my life was to bring Susan, and then after Leonard passed away, Susan and I continued and deepened our friendship. So it’s been such a lovely journey that we’ve been on, and I’ve come to know her so well, and she is someone who is a real inspiration for me in terms of how to age gracefully and how to maintain vitality. It all comes down, I think, to that same principle that Oliver Sacks really was led by, which is curiosity. What can I learn? What can I do that is going to challenge me and and necessitate me expanding beyond my limitations or beyond my comfort zone, and put me in a space that I haven’t been in before, which could be scary?
We’re talking about the same thing in all of this. So for Susan, it was like, ‘Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense.’ She’s 82 years old and is so engaged and connected. She was an actress. She hasn’t acted in 30 years, but she has acted in the past. And I just thought, ‘Yes, this is a moment.’ The character is someone who’s really wanting to reconnect with a part of herself that many people don’t encourage or facilitate that kind of connection. So she’s driven by this desire to be a whole person, to be a complete human being, even though she’s aging. I believe that’s Susan. That’s my experience of Susan. She’s, never shut off. She’s never closed the doors within herself. She’s really so open…She was so excited, and she did such a beautiful job. I thought she really brings her life experience and her perspective to the role, and it was a delight to have her there.
DEADLINE: I thought June’s story was really beautiful, and it seems like it really had a profound impact on Oliver, especially after losing Roman. How do you think those back-to-back experiences affected him?
QUINTO: I mean, I think Oliver’s journey on the show is really cumulative. I think that’s also true of life, right? We can’t have an experience without bringing our previous experience to bear. So I think there’s an evolution to it. I think what Oliver learns from Roman is how to make space for other people’s experiences or perspectives, even if they are at odds with his own and and that’s something that I really am mindful of in my own personal experience…then with with June, I think it’s really about resilience. It’s about this combination of surrender and persistence. These two opposing ideas, but they’re both necessary, and we have to know when to embrace them and when to withdraw from them. I think that Oliver, in the course of this part of the season, is reckoning with that. He’s reckoning with when to push forward, because he knows that his belief and his point of view and his perspective is necessary, and when to sort of recognize that it doesn’t always have to go his way. Those are, I think, the lessons that he’s learning at this point with Roman, with June, and he’ll continue to evolve, and he’ll bring those lessons with him to learn other lessons later. That’s the cool thing about the show, and about the way that the cases reflect back to the doctors and reflect back to the world of the show that we’re invested in from a character standpoint.
DEADLINE: What do you make of Oliver’s relationship with his mom at this point? He is clearly still working through the trauma surrounding that relationship, and in moments he makes breakthroughs, but in this episode, he lashes out at her again after she interferes with Josh.
QUINTO: Oliver’s relationship with Muriel is so complicated, and I think Michael’s really captured something that I know I can relate to, and I’m sure many people can relate to, this mother-son dynamic, and particularly mother-gay son dynamic. I think there is a lot wrapped up in it. And Muriel, while operating from a desire to protect Oliver, actually ended up really damaging him, and and I think that’s what they are unpacking at this point in the season, and they’re doing it in the context of having to work together, which is even trickier. I love this aspect of the show. I had my own complicated relationship with my mother, and I love the opportunity to explore that and to bring it into these narratives. I don’t really know what to say about it, because I feel like any parental relationship is always unfolding. I hope that we get to keep telling these stories, because I really want to see where Muriel and Oliver go.
But they’re really in the thick of it here. I think Oliver feels really controlled by her in a certain way. He’s also reckoning with the constructs and belief systems that she instilled in him and built up around him, that have defined who he is and how he’s related to people. He’s just breaking through those to be able to have some sense of intimate connection with Josh. So I think he’s reckoning with a lot. One of the things that I think is a big part of this story is, like, what takes Oliver so long? And if you look at the real life Oliver Sacks, he was celibate for 35 years of his life, I think for very different reasons that had much more to do with the social, political environment that he grew up in. But with Oliver Wolf, I think we can focus it more on the psychological impact that his upbringing had on his developing sexual identity, and say that the beliefs that were instilled in him, primarily by his mother, made him feel somehow fractured from an integrated, easy, comfortable life as a gay man.
So I think we come into this story also at a real inflection point for Wolf, where…largely through the experience that he has with Roman, he’s deciding to to step into that abyss of the unknown. And it’s thrilling for him, and it’s exciting, and I think eventually the hope is that Muriel will be excited for him too, but that’s not the history that they share, and so that’s what they’re reckoning with to a certain extent.
DEADLINE: Speaking of Josh, I think I expected a bit more of a slow burn from that relationship. How did you feel about them kissing and beginning to explore their feelings so early in the show?
QUINTO: I don’t know that we considered it that early. I mean, it’s episode eight, so it’s more than halfway through the season. Structural decisions about how things unfold and the world of the show are really up to Michael. So I didn’t really participate in the timing of how that would all unfold. But, I think it’s a good moment to introduce it, because it gives us a time to explore it and see where it wants to lead us at the end of the first season. If we’re lucky enough to continue telling these stories, then we get to explore where we might want it to go from there. So I think it’s kind of a midpoint in the first season. It seems like a good time to present that dynamic so that you can explore it and then anticipate where it might want to go based on how people are investing in it.
I felt like we knew that it was brewing. Obviously, Teddy and I knew it was brewing. We sort of peppered our scenes with that awareness just lightly leading up to episode seven. I’m excited to see what happens. Frankly, I love working with Teddy. He’s such a wonderful actor and a really amazing guy. He’s really, really just one of the nicest people. We had a history of working together. We worked together on the first season of American Horror Story. We play gay ghosts to together, and it was really nice to reunite with him, and connect with him and work with him. So I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with Josh and Wolf.
DEADLINE: What else are you excited for audiences to see from the remainder of this season?
QUINTO: I think so much becomes clearer in the second part of the season about why Oliver is who he is, and I feel like it drives to a season finale, which answers one of the biggest questions of the season but also unloads about 100 other questions that need to be answered from there. I didn’t really read ahead so much while we were filming. We would get the episode we were about to shoot, sometimes in the middle of the one we were shooting. So it was like I was a little bit ahead, but it wasn’t until we finished the whole season and I could look back and see how Michael had structured it all. It was really wonderful to have that perspective…from a story standpoint, he’s so smart about how he’s layering and layering and layering the stories in and revealing more about the characters in each episode — not just Wolf, but all the interns and everybody in the show. So I think one of the things I’m looking forward to for audiences is to for them to get to know everybody else.
I love the actors on our show so much. They’re all so talented, and so I guess that as I’m talking out loud, the thing that I’m most excited for is for those stories to also really be a part of what drives the show and hopefully what engages audiences, because our goal is for people to see themselves in these stories. So the more you know about all of the people in this world, the more likely that is to happen. Not all of the relating to these characters has to happen through my character. They’re really wonderful, complex, grounded performances by the whole cast on the show. I just really am so lucky to be working with people who are so talented and who are so committed, and who are so invested, and who are so nice.
