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Brilliant Minds' Alex MacNicoll on Dr. Van's Mirror-Touch: "It Made Me a Better Person"
Dr. Van Markus brings a special kind of empathy to treating his patients at Bronx General Hospital.
The brilliant doctors working at Brilliant Minds' Bronx General Hospital bring an unusually empathetic approach to practicing medicine. Intern Dr. Van Markus (Alex MacNicoll) takes that to another level.
RELATED: Brilliant Minds' Dr. Markus Feels His Patients' Symptoms: Mirror-Touch Synesthesia Explained
Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) diagnoses Van with Mirror-Touch Synesthesia, which, in the most basic terms, means he can physically feel other people's emotions and bodily sensations. A patient gets an injection? He feels the needle. Someone's crying on the subway? He "loses it."
"And if I'm being honest, I'm still processing what it all means," Van tells Dr. Dana Dang (Aury Krebs) in Episode 5, "The Haunted Marine," when she learns about his diagnosis and excitedly calls it his "superpower."
Alex MacNicoll talks Van's Mirror-Touch Synesthesia diagnosis
MacNicoll told NBC Insider that understanding and portraying Van's Mirror-Touch symptoms was part of the audition process.
"From the gate, it was talked about ... that he has this condition," MacNicoll said. "It's a rare condition. But it's basically, like, super empathy. And then the showrunners and the creators and the writers, they all had this subject material to go off of. There's this one doctor, in particular, who has [Mirror-Touch]. And so, basically, it was just all about reading up on that and learning about his experience and trying to apply it to my own life and all that."
Dr. Joel Salinas is a neurologist at NYU Langone and Massachusetts General who has Mirror-Touch Synesthesia, and who still works in medicine. Salinas has spoken about how he's managed to "work around" his condition to still help his patients — a journey that Dr. Van is following onscreen.
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"[I was] really just trying to be completely open, completely present, and ... get all my personal stuff out of there so that I could just kind of feel whoever the person we were dealing with in the scene or in the story was going through," MacNicoll said.
"I think it made me a better person ... it was really nice," he added.
By the end of the episode, Dana — who Van had sworn to secrecy about his diagnosis — has told the other interns, which was Van's plan the whole time; he knew she wouldn't be able to keep her mouth shut, so it saved him from having to do the legwork of explaining himself.
Greater Empathy for Invisible Disabilities
For MacNicoll, it helped him gain a greater appreciation for people living with disabilities that aren't physically obvious, aka invisible disabilities.
RELATED: Brilliant Minds' Zachary Quinto Initially Struggled to Understand This About Oliver Sacks
"It was definitely challenging," he said of portraying the myriad of sensations and emotions. "But also, oddly enough — or not oddly, but, it made me realize and think about friends that I've had that have [illnesses] where they look like they're totally fine. And it's like, 'Oh, he was just at karaoke. He was fine, what do you mean he had a migraine the whole time? Or he was in pain the whole time?'
"And so, it really helped me out in my personal life with a lot of people that I know that have certain illnesses," he continued. "There's so much going on under the surface that I wasn't aware of. Or we meet people all the time in life where they might be going through all these struggles or this pain, whether it's a physical illness or a mental illness."
What's next for Dr. Van Markus?
With Van continuing to figure out how to utilize his Mirror-Touch in his job, we asked if it's a "superpower" or a "curse" — descriptors others and Van have used to describe the condition.
RELATED: Zachary Quinto Knows Brilliant Minds' Cases Will Make You Cry: "That's Good!"
"I think, a little bit of both," he said. "I think, especially because [he wasn't] aware of it at first, I think it was more of a hindrance. Because it's kind of one of those confusing things where [he's] trying to do a simple procedure and not being able to and not knowing why ... But then, I think as Van learns about it and as Van kind of embraces it and accepts it and is able to learn from it, I think it becomes more of a tool or an asset for him rather than a hindrance."
Watch new episodes of Brilliant Minds when they premiere on Mondays on NBC at 10/9c. Episodes are available to stream on Peacock the next day.
