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All About Brilliant Minds Series Creator Michael Grassi's TV Career: "A Storyteller First and Foremost"
A deep dive into Brilliant Minds creator Michael Grassi's incredible television career (so far)!
Series creator Michael Grassi is the brilliant mind behind NBC’s new medical drama Brilliant Minds.
The innovative new drama starring Zachary Quinto is Grassi’s contemporary take on the unconventional life of world-renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Wolf Sacks, a talented doctor who devoted his life to finding creative ways to reach patients suffering from complex neurological conditions.
With Grassi’s help, Sacks’ inspiring story is brought to life on screen through Dr. Oliver Wolf, a fictional, modern-day character portrayed by Quinto and that draws inspiration from the real-life doctor’s life and work.
Brilliant Minds is a testament to Grassi’s ability to create powerful human connections between patient and doctor, but his career accolades don’t end there.
For more than a decade, the Canadian-born writer and producer has played a role in creating one television hit after another, from his early work as a writer and producer on the teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation to his role as executive producer on The CW’s Riverdale.
“I have always been a storyteller first and foremost, and TV has been the best place to make it happen for me,” Grassi told the Canadian publication Playback in 2014.
Here’s everything to know about his successful career (so far):
How did Michael Grassi get his start in television?
Grassi was born in Montreal before heading to Toronto as a teen to attend Ryerson University, according to The New York Times.
He soon became interested in writing for television and landed his first job as a story coordinator for Degrassi: The Next Generation, a Canadian drama that tackled many of the complex issues facing teens today, whether it was teen pregnancy, date rape, or suicide.
Grassi, who eventually became a co-executive producer on the series, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy and earned a Peabody Award for his work on the episode “My Body is A Cage,” according to Playback. The groundbreaking episode introduced a transgender character and explored the challenges the character faced.
“We were hearing more and more about transgendered youth that were coming out in high school at such a young age, and it was a story that had never been done on TV before,” Grassi told the outlet at the time. “We thought Degrassi was the perfect place to tell this story.”
RELATED: Zachary Quinto Promises Brilliant Minds Has an Undeniable "Message of Hope"
His literary agent Jeff Alpern described Grassi in 2014 as “the Wunderkind,” commending the young writer for his “cheerful likability” and “can-do type of spirit.”
Grassi spoke about his love for being part of writers’ rooms — and collaborating to create hit shows — during an appearance on the podcast Show Your Work, where he compared being in a writers’ room to having long dinner-party-like conversations.
“All the best rooms that I’ve been in have been, really, rooms where you feel really safe, rooms where you can pitch the bad idea and the bad idea often leads to something great and you sort of feel like you can be yourself and say the thing that you need to say whenever you need to say it,” he said.
“I think those are the best rooms that I’ve been in where it feels sort of collaborative and you can be vulnerable and you can open up about life experiences,” he added.
What other TV shows has Michael Grassi worked on in his career?
After leaving Degrassi: The Next Generation in 2013, Grassi moved on to spend two years as the executive producer and showrunner on Lost Girl, a supernatural Canadian drama, before landing a job in 2015 as a writer and producer on The CW's superhero drama Supergirl.
That same year, he spent time as a story editor for the beloved comedy classic Schitt’s Creek, according to his bio on IMDb.
RELATED: The Near-Decade-Long Journey to Translate Dr. Oliver Sacks' Life Into NBC's Brilliant Minds
While working on Supergirl, Grassi’s coworker and frequent collaborator Roberto Aguirre-Sacassa was developing the pilot for Riverdale, a hit teen drama ripe with mystery and intrigue and inspired by the characters from Archie Comics. As Grassi explained on the podcast, he asked Aguirre-Sacassa to read the pilot and was immediately drawn in by the show.
“I was like, ‘I am obsessed with this show and obsessed with the characters.’ I felt like it was something that had a pulse and it was so deep and I really couldn’t believe what I was reading,” he said.
When he had an opportunity to be part of the Riverdale team as a writer and executive producer, he jumped at the chance.
From there, he served as the executive producer and co-creator of the Riverdale spin-off Katy Keene before executive producing Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin in 2022.
What is Michael Grassi’s role on Brilliant Minds?
NBC’s Brilliant Minds is admittedly a departure for Grassi, who never saw himself creating a medical drama.
But as he told Forbes, he was drawn in by Sacks' incredible career.
“I fell in love with his work, his life, and the man himself. And I quickly saw a tremendous opportunity to create a character and a world inspired by this incredible man set in present day and have audiences fall in love with him, just like I did. It's become my obsession,” he said.
RELATED: How Brilliant Minds Is Taking Inspiration from This Is Us and Will & Grace Over ER
As the show’s creator and showrunner, Grassi wanted to create a show that was medically accurate and engaging in a way that set itself apart from other medical dramas.
“I think we've seen a lot of medical shows where it's about the diagnosis and the cure, and then the patient is just sent off to live their life. But I think that's not necessarily true for a lot of medicine and on our show, specifically, when there isn't a cure it’s more about how our doctors help that person find a way forward or find purpose, or take something that maybe society perceives as something that's a disadvantage, and maybe help the patient see it as a potential superpower, which is something that Oliver Sacks did a lot with his patients, and we explore that a lot,” he told Forbes.
Grassi told NBC Insider that the four interns tasked with helping the eccentric neurologist were created as a “really fun way to infuse fun and levity into the show.”
"It's a high-octane workplace drama," he said. "All of these doctors, including the interns, are working day and night to help people in their mental health. At the same time, they are neglecting their own mental health in little and big ways, in a way that's really relatable. I think everyone, including myself, is dealing with mental health, or know someone who is struggling. I hope that audiences can come and find themselves either in our doctors, or one of the interns, or even the patients and know that they're not alone."
New episodes of Brilliant Minds premiere on Mondays on NBC at 10/9c and are available to stream on Peacock.
