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How Brilliant Minds Connects to Groundbreaking Neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks
Actor Zachary Quinto plays Dr. Oliver Wolf, who was inspired by the life and works of the late, great Dr. Oliver Sacks.
If you've seen the movies At First Sight (1999) or Awakenings (1990), or read the nonfiction books The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985), Hallucinations (2012), or The River of Consciousness (2017), then you know the works of neurologist and writer Dr. Oliver Sacks (1933-2015).
A compassionate advocate and researcher of neurological disorders, Sacks was the rare doctor who wrote multiple books of his collected case studies that became bestsellers and crossed over into the mainstream zeitgeist. Most well-known is his book Awakenings, which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film of the same name directed by Penny Marshall and starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams playing Sacks.
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Despite Sacks' passing nine years ago, he and his compelling stories are still relevant and continue to inspire new adaptations, including the upcoming NBC medical drama Brilliant Minds.
The series premieres September 23 and stars Zachary Quinto (Heroes) as neurologist Dr. Oliver Wolf, a fictional doctor directly inspired by Sacks and the period when he was a Bronx, New York-based neurologist. Series creator and showrunner Michael Grassi shared with NBC Insider how Brilliant Minds is intertwined with the legacy of Dr. Sacks — literally and figuratively.
How Is Brilliant Minds Inspired By Dr. Sacks' Work?
Grassi said when he was first presented with the project to adapt Sacks' work into a television series, he was sent two specific books: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars. Compelled by the studies Sacks presented, Grassi decided to use them as the basis for a contemporary retelling with Dr. Wolf mentoring neurology interns at Bronx General Hospital.
"There are so many incredible cases that we take from these books and then we set them in present day and have conversations that feel urgent and pressing with Oliver Sacks' incredible material," Grassi explained. "The source material has been incredibly informative for what we're doing on the show."
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The series itself will present a neurological "case of the week" that Wolf and his students have to identify and treat.
"What Oliver Sacks did so well, is that he told incredible stories about people," Grassi said. "And that's the same thing we're doing on our show as patients come in and they're suffering from these strange, mysterious illnesses. But it's about them, and how do they move forward as a person? And it's about our doctors getting to know them. It's not just about the condition, it's about the person."
For those who have read Sacks' books and remember the standout stories, Grassi promised they will get to see many of those cases play out in the way they remember them, just in ways that feel "refreshed and contemporary" for today.
"Medicine has changed so we want to make sure that that's reflected as well," he said of the series. "And we're just making sure that there are still surprises within the cases while making them feel like they're grounded in real medicine."
The Oliver Sacks Foundation Is Involved in Brilliant Minds
In order to honor Sacks' writing and methodology in caring for patients, Grassi said he went to the Oliver Sacks Foundation to get their consultation.
"The woman who runs the estate is Kate Edgar, who was Oliver Sacks' longtime friend, ghostwriter, and editor," he detailed. "She reads all of the scripts and we email each other. She's a huge fan of what we're doing. Having her endorsement and blessing has been so important to me because I really do want this to be a love letter to Oliver Sacks. I want to make him proud."
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Aside from the cases themselves, Grassi has also woven in many standout quirks that made Sacks famous with his colleagues, friends, and patients. "Oliver Sacks really did swim every day, which was a big part of what he did to keep himself focused and escape himself," Grassi said. "It was such a big part of his life. Anecdotally, he was swimming in the Hudson River when he got out at City Island. He was just walking in his bathing suit and found what later became his clapboard home on City Island where he spent so much of his life."
In the Brilliant Minds pilot, Grassi even teased that audiences will see Quinto follow in Sacks' footsteps when Wolf takes a dip in the Hudson — just with the help of much safer visual effects.
Brilliant Minds premieres on NBC on September 23.
