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Brilliant Minds' Tamberla Perry Unpacks Dr. Pierce's Dramatic Family Arc & What Comes Next
Perry gets candid about Dr. Carol Pierce's drama-filled season on Brilliant Minds.
Spoilers for Episode 11 of Brilliant Minds.
NBC's Brilliant Minds hasn't even completed its first season yet, but Dr. Carol Pierce (Tamberla Perry), Bronx General Hospital's Chief of Psychiatry, has been going through it both personally and professionally.
As the long-time colleague and friend of the eccentric but deeply empathetic Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) — who's loosely based on real-life neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) — Pierce started the season by wooing Wolf to return to her hospital as the head of the Neurology Department. Once he accepted, she helped him manage, train, and bond with his gaggle of neurology interns while they treated challenging cases.
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All the while, Pierce was also navigating the deterioration of her long-time marriage to Morris Allen (Rainbow Sun Francks), and discovered that the root of that problem led directly to her client Alison Whitaker (Julia Chan)... who was having an affair with Morris.
In a recent exclusive interview with Perry, the actress shared with NBC Insider the challenges of playing Dr. Pierce's predicament, the satisfaction of her character's recent decision in Episode 11, and what to expect in the final two episodes.
Dr. Carol Pierce's unexpected Season 1 arc
"The season started off with me just being this boss, fierce woman who just has it all together," Perry said, reflecting on Dr. Pierce's path in Brilliant Minds. "I brought this genius [Wolf] to the hospital. I know he practices unconventional methods of medicine because of our history, but I know that he is a bomb doctor, and that together, we can create this Neuropsychology Dream Team."
And then, Pierce's personal life creeps into the narrative, which helped round out the character as a wife and mother, too.
"First, entered my husband, and we don't really know what's going on there," she said of their early implied marital issues. "And then, onto this woman who's coming to me to get therapy — who I really care about, as I do all my patients — and I find out that this is the woman who assisted in the infidelity of my husband."
Pierce's story then spiraled into some dark, emotional places as the character tried to balance the emotional toll of being actively betrayed by a spouse with her professional role as a clinician with a client in crisis.
"It was really hard," Perry said candidly about getting scripts where Piece doesn't yet confront Alison or Morris on their relationship.
"You have to separate Tamberla's reaction from Carol's reaction," she said of how she justified Pierce's choices. "And you have to separate what Tamberla, as a Black woman, would be doing if she saw this on television versus what maybe another psychiatrist would be doing if this was happening in real life."
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Perry said she was grateful that she could get scripts throughout the season and call her showrunner Michael Grassi, who "always took my calls" when she needed to talk through the Pierce on the page and the Pierce in her heart.
"We were able to have conversations about the challenges I was having with still pouring into [Alison] despite knowing who she was," she explained. "Once I was really able to separate my reaction from Carol's, then it became easier. And that, coupled with a little bit of writing changes because the writers do really listen if you have something to say and you have a point that is clear and concise."
She said once it was clear that Carol cared deeply as a psychiatrist about a positive outcome for Alison, the character's actions made more sense to play.
"Carol's character is conflicted this entire time because she really does want to treat her. She doesn't want this woman to die. But at the same time, she really wants to find out 'the details' because her husband isn't telling her the truth," she said of the affair. "So how else do you get the truth? You've just got to be strategic to get the truth... even if that means losing your job, which she didn't want to lose."
Brilliant Minds' audience reacts to Carol's divorce decision: "Somebody told me they threw a shoe"
By "The Other Woman" episode, Perry said she was ready for a change in Pierce's situation; it was hard to play a strong woman not standing up for her own heart... until she did at the end of the episode and let Morris know she wanted a divorce.
"I've been getting a lot of messages in my DMs, comments on the [social] posts, saying 'Finally!' They were so happy to see the end result!" Perry said of that turning point moment for Pierce. "Before that, many of these women were pi--ed that I was holding space for this woman who was cheating with my husband."
She gave her appreciation to the show writers for allowing her daughter in the series to be the voice of grace for Pierce.
"It was a real opportunity for us to listen to the young people who pay attention to this stuff. When she said, 'It's not your responsibility. You didn't cheat. He did. And it's not your responsibility to fix everything,' I think, in that moment, that is one of the things that helped Carol to come to this decision," she said.
"And I do believe you can still love somebody, but you just can't forgive them and you have to move on," she continued. "So yeah, it was very satisfying to get that [moment] because we were doing a whole lot of hemming and hawing. Somebody told me the other day that they've been yelling at the TV, and then somebody told me they threw a shoe when I said, 'I want a divorce!' And that's a good response!"
Teasing Season 2 for Dr. Carol Pierce
With just two episodes left in Season 1 of Brilliant Minds, the big question is how much more will we see of Dr. Pierce's imploded home life this year?
RELATED: The Near-Decade-Long Journey to Translate Dr. Oliver Sacks' Life Into NBC's Brilliant Minds
"There's not much to tease about where Carol goes next," Perry said. She infers that the aftermath will come in Season 2 if the series is picked up.
"I will say that Michael and the staff, they're going to be very open to what I have to offer about it," she said of her input on where they all see Pierce going in the future as a doctor and likely single mother. "Here's the thing, Morris is still in my life. We have a 15-year-old, and we have to co-parent. so is it navigating that with a potential new partner, or a potential new love interest? There's some other big things that are happening in the next two episodes that I cannot say. But we just have a lot to look forward to with Carol, professionally, as well as personally."
Brilliant Minds is taking a short break over the holidays and will resume in the New Year on Monday, January 6, 2025, for a 2-hour season finale in its usual time slot at 10/9c on NBC.