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Zachary Quinto & Tamberla Perry Reveal the Real "Longtime" Relationship Behind Brilliant Minds
The two actors unpack how they built the special rapport between their characters.
Great character duos always make a drama series better. In the case of NBC's new medical drama Brilliant Minds, the long-time friendship and collegial appreciation between Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) and Dr. Carol Pierce (Tamberla Perry) is very much the glue that keeps the Neurology department at Bronx General Hospital together.
The series and Dr. Wolf's unique bedside manner — helped along by his "prosopagnosia," aka "face blindness" — is inspired by the actual life and writings of famed neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks. But it wasn't just Sacks' brilliant work that inspired this series. In truth, both Wolf and Pierce were influenced by Sacks and his real-life colleague Dr. Carol E. Burnett.
RELATED: The Near-Decade-Long Journey to Translate Dr. Oliver Sacks' Life Into NBC's Brilliant Minds
In a recent interview for the launch of Brilliants Minds, which airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC, Perry and Quinto spoke to NBC Insider about finding the easy rapport between their characters and the real-life doctors inspiring them.
Tamberla Perry connects Dr. Carol Pierce to Dr. Carol E. Burnett
Dr. Burnett was both the first Black graduate and one of the first women to graduate from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1960. She specialized in pediatrics and was an outspoken advocate for diversity in the medical field and health disparity within race and gender.
"Carol Burnett is actually mentioned in several of Sacks' pieces of literature about their relationship," Perry said of her character's relationship to Sacks. "They had been longtime friends and colleagues. They were in the trenches together. They did their residencies together."
RELATED: Zachary Quinto Explains the Origins of Brilliant Minds in New Behind-the-Scenes Look
Perry said that just understanding the nature of their relationship decades ago made it much easier to inform her own implied relationship between Perry and Wolf.
"And the day that Zachary and I met in person, I think we hit it off," she said of her chemistry with Quinto. "I can't say that we sat around and talked about how we were going to do this. We didn't do that. It just kind of naturally clicked for us.
"I think from the moment I saw him on my first audition with him — it was my last audition for the process, but my first audition with him — and you had to get that chemistry within two minutes, honey, or the job was going to somebody else so we had to do it," she said with a smile. "But it was easy, and it's been easy over the past year. Our professional relationship is wonderful, and our personal relationship is even more phenomenal."
Quinto is reminded of their namesakes' legacy daily
Quinto added that the show is also tapping into the spirit of the doctors through their characters' rapport.
"I just have to say the idea that our show is exploring consciousness, the idea of, 'What is consciousness?' A body is consciousness dependent, but consciousness is not body dependent," Quinto explained. "And so this idea that the spirit of these people — the real people, Oliver Sacks and Carol Burnett — who are no longer embodied on Earth, their consciousness still exists. And it is a continuum.
"Consciousness looks for expression and outlet in other people," he continued. "And so I do believe that there is some personal connection that Tamberla and I share, as people now, that is an echo, a whisper, of the same kind of connection that Oliver Sacks and Carol Burnett experienced a generation ago. To me, that is also why I do what I do. And why we tell stories as a civilization is so that those echoes can reach one another and inspire some kind of self reflection or connection with other people who are intimate to you in your life."
RELATED: Meet the Brilliant Cast Behind NBC's Medical Drama Brilliant Minds
With their friendship in the series serving as a refuge from the stresses of the hospital, their cases, and the realities of medicine for their characters, Quinto emphasized how art can imitate life.
"Entertainment at its best, I think, does it all," he said. "People come and they laugh and they cry and it's drama and it's fun and it's romance. But there's also something under that, that if you can aspire to it, maybe it can have some stirrings beyond just the surface level. So that, I think, is part of the relationship between all the Carols and Olivers that we're talking about."
New episodes of Brilliant Minds premiere on Mondays on NBC at 10/9c and are available to stream on Peacock.
