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The Near-Decade-Long Journey to Translate Dr. Oliver Sacks' Life Into NBC's Brilliant Minds
Kate Edgar, Sacks' longtime editor and friend, explains how the famed doctor's life inspired the new NBC drama.
On August 30, 2015, the world lost the wonderful mind and voice of world-renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Wolf Sacks. Outside of the medical community, laypeople may best know him from his engrossing non-fiction works that collected his case studies of people with bewildering neurological disorders.
His best-known was Awakenings (1973), which was adapted into the acclaimed 1990 film of the same name directed by Penny Marshall and starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. His 1995 essay "To See and Not See" inspired the film At First Sight (1999), and his 2008 book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain became a New York Times bestseller.
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The Oliver Sacks Foundation was established to keep his life and works alive. NBC Insider recently connected with his longtime editor and friend Kate Edgar to find out how Sacks' life became the creative spine of NBC's new medical drama Brilliant Minds, starring Zachary Quinto and Tamberla Perry.
A decade of developing Dr. Sacks' life into Brilliant Minds
The series development path is rarely a quick process, and that includes creating a scripted television series inspired by Dr. Sacks' life. Ric Burns' acclaimed 2021 documentary Oliver Sacks: His Own Life featured interviews with Sacks from not long before his death, but a fictional series had to go through many iterations after the Sacks Foundation gave its blessing.
"This project came to us very soon after Oliver died," Edgar said of the show's timeline. "In 2015, Bill Hayes — who was Oliver's partner — and I were in London actually planning a memorial for Oliver and we got a message from Jonathan Cavendish at The Imaginarium." They originally pitched a project around Sacks, the man, which Edgar says they enthusiastically approved. Over the next nine years, different iterations and producing partners evolved the project until it coalesced into the NBC medical drama Brilliant Minds from creator Michael Grassi (Riverdale, Supergirl).
"I had a chance to review his scripts, which were just marvelous," Edgar said of Grassi's approach to a series that was inspired by Sacks yet told in contemporary times. "As soon as I read the pilot script, I thought, 'Wow. He really got it.'"
Why the Oliver Sacks Foundation works with the series
Agreeing to consult on the series and its scripts, Edgar said that due to Covid safety and the production of the series in Toronto, Canada, she never actually met Grassi in person until this year.
"And we really hit it off," she shared. "He gave me his story of how this project originated, which is wonderful. And it was clear to me from the beginning that Michael understood the main thrust of Oliver's work is to be very focused on the patient. It sounds like a simple thing, but it's not always. We still today look at our own doctors to ask, 'Can I have more than three seconds of your time?' He really demonstrated that [understanding] from the get-go."
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Edgar added that she very much appreciates actor Zachary Quinto and Grassi's mutual interpretation of Sacks in their fictional Dr. Oliver Wolf on the screen.
"Obviously it's not a literal portrait, but it's very close in a lot of ways," she said of reality versus fiction. "I think it brings out some of Oliver's really lovely aspects, and maybe some of his not-so-lovely aspects. But it's a real person. I feel that Zach and Michael are portraying real people, even with the rest of the cast."
Brilliant Minds premieres on NBC on September 23 at 10/9c. Brilliant Minds will be preceded by the premiere of Season 26 of The Voice with new Coaches Snoop Dogg and Michael Bublé at 8/7c.
