Talent: Zachary Quinto @zacharyquinto
Publication: L’Officiel Fashion Book™ – Australia @lofficielau
Creative Director + Photographer + Producer: Mike Ruiz @mikeruizone
Editor-in-Chief: Dimitri Vorontsov @dimitrivorontsov
Fashion Stylist: Ayumi Perry @ayumiperry
Assistant Stylist: Roderick Reyes @reyes_roderick
Groomer: Jess Ortiz @jessica_o_
Graphic Design: Daniel Alarcon Design @by_danalarcon
Assistant to Photographer: Dani Sax @danisaxphotos
Set Design: Jasin Cadic @jasincadic
Website: www.lofficiel.au

Coat: Aknvas@aknvas Suit: Burberry @burberry Shirt: Vivienne Westwood via Steve Karas, House W NYC @viviennewestwood @housewnyc Belt: PALWY @palwy.made Shoes: Terry Singh @terrysingh.nyc

Dimitri: Can you tell us about Doctor Wolf? He is quite a character.

Zachary: He’s a character for sure. I think the most interesting aspect of the character in the show is that it’s all based on a real-life person, doctor Oliver Sacks, a world-renowned iconic neurologist who lived and worked in the 20th century. He died in 2015 at the age of 83. And I’ve never had the experience of playing a character inspired by a real-life person while not being the real-life person. So I have the benefit of all of the source material and access to his writing and his lectures and speeches. But then I also got to create a character from within my imagination and with my collaborative creative team, which was special. Oliver Sacks was such an influential and remarkable man to get to tell stories that honor his legacy and hopefully amplify his message meaningful to me personally.

Coat & Pants : Landeros @landerosnewyork Shirt: Kid Super @kidsuper Ring: Maiko Suzuki @maikosuzuki Shoes: Landeros @landerosnewyork

Dimitri: Oliver Sacks published multiple books during his time.

Zachary: Yeah, a lot of books. Oliver Sacks was considered by the New York Times to be the poet laureate of medicine.  Dozens of books, actually. And he was fascinated by the lost art of medical case studies. Because, you know, in the 18th and 19th centuries, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when medicine was not yet so diagnostic the only way that doctors could learn was by writing about their patients, writing about the experiences that they had before they were ill, writing about the experiences that they had with illness, and then writing about the experiences that they had with the treatment. Then technology evolved to a point where medicine just became about diagnosing the problem and fixing the problem. The art and the nuance of understanding what these very unique, and oftentimes singular medical conditions were became less important in the medical field but Oliver Sacks himself was always inspired by and motivated by this idea of understanding the person and not just the disease. And so he revived and invested in the return to the case study. And so he started writing and writing and writing and he wrote many books: “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, “An Anthropologist on Mars“, “Musicophilia”, “Hallucinations”, and “Awakenings”. The list goes on. He also wrote many articles and a wonderful memoir called “On the Move“. He gave many lectures and speeches, and he was an incredible explorer of the brain as a seat of consciousness. And he wrote a wonderful book called “On the River of Consciousness”, exploring people who in their own time and in their way, kind of chronologically were drawn to what it is to be human. I find that exploration and that world a wonderful one to live in. I’m truly honored to play a character inspired by such an influential and instrumental contributor to the human race.

Coat & Pants : Landeros @landerosnewyork Shirt: Kid Super @kidsuper Ring: Maiko Suzuki @maikosuzuki Shoes: Landeros @landerosnewyork

Dimitri: How do you feel about your show and fast-paced storytelling from Network Television to Streamers?

Zachary: The format of the show, because it is a network medical drama, essentially allows us to tell stories every week of different patients And I like that. I like that there is momentum to the show, but also there are stories that take longer to unfold. So you get the best of both worlds with “Brilliant Minds”, which is you get to meet new patients every week and we get to, you know, be presented with and solve these medical mysteries. You also get to know the doctors who are working on the cases. And oftentimes the cases themselves reflect to the doctors what they’re going through in their own lives. So there is a kind of symbiosis between the patients and the doctors. And I love that. I find that to be a really nice way to tell a story. Right? So that people can tune in every week and know that they’re going to be presented with a certainly unexpected, maybe bizarre, unbelievable medical case, which I promise is actually real. And then also they’re going to get to develop emotional connections to these characters who exist in the world and who work at this hospital together and what they mean to one another and, and what they mean to their patients and what their patients mean to them.

Coat & Pants : Landeros @landerosnewyork Shirt: Kid Super @kidsuper Ring: Maiko Suzuki @maikosuzuki

Dimitri: Do you feel that the stories are going to touch people on a personal level?

Zachary: Oh, I hope so. I really do hope so. I’m sorry that you had that experience with your dad. I also had a long journey with my mother who suffered from dementia. Even as we’re talking about it, we get emotional. That’s that’s a beautiful thing. I’m grateful and honestly what I’ve always said is that if people watch our show and see themselves in our stories, then we’re doing our job. And, you know, oftentimes on “Brilliant Minds“, the patients that we encounter are experiencing diseases or conditions or disorders or injuries from which there is no recovery. Right. There is no fix for the problem. And so what this show is about is really encouraging people to adapt, to evolve, and to look for new ways to live a life that maybe still have some purpose and some joy and some fulfillment in it, even if it looks completely different than what they expected it would look like. So I appreciate that reaction from you. There are a lot of people who are confronted with adversities that are difficult to face and difficult to talk about. And I think that entertainment at its best can be substantive. It can generate conversations and dialogue between loved ones and audiences that might not necessarily happen so easily otherwise. And so I hope people enjoy the show, there is humor, heart, and levity in it, but there’s also meaning in it, you know? And there is fundamentally a message of hope. Particularly in this moment of our collective evolution, a message of hope, I think, is something that all of us can benefit from. And so I’m glad that you had that reaction to it, that response to it, because, you know, that’s it. That’s what we want to do. We want to invite people in, you know, we want to invite people in and we want to make people feel and that’s what I think, you know I think that’s what art can do.

So I feel grateful for that and if other people have the response that you have to it, then that makes me really happy because I had that response too. I was working on the show. I confronted myself as an actor, as a person that I went through in my own life that were paralleled in the show that I had to work through, you know. And there’s catharsis in that. There’s there’s liberation in that. There’s freedom in that we can honor those that we love and those who we’ve lost through telling their stories, and that’s sort of what “Brilliant Minds” in the best version of it, maybe that’s what it can do a little bit, is tell stories that resonate for people who have gone through situations that are similar and bring them some comfort or some relatability that can help them process grief and, and come to some place of healing.

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Dimitri: Absolutely. Can you tell us about working with your showrunner and EP, Michael Grassi?

Zachary: Michael Grassi is a huge reason why I am doing this show. He is such a collaborative, supportive, generous positive person. You know, it’s not all that common to meet people in our industry who bring such an abundance of light to what they’re doing to their job. I admire him so deeply, and I feel so grateful for his spirit. And he is the heartbeat of this show. I may be the face of it, but he’s the heart of it, my job as the face of it, as number one on the call sheet is to bring his vision to life in the spirit with which he intends it to be brought to life. That spirit is one of collaboration. It’s one of safety, trust, and creative freedom. When I go to work every day it’s that mandate that I bring with me and that energy that I try to generate on set and he’s a trully special person. And I think the show is a reflection of that.

Coat: Vivienne Westwood via Steve Karas, House W NYC @viviennewestwood @housewnyc Pants: Giorgio Armani @giorgioarmani Shoes: Dolce and Gabbana @dolcegabbana

Dimitri: Did you work with the Olivier Sacks Foundation?

Zachary: We had the support of the Oliver Sacks Foundation, and they did option, I think, 2 or 3 of his books, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat“, and “An Anthropologist on Mars”. There are some cases on our show that are directly taken from Oliver Sacks’s writing. There are other cases on the show that are inspired by them, and then there are cases on the show that are imagining what it might have been like. All of the aspects of the character that I play are lifted directly from Oliver Sacks’s life. You know, Oliver Sacks had prosopagnosia, face blindness, which Oliver Wolf, the character I play on the show.

Oliver Sacks rode a motorcycle. Oliver Sacks was obsessed with plants and ferns. And Oliver Sacks, you know, the aspects of the character that I play are all true of the real-life person. The character itself exists in a contemporary setting in a modern world. And, you know, these are stories that are unique to the character that I play, not necessarily unique to Oliver Sacks himself. Still, he’s always with us, right? He’s always a part of our stories, even though, you know, we’re not telling his story exactly.

It’s not a step-by-step biopic, but it’s a unique experience. I’ve never had that before. I have the benefit of all the source material and his writings, his memoir, his articles, his lectures, and the things that I’ve watched of him on YouTube. But I don’t have to worry about actually playing that man. I get to create the character for myself. And so it’s a really unique hybrid which gave me a special kind of freedom. And, and that freedom was anchored in the integrity of who Oliver Sacks was.

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Dimitri: Can you tell us about your brilliant cast-mates. It’s such an eclectic group.

Zachary: Kimberly Perry, who plays Doctor Carol Pierce is based on a real-life person Doctor Carol E. Burnett. Oliver Sacks and Carol Burnett were friends in medical school. Carol Burnett was the first African American woman to graduate from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. She and Oliver Sacks worked together, studied together, and became very good friends. Tamarla Perry plays Carol Pierce. Teddy Sears plays Doctor Josh Nichols. Teddy and I worked together on the first season of “American Horror Story“. So we have a history, and it was wonderful to come back to a working relationship with Teddy, who I respect and enjoy. We have a younger collection of interns. Ashley Lathrop spends more of the second, Alex Macnicoll and Ari Krebs, they play wonderful foils to Oliver Wolff and all of them are really talented and unique and exciting. And Donna Murphy plays Doctor Muriel Landon. Mandy Patinkin comes on to the show. Steve Howey comes onto the show. Andre DeShields. We have a wonderful collection of actors who came together to tell these stories with us. I was so grateful and inspired to work with all of them.

It’s a unique show dramatizing neurological disorders, diseases, injuries, and conditions. It’s not it is unusual. You think about most medical shows, you’re dramatizing injuries. It comes back to the idea that in many cases on “Brilliant Minds“, there is no solution. There is no there is no fix for the problem. So it becomes about identifying and implementing a new normal in people’s lives. And I think that’s what’s relatable about it. Right? So many people live through experiences that irrevocably change their lives. The question then has to become, how can I still find joy, purpose, and meaning in my experience? And Oliver Sacks was driven by that pursuit singularly as a doctor. The thing that he cared about most, he often said, “Ask not what disease the person has. Ask what person the disease has.” So who is the person? Where is their sense of self? Even if they can’t communicate the way they used to be able to, even if they can’t move the way that they used to be able to, even if they can’t live their lives the way that they used to, how can we still provide them with a sense of dignity.

I think that message is valuable, especially in this day and age. And the other thing we get to explore on the show is mental health. We live in a time when conversations around mental health have become much more centralized as a part of our social discourse. The idea that we get to explore and and include stories about people’s mental well-being, I think is also something that I feel grateful for. You know, I’ve played a lot of evil characters in my career. I’ve played a lot of villains and people, you don’t say that oftentimes relate with these sorts of darker characters. And I have to tell you what a joy it is to play a character who is rooted, in a sense of compassion, and a sense of generosity, the spirit that is kind of to me. One of the nicest things about this show is that actually it’s very unexpected for what people, I think are used to seeing me do. That is what I love the most of all.

Suit: Kid Super @kidsuper Sweater: R13 @r13 Shoes: Florsheim via Agentry PR @florsheimshoes @agentrypr

Dimitri: Your show is out on NBC, and hopefully internationally.

Zachary: I hope we find an audience here in the States is where we have to start, and that’s what we’re you know, that’s what we’re working on right now. But I’m just really grateful. This is the fun part. I love making the show. That’s fun too but it’s a lot of work. And this is the part I really love to hear that it generated in you an emotional response. That’s what we want. So, I feel like having these kinds of conversations and understanding from the audience because it’s interesting when you’re filming a show in the first season, you’re filming it in a vacuum, right? Nobody has seen it, right? So we’re making it with each other. We’re making it for each other as the creative team. We filmed in Toronto for six months.

Dimitri: So you didn’t swim in the Hudson River?

Zachary: I didn’t swim in the Hudson River. Thank goodness. You know, now is the time when we get to have these kinds of conversations and it becomes more of an exchange. And then as a creative team, Michael Grassi and our writers and our producers, if we’re fortunate enough to keep telling stories and we get more seasons of the show, we get to understand what audiences are responding to and what it is about the show that’s resonating for people. And then the show takes on a different life. So that’s the exciting moment that we’re in right now, you know? And so to have this conversation and for you to have an unvarnished response to the work means that we’re doing something right.

I hope that other people who have had experiences with them in their own lives, either themselves or with loved ones of various, neurological conditions and disorders or mental health disorders or conditions feel that sense of connection and feel that sense of being seen in the stories that we’re telling, because that, I think, is the crossroads when entertainment becomes something a little bit more substantive and a little bit more potentially impactful for audiences. So that’s the moment we’re at right now. And that’s what’s exciting for all of us because we all know why we love the show, why we made it, and what we’re excited about. And now we get to put it out and invite the world into sharing the experience and hoping that they meet us in the middle at the same place, you know?

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Dimitri: Absolutely. For the last question, if you don’t mind, if you had a chance to give your younger self advice, what sort of advice would you give yourself?

Zachary: I think I would encourage myself to cultivate more self-love. I think I was really hard on myself when I was younger and maybe it served me in some ways and served my ambition, but I feel like I would probably tell myself to find the compassion, find the love, and trust that everything’s going to be okay.