In ‘Brilliant Minds,’ Zachary Quinto gets to play the hero

Best known for playing Spock in “Star Trek” and a deranged doctor in “American Horror Story,” Quinto plays a different kind of brainiac in the new NBC medical drama.

Zachary Quinto has always relished the opportunity to play villains, having starred as a brain-eating serial killer in “Heroes,” a deranged doctor in “American Horror Story: Asylum” and a child kidnapper in “NOS4A2.”

But in the new NBC medical drama “Brilliant Minds,” which premieres Monday, the Emmy-nominated actor, who broke out as Spock in “Star Trek,” gets to play a different kind of brooding brainiac — a modern-day character inspired by the life and books of Dr. Oliver Sacks, the late British neurologist and author whom The New York Times once described as the “poet laureate of medicine.”

Created by Michael Grassi (“Riverdale,” “Supergirl”), the new series stars Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf: an iconoclastic, larger-than-life neurologist who, after being fired from another institution for his unorthodox way of treating patients, agrees to take a job at Bronx General Hospital. While exploring the wonders of the human mind, Dr. Wolf and his team of young interns must grapple with their own mental health. Like Sacks, Quinto’s protagonist rides motorcycles; loves ferns and swimming in the rivers of New York City; and has prosopagnosia, or face blindness. (Sacks’ middle name was also Wolf.)

“I’m playing a character essentially based on a real-life person, but I don’t have to adhere to any of the constraints of period, or mannerisms, or behavior of the person,” Quinto told NBC News. “I get to dive into all of the source material and rich history of all of Oliver Sacks’ life and then use it to inspire a fictionalized character that we’ve created for the purposes of our show, and to make it more relatable and accessible to audiences.”

Sacks’ 1973 book, “Awakenings,” about his experience of treating patients whose encephalitis left them in a statue-like condition, was adapted into a 1990 movie in which Robin Williams played Sacks. But after being approached by executive producer Greg Berlanti about adapting Sacks’ books “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “An Anthropologist on Mars,” Grassi was keen to create a prime-time medical drama with an openly gay character — and actor — at the forefront.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-pop-culture/brilliant-minds-zachary-quinto-play-hero-rcna172202

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