Oliver Sackshas an unconventional way of diagnosing and treating his patients.
Suffering from prospognosia (a.k.a.
face blindness), Wolf tends to isolate himself.
Andra De Shields and Zachary Quinto on ‘Brilliant Minds’.Rafy/NBC
Youre still dealing with emotional and physical fallout.
Dr. Wolf enters their POV and tried to understand how the patient is feeling.
He wants to get into their heart, mind, and soul.
Because I don’t feel like that’s necessarily representing what the patient is seeing and experiencing and feeling.
But its similarly transformed Quintos approach to his work, particularly his representation of Wolfs face blindness.
How do you dramatize neurological disorders?
Thats been a unique process, from a production standpoint.
Working closely with the directors for the first two episodes, the actor developed a specific physical language.
Hearing his voice applied to himself was really valuable to me, Quinto says.
To give a shot to do that with empathy, compassion, and understanding.
Thats true of Oliver Wolf and was true of Oliver Sacks.
These parallels are exactly why Grassi had the Quinto in mind as his first choice to play Oliver Wolf.
When I think about Oliver Sacks, I think about somebody who always took big swings as well.
It was an interesting mashup of actor and real life.
Weve seen Zach do so much genre.
Wolf has not got any ulterior darkness to him, Quinto notes.
Hes iconoclastic and rebellious.
He sometimes acts before he thinks.
But at his core, he is a good person.
That could be a surprise for people used to seeing me play more nefarious characters.
Brilliant Mindspremieres on NBC on Sept. 23 at 10 p.m.
