Zachary Quinto steps into some giant-sized doctor's shoes in NBC's 'Brilliant Minds'

NEW YORK (AP) — There's a great moment in the first episode of the new NBC medical drama “Brilliant Minds” when it becomes very clear that we're not dealing with a typical TV doctor.

Zachary Quinto is behind the wheel of a car barreling down a New York City parkway, packed with hospital interns, abruptly weaving in and out of lanes, when one of them asks, “Does anyone want to share a Klonopin?” — a drug sometimes used to treat panic disorders.

“Oh, glory to God, yes, please,” says Quinto, reaching an arm into the back seat. The internthen breaks the pill in half and gives a sliver to the driver, who swallows it, as the other interns share stunned looks.

Quinto, playing the character Dr. Oliver Wolf, is clearly not portraying any dour, by-the-rules doctor here — he’s playing a character inspired by Dr. Oliver Sacks, the path-breaking researcher and author who rose to fame in the 1970s and was once called the “poet laureate of medicine.”

“He was someone who was tirelessly committed to the dignity of the human experience. And so I feel really grateful to be able to tell his story and to continue his legacy in a way that I hope our show is able to do,” says Quinto.

“Brilliant Minds” takes Sack’s personality — a motorcycle-riding, fern-loving advocate for mental health who died in 2015 at 82 — and puts him in the present day, where the creators theorize he would have no idea who Taylor Swift is or own a cell phone. The series debuts Monday on NBC, right after “The Voice.”

“It’s almost as if we’re imagining what it would have been like if Oliver Sacks had been born at a different time,” says Quinto. “We use the real life person as our North Star through everything we’re doing and all the stories that we were telling, but we were able to find our own flavor and our own perspective in the telling of those stories as well.”

In upcoming episodes, Wolf and his team deal with a biker friend whose brain tumor is affecting his memories, a mother who after surgery feels disconnected from her children, and a 12-year-old girl who gets seizures whenever she laughs.

Aside from the weekly emergencies, there is also a longer, series-long narrative exploring Wolf's personal life and his fraught relationship with his doctor parents, especially his late father, who had mental illness.

“I think over the course of the season, we see Dr. Wolf start to let his guard down a little bit by helping his patients and by mentoring the interns. And he’s learning from them as much as they’re learning from him,” says creator and showrunner Michael Grassi.

The series hopes to satisfy viewers who come for the complex medical mysteries — with delicious jargon like “elevated intracranial pressure” and “abnormal neurocardiogenic reflex” — but also the very human connections between patient and doctor.

“I always say if people watch our show and they see themselves and the stories that we’re telling, then we’re doing our job,” says Quinto.

This isn't the first time Sacks has been portrayed. His 1973 book, “Awakenings,” about hospital patients who’d spent decades in a kind of frozen state until he tried a new treatment, led to a 1990 movie in which Sacks was played by Robin Williams.

The real Sacks lived in self-imposed celibacy for more than three decades, only coming out late in life. But Quinto and Grassi were not interested in having their hero closeted.

“If we were going to be having a gay male lead of our show in 2024, I really wanted them to be out and proud and that not to be something that he was hiding,” said Grassi.

Grassi said when he was creating the show he always had Quinto in mind, being a fan of the actor's depth but also his humor. Grassi knew it was the perfect fit while filming the driving scene for the pilot when the intern offers her pill.

“Zach on that day ad-libbed like a million different responses,” says Grassi. "And they were all funnier than the last. Editing was so hard to choose which one. But that’s when I knew. I’m like, ‘This is going to be great.’”

For Quinto, “Brilliant Minds” offers a chance to play a charismatic, empathic hero. While Quinto broke out as Mr. Spock in “Star Trek,” his resume also includes some less savory characters — a serial killer who tore out the brains of superheroes in “Heroes,” the deranged Dr. Oliver Thredson on "American Horror Story: Asylum" and a demonic drifter in AMC’s “NOS4A2.”

“After all the dark and villainous characters that I’ve played, it’s really nice to anchor a story playing a character who is really operating from a place of optimism, hope, compassion and love and joy.”

FILE - Actor Zachary Quinto poses for a portrait on Friday, March 30, 2018, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Actor Zachary Quinto poses for a portrait on Friday, March 30, 2018, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Actor Zachary Quinto poses for a portrait on Friday, March 30, 2018, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

This image released by NBC shows Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf in a scene from "Brilliant Minds." (Peter Kramer/NBC via AP)

This image released by NBC shows Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf in a scene from "Brilliant Minds." (NBC via AP)

FILE - Actor Zachary Quinto poses for a portrait on Friday, March 30, 2018, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

The U.S. Department of Justice is considering asking a federal judge to force Google to sell parts of its business in order to eliminate its online search monopoly.

In a late court filing on Tuesday, federal prosecutors also said the judge could ask the court to open the underlying data Google uses to power its ubiquitous search engine and artificial intelligence products to competitors.

“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little-to-no incentive to compete for users,” the antitrust enforcers wrote in the filing. “Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.”

To that end, the department said it is considering asking for structural changes to stop Google from leveraging products such as its Chrome browser, Android operating system, AI products or app store to benefit its search business. Prosecutors also seem to center on Google's default search agreements in the filing and said any remedy proposals would seek to limit or ban these deals.

Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in response to the filing that the Department of Justice was “already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues" in this case. “Government overreach in a fast-moving industry may have negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Google's search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation. He has outlined a timeline for a trial on the proposed remedies next spring and plans to issue a decision by August 2025.

Google has already said it plans to appeal Mehta’s ruling, but the tech giant must wait until he finalizes a remedy before doing so. The appeals process could take as long as five years, predicts George Hay, a law professor at Cornell University who was the chief economist for the Justice Department’s antitrust division for most of the 1970s.

FILE - The Google building is seen in New York, Feb. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)