Spoilers ahead for the series premiere of Brilliant Minds on NBC.
Brilliant Minds has officially debuted in the 2024 TV schedule as primetime’s newest medical drama, starring Zachary Quinto in his first main network TV role since The Slap in 2015 and They Cloned Tyrone alum Tamberla Perry. The new series focuses on mental health rather than more general medicine that you’ll find on dramas like Chicago Med and Grey’s Anatomy, and according to one of the stars, a fair amount of work went into guaranteeing a good match between the top-billed actors.
As neurologist Dr. Oliver Wolf and psychiatrist Dr. Carol Pierce respectively, Zachary Quinto and Tamberla Perry are playing old friends and new colleagues with a lot of history. Early on, Wolf claimed that she’s the only person that he likes, and Pierce consistently showed faith in him despite some seriously unconventional approaches. His face blindess doesn’t seem to ever apply when it comes to her.
So when I spoke with Perry over Zoom about what sets Brilliant Minds apart, I asked if if she auditioned with Quinto before being officially cast. She shared:
I had four auditions for this, and my very last audition was a chemistry test with him. And it was all via this platform, via Zoom. There’s not a lot of in-person stuff happening at that time. This was a year and a half ago. This was March of 2023, just a few months before our strike, and then just a couple years after the pandemic. So we had not been back into the rooms too much at that point. My last audition was with him. Last audition, but first time meeting him… It wasn’t [easy], but listen – I knew that I had one shot and I had to knock it out the park. And I guess I did! [laughs] Because I’m here.
Brilliant Minds established early on in a fun exchange between the two characters that Wolf is gay, so the chemistry read wasn’t for the purpose of setting up a slow burn between Wolf and Pierce. Tamberla Perry just had to strike the right kind of chemistry with Quinto without actually meeting him previously or reading together in person. She elaborated:
It’s one of those things where you have to create the chemistry immediately. You have a few minutes to show these people that what they’ve written, you can convey on screen.
Only one episode has aired so far, but I think it’s safe to say that the show wouldn’t have worked right off the bat if there wasn’t a sense of ease and comfort between Wolf and Pierce. If she was going to be the person he confides in, their friendship had to be believable, so it seems that those four auditions did the trick!
Having shared what her audition process was like up to and including the chemistry read with Zachary Quinto, Tamberla Perry also explained what attracted her to Brilliant Minds. She said:
Brilliant Minds is inspired by the life and works of renowned neurologist, Dr. Oliver Sacks, and in this show, we follow Dr. Wolf and his team of interns, and myself. I play the chief of psychiatry at Bronx General as we explore the last great frontier, which is the human mind, something that a lot of shows aren’t doing. I think all medical dramas have components of mental health and things dealing with the brain, but our show is specifically focused on it, so that is one of the main things that attracted me to the show.
The first episode also confirmed that there’s plenty of story to be told outside of the walls of Bronx General, with what seems to be a very messy backstory for Oliver Wolf that surely won’t be helped by the fact that he’ll be working under his mom. Not a whole lot has been revealed about Carol Pierce’s personal life just yet, but Tamberla Perry went on to share what specifically about her character made her want to land the job on Brilliant Minds:
What attracted me to this character, Dr Carol Pierce – Dr Carol ‘Fierce’ Pierce, as I like to call her – is just that. She’s fierce, she’s phenomenal, she is a boss Black woman on television. I can’t name a lot of Black psychiatrists on television. I can think of maybe two or three. She is the Chief of Psychiatry at this hospital, and she’s one of the most sought-after doctors in her field in New York City, but she chooses to stay at Bronx General and give back to that community. So it’s exciting to play her, and the moment I read the script, I said, ‘I’m her, and this is my role, and I gotta get it,’ and I did.
Hopefully Brilliant Minds will continue to show more of Carol Pierce as a doctor and as a person as the medical drama continues this fall. At the very least, it seems like a safe bet that the friendship between Tamberla Perry as Pierce and Zachary Quinto as Wolf will be a highlight. Keep tuning in to NBC on Mondays at 10 p.m. ET for new episodes of Brilliant Minds, following new episodes of The Voice. You can also stream the series next day with a Peacock subscription.