BRILLIANT MINDS' Zachary Quinto & Tamberla Perry on Oliver Sacks connection & more | TV Insider

[Music] he took a patient out of the hospital sorry M we'll be back soon hey hey hey on a motorcycle have you lost your mind he can't even remember our daughter he has memories we just need to unlock them are you ready [Music] I forgot that thredson name was Oliver actually until the other day when somebody was like oh this isn't your first time playing a doctor called Oliver and I was like oh right uh quite different I'm diametrically opposed really uh Oliver thredson was a diabolical character and Oliver wolf is a character who's motivated by compassion and um he his sole purpose as a doctor is to help his patients live a better life and and to honor their dignity um his philosophy is ask not what disease the patient has ask what patient the disease has so he's constantly looking for the person in the context of uh what they're struggling [Music] with I have to say it really is to play a character um who's not going to try to cut somebody's head off in the middle of the season it's really wonderful uh it is really nice especially this stay age I feel like to be a part of a show that's actually putting a message into the world of optimism positivity um hopefully audiences will see themselves in these characters not only in the doctors but especially in the patients and to generate conversations about mental health and mental wellbe and um um those kinds of issues is is really gratifying really I think meaningful one of the things he didn't mention is that his this character puts himself into some of his patients shoes he literally puts himself in their shoes several times we go to we go to doctors specifically my dentist or any other doctor and they're doing an extraction or a root canal and they tell you this won't hurt or and I often have to ask have you had an extraction have you had a root canal and the answer is no even with male doctors who' never had a baby like you know it's it's really hard to say like have an opinion about these things if you have not experience them yourself and this character really wants to experience what these patients are going through you know I when creating this character I I I picked a few females who I deeply respect Diane Carol is one of them and Regina Hall is another one and I kind of Blended the two and I think Diane Caroll brings a Poise and a classiness um and Regina Hall is hilarious uh she's witty she brings the humor so I blended those two women and then the rest of it is Tamba which is in itself I'm a boss um Carol is a boss she's a loyalist um she is highly sought after but she decided to work in the Bronx in her community um to give back so those are all things that stir them up you get Dr Fierce [Music] honey she does have to convince him she needs him because this is she knows that they're a dream team they they have a relationship over 20 years um this could be a dream team we could solve cases and our show we don't we don't stitch people up and send them away fixed we give them the tools they need to adjust and adapt in their own lives and together we can just blow it up um so she's he's proba he's someone that she's wanted for a long time and this was just the perfect opportunity to get him in and uh she capitalized off the moment well I think one of the interesting things is you know Oliver Sachs is the inspiration for Oliver wolf it's it's all um it's all taken from his life uh so many aspects of the character and of the story and the relationship between wolf and Pierce uh reflects the relationship between Oliver Sachs and uh Carol Bernett not the comedy Legend icon Bernette but but a woman with whom Oliver sex went to medical school and um was um probably I imagine one of the only black women in his medical program and orbit and they forged a very unique Bond and relationship in real life and that is the source of the relationship between Carol and Oliver on our show you know we use Oliver Sax's life as our North Star to tell these stories and and the most incredible part of the experience for me has been being able to draw from his incredible writing and life experience and apply it to a character that I get to create um who is separate from um the the source yeah which is very unusual um I I'm not Tethered to any of the constraints of the period in which Oliver sax lived or um you know any of the circumstances that defined his life we get to take all of the stuff that made him so interesting and iconoclastic and influential and apply it to this fictional character um who moves very differently through a contemporary World um so I think the relationship between Carol Pierce and Oliver wolf reflects that and reflects the origin of uh of sax and [Music] brette it's a very interesting thing I I was struggled with it at the beginning to understand how do I communicate it and luckily Lee Tolen creger who directed The Pilot in the second episode of the show is an an amazing visionary director and was able to create a cinematic vocabulary for what it is to struggle with face blindness so that the audience can really understand what uh wolf is going through and what he's experiencing so um we've created that which I think is very helpful and then for me as an actor to plug into the ways that real life people with prosopagnosia would use their I mean the interesting thing about our show is that so many of the disorders that we uh explore don't have a solution they're not going to ever resolve so it becomes about how do people um use other parts of their brain or other uh mechanisms to help them navigate their lives with these disorders and these conditions um and that's true of Oliver wolf himself so um what does he focus on in order to like the color of your hair is something that I could use to identify who you are or um you know the shade of your lipstick or the sound of your voice or specific details of about your physical appearance that aren't about me recognizing your face um but maybe recognizing other aspects of you or how you relate to people so how does he recognize Carol well I mean this is a 20 something plus year old relationship he knows this he just he knows when I enter the room without me speaking I really do I mean my favorite medical show is getting on with Lori Mecha on HBO that was the and and uh Alex Borstein and N Nash I mean that was um incredible with posos and humor and heart and all of the things that it brought and then you know the class like er when I was a kid would watch ER all the time um yeah there's some great medical dramas and I think we're really honored to be a part of the Continuum yeah what about you yeah um I'm a Grace girl early Grace's girl you know since they've entered their 67th season I haven't I haven't caught up um but gray and I also like Scrubs you know I I actually have a background in comedy so watching those um Hospital comedies is have you watched getting on I did not watch get on I'm going to watch you you've been saying that for like a year now and I need to do it um but yeah I'm a Grace girl and a scrubs girl yeah