‘Brilliant Minds’ Adds André De Shields, Steve Howey & Mandy Patinkin As Season 1 Guest Stars

Katie Campione
·2 min read

Brilliant Minds has added several guest stars to its Season 1 lineup.

Steve Howey, Mandy Patinkin, and André De Shields will all appear in the upcoming 13-episode inaugural season, which debuts on September 23 on NBC. Creator Michael Grassi announced the news during the Brilliant Minds panel as NBCUniversal’s Television Critics Association summer press tour.

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“We have exceptional guest stars this season,” Grassi said, teasing that there may be more to come.

De Shields appears in the pilot as an Alzheimer’s patient. Howey appears later in the season is a member of a biker gang that comes to Dr. Wolf from treatment. Patinkin, whose arc will span two episodes, plays a family doctor who visits Bronx General.

Brilliant Minds is inspired by the late neurologist Oliver Sacks and follows revolutionary, larger-than-life neurologist Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) and his team of interns as they explore the last great frontier — the human mind — while also grappling with their own relationships and mental health.

The drama is inspired by the books “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “An Anthropologist on Mars,” by Sacks, who died in 2015 at 82. Dubbed by The New York Times a “poet laureate of contemporary medicine,” Sacks dove into dedicated his life to studying the strangest and most mind-boggling brain disorders in the world as a window into human consciousness, and he believed in remaking our approach to the mentally ill and neuro-atypical. His book, Awakenings, also was made into the 1990 film starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

Besides Quinto — whose last series regular role on NBC was in Heroes — Brilliant Minds will star Tamberla Perry, Ashleigh LaThrop, Alexander MacNicoll, Aury Krebs, Spence Moore II, and Teddy Sears.

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