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Zachary Quinto‘s medical drama Brilliant Minds just lost several original cast members.
During the midseason return on Monday, January 5, Dr. Jacob Nash (Spence More II) and Dr. Van Markus (Alex MacNicoll) left the hospital. Jacob chose to depart after being offered a spot in his residency program in Texas.
“When I got injured, doctors were in and out of the room, telling me what was best for me. No one ever took the time to get to know me. Not the way you take the time to get to know your patients,” he told Quinto’s character Wolf. “I want to give athletes the kind of care you taught me every patient deserves, the kind of care I wish I got when I was a kid. I’ve gotta go.”
Van, meanwhile, left after his ex-wife, Michelle (Farber), sustained injuries from a car crash and was declared braindead. He eventually agreed to turn Michelle’s life support off and made a decision at the end of the episode.
“Dr. Wolf, I’ve been thinking. I need to step away from the department,” he said. “I need to be there for Liam. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
Creator Michael Grassi broke down what those changes meant for the show.
“What I’ll say is: I love Van and Jacob. I love their characters, but I also love Alex [Macnicoll] and Spence [Moore II] so much,” Grassi told TVLine. “They’ve been with us from the beginning of Brilliant Minds, and I’m their No. 1 fan.”
He continued: “Similar to what Wolf says in that scene in his office at the end of the episode — he says, ‘My door is always open’ — and my hope is that they’re very much still in our world, and this is not the last we’ll see Van or Jacob on Brilliant Minds.”
Brilliant Minds, which premiered in September 2024, is inspired by the Oliver Sacks books The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars. The show follows a neurologist and his team of interns as they tackle challenging neurology cases while dealing with their own relationships and mental health.
The NBC procedural has been met with critical success, and Quinto, 48, is also making history. Oliver is the first openly gay character to lead a network medical series.
“I think the thing for me that is so significant about that is that it’s not significant at all. Actually, it’s not significant to the character,” Quinto said on The Drew Barrymore Show in December 2024. “It’s an aspect of who the character is and NBC was really open to and invested in this story, the value of this story in our contemporary culture and the conversations that are happening today in the society.”
Quinto noted that the role meant “so much” to him because it is based on Sacks, who died in 2015.
“He lived and worked primarily in the mid-20th century, and he was a gay man himself and was celibate for 35 years of his life. When I found that out, I was like, ‘If you’re not somehow called to the clergy or living a life that restricts that, why would you ever make a choice like that?’” the actor recalled. “Then the more I learned about him and the more I read about him and the more that I observed why someone would make that decision, it became clear to me that it was because he didn’t feel he could be authentically himself and be afforded the same opportunities in his field of medicine. He knew he was designed to change the field of medicine, which he did.”
After reading about the inspiration for Brilliant Minds, Quinto believed the role would be “an honor” to take on. “The tragedy of his life was that he felt like if he brought that part of himself into his work, he would have been denied those opportunities,” he explained. “So for me to be in this situation now — a generation later — and to be an openly gay man who’s leading this show and who’s telling this story, it’s such an opportunity to honor the original man himself, Oliver Sacks.”
He concluded: “And to say how grateful I am that I don’t have to cut that part of myself off in order to enjoy a life of fulfillment and success.”
