Some TV shows are needed more than others. In today’s world, a medical drama like Brilliant Minds is 100% needed.
This is a series that offers more than just entertainment. It is a look at people and life. It brings us topics of empathy, seeing patients as people, and going above and beyond to get answers. DeMane Davis is both a director and EP on the series, and we talked with her about why this show right now.
Davis directed episode 3, “The Lost Biker,” and the finale “The Man Who Can’t See Faces.” We talked about the directorial decisions made in the third episode, which allowed us a chance to see what a patient could be experiencing, adding more empathy to the show.
Why Brilliant Minds as the next project?
Hidden Remote: What was it about Brilliant Minds that made you decide this was the next project you wanted to work on?
DeMane Davis: I am in a very fortunate position to be in an overall deal with Warner Bros., and one of the executives said “I’m going to show you this show, and you’re gonna cry in the first three minutes. So we really want you to be producing director on the show.” I was like “I’m not gonna do that,” and then I was in.
I love Dr. Oliver Sacks. I’ve been a huge fan of his work. My mother took me to see Awakenings when I was little, and I will never forget that film. To think of Dr. Oliver Sacks as being alive as Zachary Quinto today, treating his patients, going to their homes, helping them figure things out, and especially dealing with mental health, which I think you know is not a secret that this country is in a mental health crisis with everything that’s gone on. I love it.
This is the way a doctor should treat his patients. It’s the way that I always thought doctors would be when I was little. That’s what they’re supposed to do. So, to be associated with a show like that—I’ve been fortunate in that a lot of the shows I’ve worked on are shows that I love and I’m a fan of, but also will do some good in the world—that’s what attracted me to do it.
HR: It’s one of those shows that is needed right now.
DD: Absolutely.
Directorial choices in showing dementia in Brilliant Minds
HR: You directed episode 3, which I thought was beautifully done in how you show everything. We could see into the mind of Wyatt. How did you go about in setting up all those scenes to allow us to connect with him?
DD: Thank you for that question. One of the things that I love about this show is that Michael Grassi, the showrunner and show creator, came up with the idea of going into the body, heart, mind, and soul of the patient to give audiences the idea of what it is they’re experiences, which can often be really hard to portray with mental health. He talked a lot about how if you see a person struggling to walk down the street usually people step back, and Dr. Oliver Sacks would step forward and say “How can I help?”
What he allowed every director to come in and do, which is rare in a show, is allow us to create visually how we were going to show that and put us inside the mind of the patient. With this particular script, which was beautifully written by Sara Saedi, my mother had Alzheimer’s, so when Wyatt starts to have memory lapses, I thought about what it’s like for me when I can’t remember anything. It feels like I’m trying to reach for a thought and then it falls.
There’s an artist on Instagram, and I’m forgetting the name, but this incredible artist has been doing fashion shows and he did all these incredible things with curtains. These curtains then got sucked into a hole and went away, and there was all this atmosphere that came down and the audience was like, “whoa!” I was like “Oh, it’s a curtain.”
That’s what it feels like. You’re reaching and you can’t figure it out, and then it’s just gone, and you’re in this limbo space where you’re like “what was I saying? What was I thinking about?” And so, I talked about that with Miroslaw [Baszak], the DP who I adore, and he said “We can do it.” With Khanh Quach, our production designer, we were able to create a curtain and our grips, John Tennant, testedit and set it up and we projected onto the curtain and then we had the curtain fall. It felt really powerful, and it felt like people immediately had the feeling that I did.
Michael Grassi and Sara Saedi actually rewrote the script a little bit to talk about the limbo space, and I was just so thriller that all of that could come together. In the end, the think I’m most grateful for is that we got Steve Howey, who is a giant man, a tremendous actor. Dr. Oliver Sacks did really treat bikers. He treated the Hell’s Angels in exchange for bike work, and if one macho man can say “I’m gonna go to the doctor,” I feel like we won.
Having Zachary Quinto playing Dr. Oliver Wolf
HR: Everyone I’ve talked to has said just how brilliant Zachary Quinto has been on set. He not only brought Oliver Wolf alive, but he has helped to keep the show focused so everyone delivers their best performances. Did you find that at all behind the camera?
DD: Yeah. He’s not just an empathetic actor. He’s an empathetic human, and he cares very much about the show and the characters. He would come in and make tweaks. He’s like “thisisn’t making sense to me, how can we make it better?” We would rewrite things on the spot for him every single time he asked for that, and it would make it better, which I loved.
He was also very caring about the crew and that everything ran smoothly, so that everyone was getting what they needed.
When he comes to set, he’s completely prepared, and in the midst of all the chaos, you’ll see him in a corner and he’s just meditating. He’s huge on meditation, and there’s all this cacophony of sound going on and people running and trying to set things up, and he’s just completely dressed and ready and prepared. When he comes to set, he just knocks it out.
In the episode he rewrote, he had all these $20 words and he was able to spit them out. It was really incredible. He was able to remember it and make it understandable, which was also great. He’s also got a great sense of hour, which I’m grateful for. He wasn’t very serious all the time.
I couldn’t think of any other actor who was more perfectly suited to play this role.
HR: I’m hoping for a season 2, but if this is all we get, what would you like audiences to take from this series?
DD: I would hope that they would watch and would want season 2 as well. I think there are so many more places to go, not just with these characters, but there are so many more things that can be portrayed.
One of the things I do is I live tweet each episode. You’re watching television with thousands of people at the same time, and everyone’s contributing and saying something. What I’ve noticed when I do that, and I’ve done it for every episode, is someone will say, “Oh my God, I have autism; they’re talking about someone who’s autistic. Oh, my son is neurodivergent. Oh, my friend has that.” And they start to not just talk about that, but they describe their issues and their problems, and they’re so grateful to see it out there. There’s this feeling of now this is demystified. We can talk about it now.
That’s all Dr. Oliver Sacks was trying to do. So, my great hope would be for more of that all the time.
Brilliant Minds airs its final two episodes of season 1 on Monday, Jan. 6 starting at 9/8c on NBC.
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