Mandy Patinkin's Family Secrets Inspired Him to Take on BombshellBrilliant MindsRole: 'It Made Lying a Cancer to Me' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Mandy Patinkin as Dr. Noah Wolf (left) and Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf on ‘Brilliant Minds’.Photo:Rafy/NBC

Rafy/NBC

Warning: this story contains spoilers from the Jan. 6 season finale ofBrilliant Minds.

WhenMandy Patinkinstepped into rehearsals for his guest role on NBC’s medical dramaBrilliant Minds, he also stepped back in time, into his own family’s history.

TheMichael Grassi-led procedural is loosely based on the real life of Oliver Sacks, a neurologist who was one of the first to investigate mental health. Just like the show’s main character, Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto), Sacks was motivated to pursue a career in this field because a close family member struggled with a mental illness, and it was treated as a big secret.

“Oliver Sacks then dedicated his life to writing about these things and talking about them and listening: all of these things that are so important toBrilliant Minds,” Grassi tells PEOPLE. “We’re sort of trying to carry that torch forward.”

The show follows Dr. Wolf, who takes on a new neurology case each episode, alongside his interns Van (Alex MacNicoll), Ericka (Ashleigh LaThrop), Jacob (Spence Moore II) and Dana (Aury Krebs). The doctor, who hasprosopagnosia, or facial blindness, also starts up a romance with neurosurgeon Dr. Josh Nichols (Teddy Sears) and contends with the death of his father, who struggled with mental illness throughout his life.

Mandy Patinkin as Dr. Noah Wolf (left) and Donna Murphy as Dr. Muriel Landon in ‘Brilliant Minds’.Rafy/NBC

In the final two episodes ofBrilliant Minds' first season, Patinkin guest stars in a bombshell role. After helping Dr. Wolf and Dr. Nichols during a terrifying building collapse, he reveals himself to be Wolf’s father, alive and well, over 20 years after his son believed he had died.

Patinkin tells PEOPLE that he got a call from Grassi about the role while sitting in a chair that he “inherited” from his time onHomeland. After quickly requesting to put him on speaker so Patinkin’s longtime wife, Kathryn Grody, could hear — “because she’s my boss,” the actor says — Grassi got to work explaining the show’s concept and the pivotal role of Wolf’s dad.

“My wife kept looking at me and her eyebrows kept going up. She was saying, ‘You should pay attention. You have interesting relationships with your sons. You might find this interesting,’ " Patinkin recalls of that first conversation, referencing their sons Isaac and Gideon.

Kathryn Grody and Mandy Patinkin attend the ‘Homeland’ season 8 premiere at Museum of Modern Art on Feb. 4, 2020 in New York City.Monica Schipper/Getty

Monica Schipper/Getty

For Grassi’s part, he couldn’t imagine another actor in the role. “I would say Mandy was the only person we imagined and talked about in the writer’s room originally pitching the series,” he says. “When I pitched Zachary what his season story would be, I said, ‘At the end of the season, dad arrives, and imagine it’s Mandy Patinkin.’ "

Before digging too deeply into the character, who ultimately causes Wolf to question all of his relationships after he realizes he has been lied to for years, Patinkin says he wanted the relationship to be “hopeful.”

“I want it to be filled with life and love and kindness. I don’t want to dredge up landfills that are poisoning the earth of their souls,” he remembers saying to Grassi.

Quickly though, as Patinkin’s own history caught up to him, this dream felt unattainable. “I thought I could do that but I couldn’t. I would constantly find myself breaking down because of things you can’t help but think about as a parent: ‘Did I screw up? Did I hurt my kid this way? Did I hurt my wife? Is it recoverable?’ " Patinkin recalls.

BRILLIANT MINDS - Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf, Mandy Patinkin as Dr. Noah Wolf.Rafy/NBC

As they got deeper into rehearsals and filming, the scenes where Wolf’s parents' lies come out “hit a nerve” for Patinkin, bringing up two family secrets and deep emotions that he couldn’t ignore.

One memory that kept tugging at him was a big reveal he received on Henry Louis Gates Jr.‘sFinding Your Rootsin 2021. At the urging of his son Gideon, Patinkin went on the show andlearned of a big family secretthat changed the way he viewed his ancestry.

“My generation was told that we didn’t lose anybody in the Holocaust but the show revealed that there were many, and they gave me the names,” he says. “They did all of this on camera for five and a half hours, and I lost it repeatedly.”

Mandy Patinkin as Dr. Noah Wolf on ‘Brilliant Minds’.Rafy/NBC

Much like inBrilliant Minds, Patinkin thinks these secret keepers felt they were doing the right thing. He adds of his own family experience, “They did it for a lot of reasons: to protect us, to deny it for themselves, on and on and on.”

“My dad was no idiot. It didn’t take him more than five minutes to figure out that this ain’t hepatitis,” Patinkin says. “I lied with everyone else. And you don’t ever get that time back to be with your father in any way you might imagine. It made lying a cancer to me, worse than any cancer that exists.”

Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty

Grassi agrees and says that a major part of bringingBrilliant Mindsto the screen was about truth-telling and “being in conversation with each other and listening to each other.”

In the end, it seems like Patinkin’s wife, Grody, was on to something, and the guest-starring role really did end up being an “interesting journey” that was “beneficial” to the actor’s work and personal healing.

“I have worked in this business for some time now, and your dreams don’t always come true. Sometimes they do come true, though, and you get to work with someone like Mandy,” he says. “It makes me wanna say, do meet your heroes because this has been an incredible experience.”

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Brilliant Mindscan be streamed on Peacock.

source: people.com