00:00I mean, Spock has like a whole side of him which isn't even human.
00:04He probably, as a result of that, is maybe a little bit super intelligent.
00:10But Oliver Wolfe would definitely give him a run for his money.
00:13I would love to see that episode of Jeopardy.
00:14Dr. Oliver Wolfe is actually based on the life of Oliver Sacks, a very renowned neurologist
00:34who lived and worked in the mid to late 20th century.
00:38He died in 2015 at the age of 83.
00:40That's kind of been a dream as an actor because I get all of the benefits of the real-life
00:47Oliver Sacks, but I get to create a character on my own.
00:51But I've never played a character that's inspired by a real-life person but exists in a totally
00:55different world.
00:56I mean, he was really regarded as one of the preeminent neurologists, certainly, of his time.
01:02And also, The New York Times called him the Poet Laureate of Medicine because he was very
01:06concerned with capturing the experiences of his patients in his writing.
01:10And so he wrote books and innumerable case studies of patients that he worked with and
01:16many essays.
01:17And he wrote a beautiful memoir toward the end of his life as well.
01:21So it's been incredible for that reason alone.
01:24And then add to it all of the amazing people that I've gotten to work with on the show and
01:28Michael Grassi, our showrunner, and our staff of incredible writers.
01:31The world that they've created has been really vivid and really a joy to immerse myself in.
01:37You're a doctor.
01:38You put this facility at risk.
01:41We get it.
01:42You want to change how your patients see the world.
01:45I want to change how the world sees my patients.
01:47For me, it was really about reading and watching him.
01:51He's given many lectures over the years and I was able to spend hours on YouTube just watching
01:58him talk.
01:59He was motivated by this idea that he always wanted to understand and experience whenever
02:04possible the same sensations and the same perspectives that his patients were experiencing.
02:10And so he was very unconventional in how he went about that.
02:14Putting myself in the same state of mind as the patient will help us understand your condition.
02:18Did you just take a patient's drugs?
02:22We must see the world through her lens.
02:24He was working with people who, in many cases, were suffering from neurological disorders
02:30or diseases or injuries from which there was no return to normal.
02:37And so part of his work was really always about working with his patients to find their new
02:42normal and find who they were in the context of this disease or this injury.
02:48And that to me, it's something so moving.
02:52It's something so beautiful about the human spirit, right?
02:56Like let me find your integrity with you.
03:00Let me find your dignity with you.
03:02He's our North Star, which is what Michael Grassi and the collaborative team always says
03:07like we're, we're always aiming to honor Oliver Sacks.
03:12This is Dr. Wolf.
03:14He's a genius.
03:15We might actually learn something.
03:17People say he can't recognize faces.
03:19Wolf.
03:20I think he's a dick.
03:21Yes, Wolf is strange.
03:24I hadn't done television in a little while.
03:26Certainly a series like this.
03:27And it just felt, I don't know.
03:29I mean, it was the material.
03:30It was the people getting to work with Michael Grassi, who's our showrunner, Lee Toland-Krieger,
03:35who directed our first two episodes.
03:37And Greg Berlanti and his whole team are producing the show has been a real dream.
03:42So I think I may have come into it with a little bit of uncertainty as to whether or not this
03:47was the right move to make.
03:49But as soon as I talked to them, as soon as I engaged them about the show they wanted to make
03:54and what they thought it could be, then there was no looking back.
03:58It is a bit of a departure for me, I would say, this character in terms of what people generally
04:15associate me with, which is either maybe some more heightened, stylized storytelling,
04:22sci-fi stuff or horror or supernatural stuff or a villain.
04:27You know, this is very different.
04:29I'm always looking for ways to diversify and change up my experience in the roles that I play
04:34and the kinds of stories that I tell.
04:36You know, I think our episodes tie up with a sense of what's possible.
04:41And so there is this, this feeling of optimism in our show, which I think at this point in our
04:48cultural moment, our social moment, I feel really grateful to be putting those stories into the world
04:53as opposed to maybe some of the darker stories that I've told in the past.
04:56You make furniture?
04:58Lamps, mainly.
05:00I make the shades myself.
05:02Really?
05:05What kind of material do you use?
05:08Skin.
05:13Zero similarities between Oliver Threadson and Oliver Wolf.
05:17Zero.
05:18But yeah, I never really, I never really.
05:21I mean, obviously I knew I played a doctor, but I forgot his name was Oliver.
05:24He's an inimitable character.
05:25I mean, it's really, it's really fun because he's quirky, socially awkward.
05:29He suffers from prosopagnosia, which is face blindness, which was true of Oliver Sacks.
05:34So that's, that's a source of conflict for the character and presents obstacles for him.
05:42He's not the most socially adept person that you've ever encountered.
05:46And so there is some humor in that and some awkwardness that comes from it.
05:52You know, he says what he thinks.
05:53He doesn't really consider how it might land on somebody else.
05:56Um, and he's only driven primarily by his care for the people that he's treating.
06:02So, um, yeah, it's, uh, it is quite a departure from Oliver Threadson.
06:07I will say that.
06:08Tell me what you are seeing.
06:11I like to know what my patients are experiencing.
06:17There is a lot of medical jargon.
06:20Uh, well, prosopagnosia took me a minute, uh, to figure that out.
06:25We have an incredible team of medical advisors.
06:28We have, uh, an ER doctor who's on our writing staff.
06:31So, um, she's a really wonderful resource.
06:34We have a great team of nurses who are on set with us every day
06:37and helping us understand how to pronounce things, first of all.
06:40And second of all, we do a lot of medical rehearsals
06:43to make sure that we are approaching any of the medical events
06:46that happen on the show with authenticity
06:48and the terminology of the brain and the different cortexes
06:52and the amygdala, the, you know, all of the kind of,
06:55for me playing a character for whom these terms are second nature
07:00and like they just come, I have to have a relationship to them
07:03that feels really familiar and really comfortable.
07:05And I usually, I usually cultivate that on the day.
07:08I like that stuff. I like that challenge of language.
07:18I can't tell you how many times I've been reading a script for the show
07:21and then I'll be like, uh, oh, okay, well that's fake.
07:24That didn't, you know, and then I go to Michael, I'm like,
07:26Michael, this fake thing that you put in the, it's always real.
07:28Like there's one case of a, of a woman who, who entirely loses her sense of proprioception,
07:34our conscious awareness of our body in space.
07:37So she loses that.
07:39So the signals that go to her, from her brain to her muscles are interrupted.
07:43And so she's not able to move.
07:46And a lot of what we try to accomplish on the show is portraying these experiences
07:52that the patients are having in a visceral way for the audience,
07:54in a cinematic way for the audience so that they get a sense of what it might feel like.
07:58The pilot episode is a woman who undergoes surgery for epilepsy.
08:03And that, that, that part of the surgery is successful.
08:06So she no longer has seizures, but a byproduct of the surgery is a syndrome called Capgras syndrome.
08:12And that is where you lose all emotional connection to the things or the people in your life
08:19that you would and should have an emotional connection to.
08:23I've never seen anything like her.
08:25She doesn't recognize her sons.
08:27You will find your way through this.
08:30I'll be there with you every step of the way.
08:33And so the whole episode is about how do we create a scenario in which she's able to feel
08:40that depth of emotion and connection and accountability to her own kids.
08:45Those are two examples.
08:46I mean, there are many others, but those are the two that I, I, I really understood the depth of stories
08:51that we were telling here and the magnitude of what those experiences would be
08:56for the people who were confronted by them.
08:58She can breathe on her own.
09:00Her brain just doesn't know it yet.
09:03He's incredibly brilliant.
09:08He knows how to help people, how to change lives.
09:11If only he could apply some of that to his own life, to his own intimate relationships.
09:15And that's another great thing that we get to explore in the show.
09:18Not only do we encounter these patients on a regular basis, but we also explore the emotional,
09:26psychological, and intimate connections between the series regulars, between the doctors.
09:30We're close to a breakthrough.
09:32Are you?
09:33You know it's a gift.
09:34Your condition?
09:35It makes you look so much deeper.
09:37Sometimes all it takes is for one person to really see you.
09:43Sophie.
09:45In the case of Oliver Sacks slash Wolf, I think he's somebody who felt called to something bigger
09:53than himself and had to get to a place in his life where he was able to connect with that
10:00and step into it fully and embrace it.
10:03And I think that has to come with a period of growing pains and discomfort.
10:07And I think that someone who is incredibly intelligent can be perceived as other
10:12because they're not always so easy to relate to or identify with.
10:16And I think that's certainly true of Oliver Wolf.
10:24I think it is human nature to want to dive deeper, to want to go to darker and more complicated places.
10:32I think that is actually part of our imperative as human beings.
10:36And I don't know why, maybe there's some connection where these experiences creatively have drawn me further
10:45on that path for myself as an actor or as a person, you know.
10:49I do think that we all bring ourselves to the roles that we play on some level.
10:52And I think we bring the roles that we play into our own lives as well.
10:55There's an exchange that happens over time.
11:02Lastly, Donna Murphy, as part of your ensemble, are there other Broadway divas you want to be on the show?
11:08Cynthia Nixon, come.
11:10Christine Baranski, come.
11:11Audra McDonald, come.
11:13Just bring them all, basically.
11:15The trouble is that pesky Gilded Age has all the Broadway divas on it.
11:18So schedules are very complicated.
11:20But interestingly, you mentioned Donna Murphy.
11:22Donna Murphy and I were in a production of Oliver in 1992.
11:29And on our first meeting, I reminded her that we were both in this production of Oliver.
11:34She pretended to remember me, but I was like, girl, you don't remember me.
11:39But she was like, no, no, I really, really do.
11:41And I was like, okay, well.
11:43But in any event, it's been a delight to work with her.
11:45She's so good.
11:46And she's really a wonderful addition to the cast.
11:49And I hope that we're able to bring, you know, because I come from the theater and go back to the theater as often as I can.
11:55And so that is the goal as we move forward, if we get to keep telling these stories, to bring more and more of them up.
12:04I think probably, I mean, Spock has like a whole side of him, which isn't even human.
12:14And I think that he probably as a result of that is maybe a little bit super intelligent, like hyper intelligent, not in just a human plane, but on another level.
12:24But Oliver Wolfe would definitely give him a run for his money.
12:27I would love to see that episode of Jeopardy.
12:29Music
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