EXCLUSIVE: Tamberla Perry Talks Playing Dr. Carol Pierce on NBC’s ‘Brilliant Minds’

Tamberla Perry stars as Dr. Carol E. Pierce in NBC’s hit new show, Brilliant Minds. Currently on a mini hiatus, the show is set to return with its final two episodes of the season on January 6.

We got the chance to chat with Perry about her role in the series, learning more about Carol, working with Zachary Quinto, and so much more more. Check out what she had to say below.

We finally got to see some of Carol’s backstory.

“Yeah, and I think there might be more. There might be more.”

The actress they cast to play a young Carol, Kaci Walfall, was phenomenal. Did you get to interact with her at all?

“Well, we didn’t have scenes obviously, but I came to set on the day that she was filming to meet her. We got to kick it a little bit, but we didn’t actually get to do anything. But my husband is a CW fan, so he had watched Naomi, and DeMane [Davis], who brought her onto the show, had nothing but amazing things to say about her. And then when I saw her, I said, ‘Oh, yeah,’ Because I’ll tell you this, I was auditioning myself to play young me. I was like, ‘No, y’all don’t need to hire any young me.’ Listen, I put my hair up, I let out my little Afro and I said, ‘Look at me.” I can play 20 years old. Look at me.’ Then when I saw her, I’m like, ‘All right, all right. Yeah, let her go ahead and have it. She can be me.’ But no, she’s wonderful. I think she’s so good. She was so lovely as a human being, and she did its justice. She really did. It was great.”

Your character’s relationship with Zachary Quinto’s Dr. Oliver Wolf is one of my favorite parts of the series. Can you tell me a little bit about how you and Zachary developed that relationship?

“Thank you so much, first of all, for that. But that’s good writing, honey. Listen, I got to shout out my creator, Michael Grassi, and I got a shout out his whole team of writers, his whole room. They have really created a relationship between the two of us that is one for the ages, and I adore it. I adore every single moment that Zachary and I get to share the screen together. And that’s on the screen, but in real life, we’re the same people. Our relationship in real life is very much like it is on the show. It’s not like that all the time. A lot of times we have to act to get that across. But this has been easy in the sense of our chemistry off the set is just as wonderful as it is on the set, and I adore it. I want to attribute that to the writers. They’ve created this friendship that is just undeniable, and I love it. I love it so much.

And yeah, those flashbacks, that’s our original story. But you know, Oliver Wolf and Carol Pierce, my character, we’re both based off of real people. He’s based off of Oliver Sachs and my character is inspired by Carol E. Pierce, his longtime friend. We had the source material, the wonderful part about it is that we don’t have to be tethered to those two, to that time, to that period, to any of that, but this is real. Their relationship is real, and you can read all about their relationships in Oliver Sachs’s published books. A lot of it is drawn, not from that time period, but just from the source material that we had at our fingertips.”

When you started the series, did you do a lot of research on the real Carol?

“I come from theater, and we do so much dramaturgy work. Each script is treated like a play. So no, you do the work, you do the research, and you get whatever information you can. It’s not a whole lot about her out there. Several times I had to read 200, 300-something pages in an Oliver Sacks book to get to the little part about Carol and their relationship. Other times I just did deep, deep dives. I even went to Ancestry.com to see if I could find some of her family. She didn’t have children. And then there are a few published articles. I paid for a couple of subscriptions to a couple of outlets that did articles on her. But it’s not a huge, wide array of information, which is one of the things that I want to get out about her.

This is a woman who was a pioneer in medicine. She was the first black woman to graduate from Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the sixties. I mean, that was a huge deal, and nobody’s talking about her. She was an advocate for diversity in medicine, and I just think she’s hugely important, and it’s unfortunate that there’s not enough material out there about her.’

I was perusing through your Instagram before we jumped on here, and I like that you keep calling her Carol Fierce Pierce. I just love that because it describes the character so well. Was that how you initially envisioned her when you read the character description for her?

“Oh, absolutely. I read this script. Again, this is pre-strike, this was when we had 30 minutes to learn 12 pages of the… The strike has really helped us get at least 48 hours to get auditions submitted. But pre-strike, we would get something on Tuesday, and we would have to have it on Wednesday at 12 P.M. I got the script, and I immediately read it. I walked into the living room, and I said to my husband at two A.M., ‘I will be ready to tape this in the morning because I’m about to book this job. This show is amazing, and this woman is fierce.’ Even in the breakdown of her… They may have even used the word fierce in the breakdown for the audition, I’m not sure, but everything about her, like how she handled Oliver, how she handled Josh, how she handled those interns. Carol runs the joint.”

She’s no nonsense.

“She is no nonsense, and she’s one of the most sought-after psychiatrists in New York City but she chooses to stay at Bronx General. She could go anywhere. She could go anywhere. So no, this woman, I was destined to play this woman.”

You’re playing her beautifully. As we wrap this interview, is there anything that you can tease coming up for Carol?

“For Carol. Yeah, I think we get a chance to see what she decides about Morris, how she’s going to handle her career going forward with this whole Allison debacle. As we saw in the previous episode, there was a huge conflict. Allison threatened her at that school saying, ‘Oh, was it because you knew that I was seeing your husband before you stopped treating me?’ This is a conflict. This could be a career ending situation. So, I think we’ll get to see two huge things that are happening, her career and her love life, what decision she makes, how she handles it, and I think some people might be upset with the decision about Morris, some people might be hugely excited. So, we’ll get to see it.”

For my final question for you. For those who are not watching the series, why should they watch it?

“The show, the relatability factor is off the charts. In every single episode, we address something that somebody is going through. And not that we’re fixing it, that’s not what we do over here at Bronx General. We don’t fix you, but we definitely give you tools to adapt out into the real world, and I think that’s hugely different from anything that we’re seeing right now. So, if you want to be enlightened, if you want to laugh, if you want to cry, come on over to NBC, Monday nights right after The Voice at 10 P.M. Eastern, Brilliant Minds, Tuesday on Peacock, we got you covered.”

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Photo credit: Brendan Meadows/NBC