‘Brilliant Minds’ Creator Michael Grassi Previews the Introduction of John Clarence Stewart’s Dr. Thorne in Season 2 (Exclusive)

Brilliant Minds Season 2 is bringing on several new cast members, and creator Michael Grassi spoke to PopCulture.com about one of them.

The NBC medical drama’s sophomore season is premiering on Monday on NBC.

Zachary Quinto stars as Dr. Oliver Wolf, with the cast also including Tamberla Perry, Ashleigh LaThrop, Alex MacNicoll, Aury Krebs, Spence Moore II, and Teddy Sears. Brian Altemus, John Clarence Stewart, and Al Calderon have joined Brilliant Minds in series regular roles for Season 2. There are even more new recurring cast members and guest stars, and while Grassi loves “all of the new additions so much,” he did share one of his favorite new additions.

“I’m not playing favorites here, but I think Dr. Anthony Thorne is really, really interesting, played by John Clarence Stewart, who is just so talented,” he explained. “And one of the gifts of doing Season 2 is that we get to open up our hospital.”

“Sort of the mothership of our show will always be neurology, psychiatry, and sort of that neuropsych in action floor, which we’ve committed to, which is sort of our central hub of the show. But now that we have a Season 2, we get to go to other departments and meet other doctors, and one of those doctors is Dr. Thorne,” Grassi continued. “And what’s interesting is how people approach medicine differently, even just within the hospital.”

The EP went on to explain that Dr. Wolf, who is inspired by author and neurologist Oliver Sacks “spends so much time with patients. Sometimes days and gets to know everything about them, and sometimes he even takes them on field trips or goes to see them where they work because his way of helping patients is getting to know them and everything in their lives.”

“On the other side, we have Dr. Thorne, who, that’s not possible for him in the emergency department,” Grassi shared. “He’s seeing hundreds of people a day, and he’s moving fast. And it’s like, he’s looking upstairs, and he’s, like, that guy gets into all of that. ‘I need beds upstairs.’ So we get to sort of show Wolf’s approach to medicine by exploring how other people in the hospital approach medicine and all of their dynamics.”

It will be exciting to see what John Clarence Stewart will be bringing to Bronx General, and fans will soon find out when Season 2 of Brilliant Minds premieres on Monday at 10 p.m. ET on NBC, following The Voice, streaming the next day on Peacock.