Meet Tamberla Perry, Star Of NBC’s New Medical Drama Brilliant Minds

I look forward to fall every year for many reasons, and fall TV is definitely one of them. I always make little mental bookmarks of the new shows I want to watch, this year adding a tab early for NBC’s new drama Brilliant Minds. It checks a lot of “interests” boxes for me: It’s a medical drama (I may have an honorary degree at this point), it’s based on real-life doctors, and it stars Zachary Quinto and Tamberla Perry.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve loved Quinto ever since you saw him in the 2006 series Heroes. But you probably also love to see and support other moms, and Perry has two little girls who get to watch theirs go out into the world and carve out space for women onscreen.

I liked everything I learned about Perry prior to our first introduction. She has a background in sketch comedy, including collaborating with her husband, Kevin Douglas, on the YouTube series The Tam & Kevin Show. Her career includes both film and stage, and she’s pursued it with dogged belief — she and Kevin moved to Los Angeles when she was four months pregnant with no job prospects but determined to make a real go of acting.

At one point, she did have plans to go to medical school, so you might say her journey has come full circle. We caught up over Zoom to talk about her “fierce” character, the importance of mental health at home, and the medical scare that makes her appreciate Brilliant Minds even more.

Scary Mommy: Congrats on the show! It made me cry in, like, the first five minutes — in a good way. What really sucked you into the script?

Tamberla Perry: It’s such a great question because the show is different. [It’s] inspired by the life and works of renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks. In our show, we follow Dr. Oliver Wolf, his team of interns, and myself, chief of psychiatry, as we explore the mind — the last great frontier — all while dealing with our patients and also dealing with, or neglecting, our own mental health.

I think that was the thing that really stood out to me: that this is a show about mental health. This is a show where the people aren't coming into the hospital and getting fixed by the end of the episode. We're going to be seeing these characters for many episodes to come, and just as you wouldn't walk into a therapy session with your counselor expecting to be fixed in an hour, that's not what the expectation is going to be. That's not the deliverable of this show. We're giving you the tools to adapt in real life.

So, what stood out was that mental health is important, and it's something that should be respected.

SM: What makes your character, Dr. Carol Pierce — or Dr. Carol Fierce, as you call her — tick?

TP: On the outside to everybody, Carol Pierce has it together ... but we will see hints of little cracks in Carol as the season goes on. But she has it together. She recruits Wolf to this hospital so that they can create this neuropsychology dream team. She is one of the most sought-after psychiatrists in New York City but chooses to stay in her community to help the people of the Bronx. She could go anywhere, but she knows that there is work to be done where she comes from.

SM: And fans may not realize she is based on a real person, too, right?

TP: She is based on a real-life doctor, the late Dr. Carol E. Burnett. Not to be confused with Carol Burnett, the great comedian! Carol E. Burnett was a lifelong friend and colleague of Oliver Sacks. So, to be able to build upon this legacy of someone — there’s not a lot of information out there about her, she's mentioned a few times in articles and pieces of literature from Oliver Sacks — who was just such a pioneer and activist and trailblazer in her own right is a huge honor for me.

SM: Very cool. Speaking of the comedian Carol Burnett, you come from a comedic background, and while there is humor in this series, it isn’t as forward-facing. What was it like for you to shift into this head space?

TP: In a recent interview, [I said] that Carol brings a bit of levity to the show that I don't think the writers may have initially intended. And when I said it the first time, I thought, Oh shoot, does she bring levity to the show? Or am I thinking that I'm out here being funny and I'm really not? Because it's not forward-facing at all. It's that weird technical part of comedy that you can't try to be funny. I feel like any levity that I'm able to bring to this role is because we have such a collaborative team. Michael Rossi, our incredible showrunner, has created a community of collaboration.

SM: You’ve said before that this series centers on doctors who put themselves into patients’ shoes in a way that isn’t always reflected in the real world. Can you expand on that?

TP: That’s one of the things that Carol E. Burnett was a trailblazer for. She was a trailblazer for diversity and medical education, and a leader in the fight against health disparities. She made it her mission to change the face of medicine by teaching students the art of being culturally sensitive in medicine.

I remember when I had my second kid, I swole up really, really badly. My legs looked like my thighs — except they were my ankles and my feet. After I had my first kid, I swole up pretty good too, but this time it was, oh, there’s something wrong. I kept calling my doctor; I sent pictures. I kept saying, ‘I know that we swell, but this is crazy.’ And I kept being met with, ‘Just drink some water and keep walking. You just need to keep moving, and it's going to go down.’

So, 10 days after my second kid was born, I randomly checked my blood pressure ... and it was 200 over 199. I didn't feel weird. I didn't feel weird at all. The only thing was that my feet were swollen. I got admitted that night for postpartum preeclampsia, and that was because somebody wasn't hearing me.

SM: Wow. Well, mental health, as you mentioned, is a big theme in Brilliant Minds. As the mother of two daughters, how do you make mental health a priority for your family?

TP: Oh, that's a good one. In all transparency, I could do a lot better in that area. Right now, my oldest daughter — she’s 8 — is having a little bit of a challenge with me traveling so much with the job and being in Canada. So, thank you for bringing that to my attention. That is something I need to really focus on in my own house.

Catch Perry in Brilliant Minds starting Sept. 23 at 10/9c.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.