The Big Picture

In the crime drama ‘Sight Unseen,’ Detective Tess Avery faces sight loss on the job, risking her partner’s safety.
Collaborating with a stranger via a special app, Tess seeks to continue her work solving cases as a homicide detective.
Tess’s journey involves rediscovering herself beyond her former identity and what her sight divergence means for her now.

In the crime drama Sight Unseen, currently airing on The CW, homicide detective Tess Avery (Dolly Lewis) has to quit the job she loves after she loses her sight while on a case, putting the life of her partner, Jake Campbell (Daniel Gillies), at risk. Diagnosed clinically blind and too stubborn for her own good, Tess seeks help from a stranger named Sunny Patel (Agam Darshi) on what’s essentially a seeing eye app and the two work together to help Tess pass as sighted. If they can successfully enable Tess to continue to solve cases, then she might not have to completely redefine her identity.

During this interview with Collider, Lewis talked about how empowering it is to play Tess, understanding sight divergence because of her own real-life experience, figuring out how to visually convey what’s going on with Tess’s sight, how receptive showrunners Kat and Niko Troubetzkoy were to her input, that there is similar technology that can be used to help people with sight divergence, how Tess’s diagnosis affects her in big and little ways, the relationship between Tess and Sunny, what viewers can expect as the Tess and Jake dynamic evolves, and how the season is really one of self-rediscovery

Sight Unseen Cast Dolly Lewis , Agam Darshi , Daniel Gillies , Jarod Joseph , Alice Christina-Corrigan , Tony Giroux Seasons 1 Creator(s) Karen Troubetzkoy , Nikolijne Troubetzkoy Network The CW

‘Sight Unseen’s Dolly Lewis Was Excited to Play a True Maverick
Image via The CW

Collider: Because there are so many interesting layers to this series and your character, what most excited you about it? Was there something in particular about this character or what this series is trying to do that you were most excited about getting out there for audiences?

DOLLY LEWIS: Oh, for sure. There are so many things that excited me, that I think are important to showcase, that Kat and Niko Troubetzkoy, the half-sister showrunners, did an excellent job with. In terms of Tess, I was really excited to dive into somebody who I think is a true maverick. Aside from Tess’s experience with the sudden loss of her vision, she is somebody who is gritty and who is committed to the point of recklessness, almost. She really doesn’t care. She is so committed to her principles and her values, and she’s just not gonna take no for an answer, even if that means that she throws herself into an absolutely crazy situation that I myself would never say yes to. It was really an empowering ride to take the trip of Tess and be able to experience a little bit of that for myself. And beyond that, getting to show the experience of somebody with divergence in their sight and how they have to reconfigure their entire identity, I thought was a really profound slice of the human experience to put out there for other people to learn from.

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Because there are different ways that her sight issues are visually conveyed, were there things that you were also similarly most concerned about being able to pull off? Was there anything that you were concerned with, as far as the things that you had absolutely no control over?

LEWIS: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question because that’s something every actor has to make peace with and it certainly was something on my radar, every single day, that I had to remind myself of. I’m a very small piece of the puzzle. When you see people in the public sphere, we think that they’re the entire thing. If you understand anything about how movies and TV shows work, you know that the person that you might see the most is actually really far down the assembly line of the entire thing. It’s a real act of trust and faith to let go of any fear surrounding that. There’s a lot of ownership that I wanted to take that I think I was able to hang onto, in terms of my own performance and how I want to show the experience of this body in space. That is within my control because it’s my body and I’m doing it on the set. Beyond that, you just have to make peace with the fact that this is a collaborative medium. I was lucky enough to work with people whose talent and experience I have a lot of respect for, and I felt like I was in good hands. It was also great because they were receptive to my input. Any time I felt like we might have lost sight of something that I thought was important, in terms of Tess’s experience with vision, I had absolutely no problem bringing it up right away, and working with Kat and Niko, or John Fawcett, the producing director, to make sure that was still in there as much as possible. But overall, that’s really an exercise in self-control.

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So many times while watching this, I wondered how much of this was real or how much of it could be real, as far as the app or the different aspects of technology. How important was it to have a balance between this technology that allows her to still continue to live her life in a way that she’s used to living it, with personal human connection and how that’s still needed, without losing one for the other?

LEWIS: That was an interesting balance to constantly keep on the radar, as well. We were being very realistic in the role that technology plays. There are lots of apps out there in real life that people with divergence in their sight use all the time. I know Kat and Niko were basing the app in the show on something that already exists. For whatever is in my control, which is just a very small slice of the pie, I was interested in not becoming too didactic with this whole sight loss thing. It’s really important not to trivialize anyone’s experience at all, but to make it relatable to people. You need a way in for people to connect, and not losing the fun or the humor is a really important way to do that. That’s just a very effective avenue to connecting with people. We all wanna laugh together and we all wanna bond through having fun, so not making it a heavy, didactic thing was really important. Having a little bit of leeway with whether Tess could actually use this app to run across the rooftop, it was important to not let perfect accuracy be the enemy of telling a story that can really help a lot of people.

‘Sight Unseen’ Will Continue to Explore the Big and Little Challenges With Tess’ Sight Divergence

I love that the series really explores a range of her life. We see how hard it is for her to get her pants on and not have them be inside out, but then we see her solve a case as a cop. Will we continue to see, throughout the season, how all of this is affecting her life, in the big and the little ways?

LEWIS: Yeah, that was one of my favorite parts. That’s also just very true. One thing where we were all on the same page, in terms of crafting this story, is that it’s not a perfect hero story, and it’s not an absolute pity story either. The fact is that people with any kind of divergence in any of their senses or any of their abilities, they’re still just regular people, so they might have trouble putting their pants on. That can happen to anybody, if the room is dark, and you didn’t realize you were putting them on inside out, or you’re still annoyed at your little brother for making a mess of your apartment, whether you can see or not, or whether you can hear or not, or whether you have two legs or not. Really staying grounded in all the other things that make Tess just like everybody else was important to me, and I know it was important to the rest of the creative team. I think it also just makes for a way more fun show. All those juicy little details, there was definitely stuff that was written into the story and there was a lot of stuff that I’m really grateful they trusted me with to add my own flavor to, on the day. If something inspired me with a prop, I would just improv with it for a few takes, and if they liked it, they would use it. Finding any moment I could to reinforce Tess’s relationships and Tess’s everyday struggles in her life, that are not just the grand glorious case, was really important and a lot of fun for everybody. I think that is one of the best parts of the show and is something that sets it apart.

It’s wild that you have these two characters, in Tess and Sunny (Agam Darshi), that play such a huge role in each other’s lives, but they’re never in the same room. What has that been like to figure out and navigate? Are there times that you wish she could be there in ways that she’s not?

LEWIS: That was a fascinating experience, for both Agam and me. I know I can speak for her because we’ve talked about it a lot. I really felt lucky that we got to meet each other at the top of the whole shoot, and we bonded really early on. For the first block of shooting, Agam was actually on the set with me, feeding me her lines, even though she was never on camera. And then, the shooting schedule picked up for both of us, and we weren’t able to do that again. I got to do it for her a couple of days, and that was really special for both of us. That’s a feast for an actor. How do you build a relationship immediately with somebody that you never actually see and that you never actually feel physically in your near vicinity? More and more, we all experience that in the day-to-day, just with how embedded technology is in our lives. We’re all constantly FaceTime, or we’re walking around with our earbuds in on a phone call. You can text people. You can have entire relationships with people that you never, ever see, or you’re never in person with. That is a really interesting thing to explore, and it’s a great challenge for an actor. How do you get intimate with somebody right away? That’s always a goal. And trying to do it without ever actually being able to feel the person was a really great challenge.

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It’s also really clever that while Sunny is essentially Tess’s secret, and she’s moving through life not telling people that she has this person talking to her, it’s not one-sided and Sunny has a secret of her own. Was that also fun to get to explore?

LEWIS: Absolutely, and I think that’s really important for the strength of the show. The whole arc and the structure of that, in order to make it really successful, it needs to be balanced in that way. People need that counterpoint, that strong seesaw between these two opposing forces who are so closely connected, for better or worse. We’re not sure yet. That’s really compelling storytelling.

We think that Tess is the one that needs help, but maybe it’s really Tess that’s helping Sunny.

LEWIS: Yeah, absolutely, and that’s true of every relationship. I think it’s highlighted, particularly in terms of logistics, but that makes it a really immediate question. I think everybody experiences that feeling of, “Is this person an obstacle to me, or are they a gateway to new horizons? Which one am I to them? When am I both? When are they both?” I think these are questions every human grapples with, and it’s really fun to explore that in this way.

Tess and Jake Will Continue to Challenge Each Other in Season 1 of ‘Sight Unseen’
Image via The CW

What can you say to tease how the Tess and Jake (Daniel Gillies) relationship will play out this season and what we’ll see from them?

LEWIS: First of all, working with Dan Gillies was such a joy. That man is so funny and he’s so humble. He’s just a constant student of the craft of filmmaking and acting. We bonded right away. We had really good chemistry, right off the bat, and I think that was mirrored in the relationship of Tess and Jake. Obviously, they love each other very deeply and they know each other very well. Concealing something like that is a really big deal. It shakes things up. Seeing where that goes, I don’t wanna give too much away, but I will say that they go on quite a wild drive together, in terms of rediscovering each other and how each of them approaches their work and themselves. I think they challenge each other in a really great way, and at the end of the day, they always have each other’s back. In what way, we’ll find out?

When it comes to the moments where Tess is bumping or running into something, is all of that scripted ahead of time, or are those things that you have to work out on the day, once you get on set and see where your surroundings are and what might be in her way?

LEWIS: I love that question. It’s just the nerdiest actor question, and that’s the stuff I love to geek out over. It’s a combination of both. Kat and Niko would have the scripts laid out, so that they knew, in a bigger sense, what the challenges would be with the story of the episode, that Tess has to grapple with, in terms of her sight. For me, I also have some issues with my sight, so I didn’t have to fill in every blank. I had some stuff already going on myself. But in terms of the physics of performance, there are just certain rules that might not occur to you because you’re used to your own experience. Your entire life, you’ve lived your way, so you don’t think of them necessarily as the rules by which you live your life, but I found that to be a useful way to think of Tess’s experience with her sight loss. Her particular condition with her sight forces her to look at things in a different way, so always having that as a little bit of a template for myself really helps. But then, it would honestly just depend. Every day, there was a different prop that I didn’t know was gonna be there, or there was a different configuration of furniture, or different blocking, and that was the fun. That’s what you wanna do, as an actor. You wanna get on set and say, “I have no idea what this is gonna be. Let me see. How do I play with this right now?”

Dolly Lewis Says That Season 1 of ‘Sight Unseen’ Will Be a Journey of Rediscovery for Tess
Image via The CW

Initially, we see Tess wanting to deny what she’s experiencing from pretty much everyone, including herself. How much of a journey of self-discovery will she have this season? Is she having to rediscover who she is now?

LEWIS: Yeah. When we first encounter her, she’s a woman who has had the rug completely pulled out from under her, and that would be a journey of self-discovery for anybody. She has to rediscover the self. That’s certainly the situation that she finds herself in, but it pertains not just to the logistics of how she moves around her apartment or how she crosses the street, but also how she really identifies herself. Her job was her identity. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, but now she has to figure out who she is, all over again, because she can’t just be her job anymore. It’s a reconfiguring of who she thought she was and who she is going to be, in all of her relationships now. It’s all about who she is to herself now. We’re meeting somebody who’s forced to take a really hard look at who she thought she was and who she’s becoming.

Sight Unseen airs on The CW. Check out the trailer:

Watch on The CW