THE EYES HAVE IT
Clinically blind excop fights crime in ‘Sight Unseen’
DOLLY LEWIS plays clinically blind ex-cop Tess Avery in “Sight Unseen ”— and her acting comes from a very real place. That’s because Lewis has detached retinas in both of her eyes, “not as severe as Tess’ condition,” she told The Post, but dangerous if not closely monitored.
“The showrunners based Tess’ experience off a genetic condition [Leber hereditary optic neuropathy], among other things, and that means a very sudden and extreme loss of vision,” said Lewis, who lives in Union Square with her film director husband. “Whereas my retinas are detaching and they can detach completely, and if I don’t get emergency surgery I can be fully blind.
“I’ve always had awful vision since I was 5 or 6, but in terms of my retinas, it’s much milder compared to Tess,” she said. “I did develop some pretty severe night blindness in recent years, but I can certainly get around — as long as I’m not at the helm of a hurdling mass of machinery in the middle of the night.”
In “Sight Unseen,” airing on the CW, Tess is a homicide detective in Vancouver who’s diagnosed with an ocular condition in which she can only see shapes and shadows, which severely limits her sight. She keeps the diagnosis to herself but quits the force suddenly when she can’t shoot at a suspect — because she can’t see him — but doesn’t tell her partner, Jake Campbell (Daniel Gillies), why she’s leaving.
Tess finds a visual assistance app in which a guide walks her through investigations via a small camera on her clothing (Tess wears an earpiece for audio). That guide turns out to be Sunny Patel (Agam Darshi), an insistent, excitable agoraphobic who’s thousands of miles away in New York City; the two women quickly bond as Sunny helps Tess solve cases and catch the bad guys, often assisting Jake and the Vancouver PD.
The crime procedural was created by Karen and Nikolijne Troubetzkoy.
“[Karen] has had numerous operations and some severe loss in her eyes over the years, so she’s certainly bringing her own experience to developing the role of Tess,” said Lewis, a classically trained actress (the Esper Studio in Manhattan) who beat out hundreds of other actors to snare the part.
“And they hired at least one other writer [Graham Isador] who experienced loss in his sight, so he was able to further advise as to how Tess would actually physically be able to do something . . . things you wouldn’t normally know if you couldn’t navigate the world without your eyes.”
Lewis said the show’s crew made it a bit easier for her to navigate the set due to her sight impairment. “I chose not to wear any kind of corrective eyewear on the set to help me physically embody the behavior of somebody who is trying to get their bearings when they can’t see what’s around them,” she said. “And that was actually quite tricky because the soundstage is dark so . . . it was hard for me to get around those interior shoots.
“On the set, I benefited a lot from the wonderful crew putting up neon tape all over the place to give me symbols like, ‘That’s the bathroom, that’s the exit,’ ” she said. “And they had signs printed in extra-large fonts.”
Lewis said the role of Tess, and the format of “Sight Unseen,” appeals to her on several levels.
“I was really intrigued because I love a good procedural,” she said. “I grew up watching the original ‘Law & Order’ — Sam Waterston was my idol as a kid — and I love courtroom drama and the suspense of people cracking a case.
“I think Tess resonates with me because of the fact that she’s gritty and a lone wolf, which doesn’t always serve her but she will use that to her advantage.
“I understood that about her very well.”
“Sight Unseen” airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST on the CW.