TV Shows

‘Sight Unseen’ Star Daniel Gillies on Tess Hiding Her Diagnosis From Jake: ‘That’s Mysterious’ (Exclusive)

Gillies spoke to PopCulture.com about the new CW series and what he thinks about Tess keeping her diagnosis a secret.
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Sight Unseen — "Sunny" — Image Number: SUN102a_0041r — Pictured (L-R): Daniel Gillies as Jake Campbell and Dolly Lewis as Tess Avery — Credit: Michael Courtney/The CW — Copyright: © 2024 The CW Network, LLC. ALL Rights Reserved.

Sight Unseen , and star Daniel Gillies spoke to PopCulture.com all about the new series. The Vampire Diaries, a homicide detective and longtime partner of Tess Avery (Dolly Lewis). After Tess nearly lets Jake get killed on the job and is diagnosed as clinically blind, she quits.

However, she doesn’t share why she’s quitting and keeps her diagnosis mostly a secret, except from her closest friend. Gillies says it’s “mysterious” that Tess isn’t spilling the beans. “I never really understood it, but that’s okay. It’s not for me to understand,” he continued. “And actually, Jake’s perplexed when he finds out that that was the case, and so it required zero acting from me because I was mystified about why she might’ve withheld that information, but it also makes sense to me, too. She’s a very proud individual and somebody who’s very autonomous, someone who’s very self-reliant and strong and personally self-sufficient.”

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“And I think that it makes sense that some part of her had to be set to one side,” Gillies shared. “She had to surrender something in order to navigate this new condition. So it did ultimately make sense to both me and to Jake. But I was a bit mystified, too, so I leaned into that. When she told me, I’m like, ‘Why didn’t I know that earlier?’ Well, yeah, I used that thing.”

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Sight Unseen — “Sunny” — Image Number: SUN102b_0273r — Pictured (L-R): Dolly Lewis as Tess Avery — Credit: Michael Courtney/The CW — Copyright: © 2024 The CW Network, LLC. ALL Rights Reserved.

As Tess continues to grapple with her new way of life, she is also going to have to grapple with her relationships and whether or not she admits her diagnosis. Not to mention the fact that she is still very much trying to do things as she normally would, but of course, it’s not as easy.

“I think that’s one of the central elements of the show, and it’s important,” Gillies explained. “That’s going to be what the show is, is her trying to straddle this old life she had, because she’s going to have to maintain certain things from her old world and take them into this new one, where she has a gun and Sunny as her eyes. So she has to walk into a new world, and she has to walk… She has to do a strange and enchanted two-step, essentially. She’s got to dance a whole new dance, and that’s what the show is.”

It sounds like there will be a lot going on with Tess and everyone else as the series continues. Fans will be able to look forward to much more Sight Unseen on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.