The CW today presents the U. S. premiere of the drama series Sight Unseen. The series, which premiered on Canadian television last year, chronicles the life of a former murder detective who, while working on a case, begins to lose her sight and is forced to quit her job. Despite being diagnosed clinically blind, the woman’s police solve crimes with the help of her agoraphobic friend and sighted guide. The friend lives far away, so the woman uses the generation to bond with her and, most importantly, adapt to the world.
In a recent pre-launch interview, Sight Unseen co-creators and showrunners Karen and Nikolijne Troubetzkoy, who are half-sisters, explained the show’s origin story from a few other threads. Karen had what she described as a “major incident of vision loss. “When she was in her early twenties, after a night of dancing and getting together, she woke up the next morning without seeing. After seeing an ophthalmologist, she was rushed to the hospital and had surgery on both eyes. Both retinas are “very thin” and exhibit degeneration, adding a “multitude of cascading effects, such as cataracts and scar tissue. “For several weeks, Karen was led through a sighted guide, a term for a sighted user who guided a blind or partially sighted user while holding them by one elbow, while telling everyone that they may still see light and shadow.
“I didn’t know about low vision [before the injury], the many types of vision loss, and all the individual experiences,” Karen said of her ignorance about vision. “I’ve been fascinated by the gulf between sight and low vision. , even more so in this day and age when other people seem obsessed with appearances, Instagram, and all things visual. “
For her part, Nikolijne told me she was listening to a podcast about a blind woman who was used by a consultant to help her navigate the world around her. The consultant helped the woman get dressed, locate her apartment, and get in and out. Nikolijne highlighted the women’s interaction and said that she and Karen had started talking about creating encouraged characters through this “fascinating relationship. “
“What we found [about the interpersonal relationship] was that it was about accepting as true and controlling,” Karen said. “It was a totally new attitude about life and its mental underpinnings, which naturally led to an exciting and entertaining visual spectacle. for sighted audiences [while having] this engaging narrative built into the guide. “
Sight Unseen’s protagonist, Tess Avery, is played by Dolly Lewis in what are her first genuine film credits. Lewis became intrigued by the series when one day a script arrived on her desk and she was surprised to see how “genuinely unique” she was and her interest was piqued. Much of this interest comes from her own way of dealing with vision loss; She describes herself as “always having horrible vision” and her retinas began to detach when she was twenty years old. Progress, she said, has been slow and her daily life has not improved much so far. An exception to this is the onset of severe night blindness, which prevents him from driving at night. Playing the role of Tess made Lewis confront her point of view, and she admitted she didn’t give him much thought before accepting the role. Lewis thought it would be interesting, perhaps prematurely, to “try things out” as a visually impaired user, given her private circumstances. Additionally, she was very intrigued by the relationships between the public and the insider, telling me how adjustments to the framework not only affect the user in question, but how they extend to others in her orbit.
At the top, Graham Isador, a podcaster who works at Sight Unseen, praised the Troubetzkoy sisters’ work in creating a series that cleverly combines entertainment and authenticity when it comes to the lived experiences of other people with disabilities. who also suffers from vision loss, said Sight Unseen is just one more step for the network’s paintings of disability in the media because “there’s not a lot of representation that happens this way” and expressed gratitude for being able to contribute some of her own experience with vision loss from the bedroom.
“We’re looking to create a wonderful TV screen that goes beyond discussions about accessibility,” Isador said.
Isador went on to describe the long-standing precedent of the inclusion of other people with disabilities in film and television, noting that other people with disabilities are tainted or taken out of pity and are seen as a source of inspiration for how they triumph over their own. Bodies. People with disabilities, he said, are portrayed as superheroes or unfortunate, which he says doesn’t reflect anyone’s lived experiences. For her part, Karen said that everyone involved in the production worked to make everything as original and available as possible; He noted that “there was always some other layer you could carry” after hearing the consultants’ recommendations. Karen admitted that everyone was “naïve” about things related to disability at first, but that she has grown since then and hopes to “get better. “”exponentially expand the opportunities” in the future, that is, if a second season is commissioned.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the media is getting better,” Nikolijne said of disability in the media. “I think there’s a shift in the way other visually impaired people are portrayed on screen and the roles they’re assigned. But there are many other degrees that we can go on, like having actors who have experienced what they constitute on screen, [as well as] telling stories about various disabilities that relate to the characters as human beings, not about their disability, and creating stories. which are also available to members of those communities when they are on screen or when other people are listening to them. There are several degrees where we can and continue and I think we’ll get there, but progress is very slow.
From an actor’s perspective, Lewis believes things are looking up.
“We’re definitely seeing changes in how the joys of other [disabled] people are represented,” she said. “I still think he can go further. What I love most about the experience of running in [Sight Unseen] is that Karen and Nikolijne set the tone. It was a challenge. . . The story I was asked to tell wasn’t just that this woman was experiencing primary vision loss and we just stopped by to watch her struggle with it. She was a woman who suffered primary vision loss. She also has to manage those relationships, [which are] absolutely independent of the state of her eyesight; That is, they are still a user who faces the demanding situations that everyone else has. In many ways, you face many other, more demanding situations. It was a fairy tale. . . it wasn’t the lazy direction of “Let’s see how he struggles with his eyesight” or “Let’s take a simple approach. “It was “Let’s take a look at a total human being who has the same thing. demanding situations than many other people. ” It was a very basic reminder that whatever you’re going through, it’s never just one thing.
When asked what network executives thought about the show, Karen and Nikolijne said the CW had been incredibly supportive. Nikolijne told me that the PTB was “completely in agreement and very encouraging in terms of what we were looking to do from an artistic point of view. “by sight. “
As for what Sight Unseen aims to be for the audience, such as the representational facet, Karen pointed out that the exhibition necessarily exists for the entertainment of the people. After all, this is Hollywood.
“The ultimate thing is to make [Sight Unseen] fun,” Karen said.
Nikolijne added that the atmosphere from the press and others has been positive, and others in Canada have been satisfied with Sight Unseen since its inception. In the U. S. , CW also did a lot of advertising. For his part, Isador expressed optimism that disability will be a general and integral component of a person’s humanity, alluding to Lewis’ comments that Tess’s condition is only one component of her existence.
People with disabilities, like her character Tess, are multifaceted, Lewis said. They have the same disorders and fundamental problems as everyone else. Seen without being seen, he added, it does justice to those notions in many ways.