Dolly Lewis stars in the CW crime dramaSight Unseenas former detective, Tess Avery, and while this may be the first time most viewers have seen the actress in action, there’s a chance they may have heard her previously. Born on August 10, 2025, Lewis began her professional acting career in 2018, appearing in the short,Vanishing Pointas Carlotta the artist. This role was followed by aseries of several more short filmsbefore she got her first television part, a one-episode role inDead of Winteras Patricia.
Lewis, like her character inSight Unseen, has a visual impairment, only Lewis' began around age 5 or 6. (viaNYPost). Lewis' retinas are detaching and could possibly detach completely, an event that would require emergency surgery or leave her fully blind. This visual impairment has not stopped Lewis from entering a visual medium like acting, and she has made a career out of doing voiceovers for audiobooks and appearing in narrative podcasts likeI Think You’re Projecting.Sight Unseenmarks her first major onscreen performance.
Dolly Lewis Stars As Tess Avery In Sight Unseen
Tess Avery Is A Sight Divergent Police Detective
Sight Unseenfollows former homicide detective Tess Avery (Lewis) who suddenly begins losing her vision and is forced to leave the department. Still wanting to help and solve cases, Tess becomes a private eye with the help of Sunny Patel (Agam Darshi), who uses a visual assistance app on Tess' person to help her navigate. The show premiered in April 2023 and the show has been renewed for a second season (viaTVLine). As the main character,Dolly Lewis' performance makes the show.
Dolly earned a B.A. in Art History from Rutgers University and was trained in acting at The Esper Studio in New York City.
Lewis competed against hundreds of other sight-divergent actorsfrom Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia to earn the role (viaCW). to properly inhabit the role of Tess, whose fictional sight loss is much more dramatic than Lewis', Lewis chose not to wear corrective eyewear on set, though the crew was kind enough to make her transition from eyewear to no eyewear a bit easier,
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’, and they had signs printed in extra-large fonts."
It’s a well-rounded performance from Lewis, who can handle the comedy and drama with equal skill.
Lewis Is An Accomplished Vocalist
Dolly Lewis Has Performed On Audiobooks And She Sings Jazz
Along with her burgeoning acting career,Dolly Lewis has already proven herself a talented vocalist. There are the aforementioned voice performances in podcasts and audiobooks, which can be found on her website,DollyLewis, but she’s also an accomplished jazz singer. Her resume states that she can perform as a soprano D3-D6, and do opera, jazz, and musical theater. Lewis can also play advanced piano and has some knowledge of the accordion. Whether Lewis will completelypivot from music to actingremains to be seen.
Dolly Lewis' Upcoming Projects
Lewis Will Co-Star In The Obelisk
Dolly Lewis has two upcoming projects alongsideSight Unseenseason 2. One is a short,The Scorpion, where she is set to play Jenna Carter and the other will be Lewis' first movie role.The Obeliskis an upcoming mystery thriller about a drifter, David (Alexey Hartlieb-Shea), who is struggling to survive in a dystopian future in America. There he meets Elizabeth Benning, played by Lewis, a marketing exec who discovers her employer may be contaminating the last remaining water supply. Filming has been completed onThe Obelisk, but a release date has yet to be announced.
Sight Unseen
Cast
Sight Unseen is a crime-drama mystery series that follows a homicide detective named Tess Avery, who loses her job after an accident that causes her to lose her eyesight and almost her partner’s life. Now blind and lamenting over the unsolved crimes she left behind, she finds help in an agoraphobic seeing-eye guide named Sunny, who helps her navigate her new life.
