Nothing is as it seems when Elena (Mariel Molino), a determined young woman with a sordid history, moves into an upscale Manhattan apartment building to work as a live-in nanny for Matthew (Warren Christie), a wealthy widower, in the new supernatural thriller The Watchful Eye (premiering Monday, Jan. 30, at 9pm ET/PT) on Freeform). For one thing, the place seems haunted. For another, Elena has her own reasons for taking this position, and it’s not to improve her resumé.
Problems arise from the start, when Matthew’s sister-in-law Tory (Amy Acker) intrudes on their job interview and attempts to keep Matthew from hiring Elena to watch her nephew. From then on, the two are at odds, both guarding their own secrets and moving forward with separate agendas. At times appearing cold and patronizing to the point of antagonistic, at others seeming like a woman who is barely keeping herself together after the death of her sister, Tory is one of many mysterious family members living in this ill-fated residence.
Acker shares with us that there’s more to her character than meets the eye. “She’s very misunderstood, I would say,” Acker says of Tory. “She’s kind of her own worst enemy a lot of the time. She feels like she’s doing the right thing; she’s keeping everybody in line and helping make everything perfect. But it just pushes people away so badly.” Asked if she sees Tory as the villain she is made out to be, Acker says no. “I think she really does love the people she’s with and wants what’s best for them. What was fun about her was really getting to figure out what was under those walls. Because when it starts, all you know is this lady is not someone you want to be friends with,” she says.
Acker, who has played many multifaceted characters — most famously, perhaps, the reserved scientist Winifred on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff show Angel (she is #TeamAngel, by the way) — says she enjoys the dichotomy of an ambivalent, even potentially unlikable character.
“That’s a really fun part about acting for me,” she says. “Finding the monster in the nice person and the human in the monster.” Many of Acker’s previous roles have been in the magical sphere, a space she definitely is drawn to. “I like doing supernatural stuff. It allows you to be a girl in a potato sack who turns into a demon goddess. That doesn’t always happen on a procedural show. It lets you have so much range. Even in Watchful Eye, we have the horror element and the thriller element and the soapy element. Anything can happen, which I really like.”
Also starring Gilmore Girls’ Kelly Bishop as the audacious but mysterious Mrs. Ivey (Acker says she’s her No. 1 reason to watch the show), The Watchful Eye is definitely one to keep an eye on.