Producer Ava DuVernay seeks normalization in superhero world

“We’re doing really muscular things as it relates to race and gender and class but we’re doing it by playing it normal,” she says.

In “Naomi,” DuVernay’s new series on the CW, a 16-year-old black girl discovers she has powers that could affect those around her. She has an open view of sexuality, too, and an aversion to labels.

“The more you can portray images without underlining them, highlighting them and putting a star next to them, that shows a different kind of hero, right?” DuVernay says. “We start to make that normal and it’s a radical, revolutionary thing.”

Kaci Walfall, who plays Naomi, says that normalization affords her the opportunity to ground the character in reality. “I do genuinely ask myself, ‘What would I do if I found out I had powers?’ Would I be, maybe, not joyful? What would I do? How would I feel?”

Because she doesn’t know the extent of her abilities, Naomi will learn just as viewers do. That, Walfall says, has allowed her to ease into the role, “which is really helpful as an actor. How I embody the powers in Episode 2 is going to be different than how I embody the powers in Episode 11. As the series goes on, she’s figuring out things and she gets better and better every episode.”