Development
Naomi was created by Shonda Rhimes, who wanted the show's central character Addison to have a close friend from her college days. The character is based on a friend of Rhimes', who "married her college sweetheart and is strong and smart and funny." Naomi was played by Merrin Dungey in the backdoor pilot episode "The Other Side of This Life", but was replaced by Audra McDonald prior to the show's first season. Rhimes explained that the production team "wanted to put an edge on Naomi that we could define more clearly." McDonald assessed that Dungey's dismissal was hard as a result of its having been so public, but commented that she herself had once been similarly replaced, having played Bill Cosby's daughter in the pilot episode of Cosby, only to be replaced thereafter.
Read more about this topic: Naomi Bennett
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow—one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and received his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)