Daya Vaidya Opens Up About Her Secret Superman & Lois Villain, Onomatopoeia (Exclusive)
Clark Kent has had no shortage of adversaries in his televised history. Tom Welling's iteration of Superman battled everywhere from Doomsday to Lex Luthor on Smallville while the cartoon Kryptonian faced off against Brainiac and Darkseid in Superman: The Animated Series. Today, Tyler Hoechlin dons television's red cape, portraying the man of steel in Superman & Lois. Hoechlin's Superman has already stood toe-to-toe with Bizarro and is expected to square off with Michael Cudlitz's Lex Luthor later this season, but before he gets there, he has an unfamiliar foe to address: Onomatopoeia.
Warning – The rest of this article contains spoilers from the latest episode of Superman & Lois.
While Onomatopoeia's identity was kept under wraps throughout the first half of Superman & Lois Season 3, the sound-based antagonist revealed herself to be Daya Vaidya's Peia, a cancer patient introduced in Episode 5 of this season.
Speaking to ComicBook.com, Vaidya revealed that she was unaware of Peia's endgame when she was first cast in the show.
"When I got the role, I didn't know she was going to be on Onomatopoeia either," Vaidya said. "I didn't even know until I sat down with the showrunners and then they had the reveal for me. 'You're going to be Onomatopoeia.'"
The secrecy extended while cameras were rolling, as Vaidya revealed she did not don the Onomatopoeia suit until later episodes.
"Crazy enough, they did have a stunt double at first until I joined. I think the first couple of episodes was my stunt double, but still my voice," Vaidya explained. "I got to play with Rob [Hayter], our stunt coordinator, to really create how she moves, how she kills, how she destroys. There was a lot of room there."
The reality of Onomatopoeia's cancer gives the character a layer of established sympathy. She may not have taking on Superman on her résumé, but Onomatopoeia's illness is something that Vaidya was able to resonate with on a personal level.
"We're already dealing with all these levels of is she really a villain? How is she a villain? She's trying to save her life. Bruno Mannheim's trying to save her life. What is the villain and what is the person just trying to live?" Vaidya continued. "I really like to play with these levels because my dad had cancer. I had cancer. When you're trying to save your life, there's not a lot you won't do. I really wanted to play with that idea of how far I would go to be here for my child, be here. I think that when you look at it from that perspective, it makes it really fuzzy."
New episodes of Superman & Lois air every Tuesday on The CW.