There is none “Fast and Furious” franchise without Michelle Rodriguez… and yet the first entry into the property would almost have happened without her. The action star was still fairly new to acting when she was cast as Letty Ortiz in “The Fast and the Furious” in 2001, having just made her big screen debut in 2000 with the lead role in the indie sports drama hit “Girlfight.” “had given. That said, Fast and the Furious was Rodriguez’s first foray into Hollywood, and she almost abandoned the project due to some problems with the original script.
The problem? A storyline that found Letty romantically torn between Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto and… Brian O’Conner by Paul Walker. “It was more of a ‘point break’ idea,” Rodriguez said The Daily Beast in 2015. “They just followed the format without thinking about the reality. Is it realistic for a Latin girl who is dating the alpha est of alpha males to cheat on him with the cute boy? I had to give it full throttle.”
Although she noticed the problematic character arc early on, Rodriguez assumed she would have some leeway on set to negotiate, as was the case on the indie production of Girlfight. “I thought it would be the same in Hollywood,” Rodriguez admitted to The Daily Beast. “I didn’t think it would be a big deal.” While this isn’t typically the process for a major Hollywood production (especially for a supporting actor with no prior Hollywood credits), the film’s writers ultimately transformed Letty into the fiercely loyal fighter, that fans have come to know and love, cutting out the love triangle storyline completely.
Michelle Rodriguez was absolutely right to complain about Letty’s writing
It’s hard to imagine a version of the Fast and Furious films where there was ever anything romantic between Letty and Brian. Following Paul Walker’s death and Brian’s subsequent departure from the films, the bond between Letty and Dom has become the central relationship on which the films are built. Their ride or die partnership is otherwise crucial to the entire premise of the franchise, and that’s impressive Rodriguez fought so hard to improve her Fast and Furious charactergiven that she may have lost her place in a major Hollywood film.
“It was a reality check for them to realize that that’s not how the roads work,” Rodriguez said Weekly entertainment in 2021. “You don’t just date a guy because he’s hot. There is a hierarchy there. Can this hot guy get beaten up by the person you’re dating? If he can do that, then you’re not going out with him because why?” Would you want to give up the hierarchy? To keep it real, I had to train them.”
In the end, the entire script was revised and the film’s writers took Rodriguez’s recommendations into account when writing the new Letty. “Basically I cried and said, ‘I’m going to stop,’ and ‘Please don’t sue me — I’m sorry, but I can’t do this in front of millions of people,'” the actor told The Daily Beast. So Brian got a new romantic subplot with Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and Letty has been Letty ever since.
