Fast & Furious Almost Lost Its Star Even Before It Started: ‘I’m Not Playing That’

Everything the Fast & Furious franchise has today it owes to the very first movie. The story of an idealistic cop who goes undercover to infiltrate Dominic Toretto's gang seemed like just another action movie with no future, but in fact it became the perfect story about people driving at breakneck speeds and making risky decisions.

The Fast and the Furious is already 23 years old, but the first movie is aging like fine wine, especially comparing it to the new films in the franchise: instead of universal scale, there are neighborhood showdowns, instead of flights over skyscrapers — jumps over the tracks with a speeding train, instead of a soap opera — a Spartan drama that takes your breath away. And finally, it is a movie where the basic laws of physics still apply.

The core of the Fast & Furious story has always been about family, and that includes the characters who were part of the first installment — Dom, Letty, Brian and Mia, who have appeared in most of the films in the franchise.

Michelle Rodriguez Came This Close to Leaving Fast & Furious

However, The Fast and the Furious could have lost one of its most memorable characters before it even began — Letty, played by Michelle Rodriguez.

After wowing critics and producers in the independent drama Girlfight, Michelle was cast in The Fast and the Furious before the script was even finished and approved.

At the time, the film was to have only one main female character — Dom’s girlfriend, who would fall in love with Brian as the film progressed. Rodriguez was supposed to play the role, but she refused to play such a character.

In one of the interviews Michelle said:

“I'm not going to be a sl*t in front of millions of people, so you're going to lose me if you don't change this.' And they figured it out.”

When the actress threatened to quit, the writers took her objections into account and another character, Mia, played by Jordana Brewster, appeared in the script.

Brewster also commented on Rodriguez's dissatisfaction with her character's development:

“When Michelle read her role, she was like, 'No, I'm not playing that.' And then she changed it completely.”

Fast & Furious Just Refused to Let Go of Letty

As a result, Letty became so popular with viewers that she even came back from the dead once. In Fast & Furious, Letty died while working undercover for the FBI so that the authorities would drop the charges against her loved one, Dominic.

When Vin Diesel 's character found out what had happened to his girlfriend, he killed her murderer and then his boss, who Letty was trying to expose. But in the finale of Fast Five, it was revealed that Letty was alive, and in Fast & Furious 6, viewers learned that the rescued woman did not return to Dominic due to amnesia.

Source: Entertainment Weekly