There is no “Fast and Furious” franchise without Michelle Rodriguez … and yet, the first entry in the property almost happened without her. The action star was still pretty new to acting when she was cast as Letty Ortiz in 2001’s “The Fast and the Furious,” having just made her screen debut in 2000 by starring in the indie sports drama hit “Girlfight.” That mean “Fast and the Furious” was Rodriguez’s first foray into Hollywood proper, and she nearly walked away from the project due to some problems with the original script.
The issue? A storyline that saw Letty romantically torn between Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto and Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner. “It was more of a ‘Point Break’ idea,” Rodriguez told The Daily Beast in 2015. “They just followed the format without thinking about the reality of it. Is it realistic for a Latin girl who’s with the alpha-est of the alpha males to cheat on him with the cute boy? I had to put my foot down.”
While she noticed the problematic character arc early on, Rodriguez assumed she would have some leeway to negotiate on set, as that had been the case with the indie production for “Girlfight.” “I thought it was the same thing in Hollywood,” Rodriguez admitted to The Daily Beast. “I didn’t think it was a big deal.” While that isn’t typically the process for a major Hollywood production (especially for a supporting actor with no prior Hollywood credits), the film’s writers wound up changing Letty into the hyper-loyal fighter fans have come to know and love, cutting out the love triangle plotline entirely.
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. In the wake of 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 movies construct themselves. Their “ride or die” partnership is otherwise pivotal to the whole premise of the franchise, and it’s impressive that Rodriguez fought so hard to improve her “Fast and Furious” character, given that she might have lost her spot in a major Hollywood picture.
“It was a reality check for them to realize that the streets don’t work like that,” Rodriguez told Entertainment Weekly in 2021. “You don’t just get with a guy because he’s hot. There’s a hierarchy there. Can that hot guy get beat up by who you’re dating? If he can, then you don’t date him, because why would you want to lose the hierarchy? In order to keep it real, I had to school them.”
In the end, the whole script wound up being reworked, and the film’s writers took Rodriguez’s recommendations into account when writing the new Letty. “I basically cried and said, ‘I’m going to quit’ and, ‘Don’t sue me, please — 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 involving Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), and Letty has been Letty ever since.
