Sorry this is so long, but at the end is a link to her full interview.
Rodriguez had signed on to Universal’s The Fast and the Furious despite having major beef with the arc intended for her character, streetwise racer Letty Ortiz. The formulaic screenplay called for a love triangle between Letty, Dominic Toretto (Diesel), and Brian O’Conner (Walker). Rodriguez was nearly ready to walk.
“Imagine—I’m living the dream, I wasn’t paying attention to the script. I thought, ‘I’ll deal with it later,’ because on Girlfight when I had a problem with the script I talked to [director Karyn Kusama] about it and we worked it out on the day,” she said. “I thought it was the same thing in Hollywood. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
Michelle Rodriguez on Why She Almost Quit ‘The Fast and the Furious’ and Her Tears for Paul Walker
The kickass star of Furious 7 opens up about why she once almost quit the blockbuster franchise, the struggles of being a woman in Hollywood, and her fallen partner in crime.
Michelle Rodriguez might have been a doctor if her family had their way. Instead, the high school dropout from Jersey City turned to acting, broke out as a brooding boxer in Girlfight, and made her Hollywood debut in a B-movie actioner opposite Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, becoming the alpha female of one of the tightest familias in movie history.
“It was my first Hollywood movie,” she recalled. “I was just excited to be in the same room as objects that were blowing up and cars that were racing, to be around real racers and remember what it was like on the streets of Jersey at two o’clock in the morning hoping that no cops would show up.”
Rodriguez had signed on to Universal’s The Fast and the Furious despite having major beef with the arc intended for her character, streetwise racer Letty Ortiz. The formulaic screenplay called for a love triangle between Letty, Dominic Toretto (Diesel), and Brian O’Conner (Walker). Rodriguez was nearly ready to walk.
“Imagine—I’m living the dream, I wasn’t paying attention to the script. I thought, ‘I’ll deal with it later,’ because on Girlfight when I had a problem with the script I talked to [director Karyn Kusama] about it and we worked it out on the day,” she said. “I thought it was the same thing in Hollywood. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“It was more of a Point Break idea,” she says of the initial Fast and the Furious story. “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.”
“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,’” she continued. “My whole point in being an actress is that I thought I got to live a dream. And I don’t dream about being a ****! Do you?!”
Just as he’d go on to become a leader of the franchise behind the scenes, Diesel stepped up to back Rodriguez on that first film, directed by Rob Cohen. “Vin was the first one to pull me to the side while I was crying, and he just looked at me and said, ‘I got your back. Chill out and let me handle this, and you’re right—it makes me look bad anyway.’ And there you go. That was the beginning of the Letty fairytale.”
Rodriguez sat out the second and third films, she says, after Diesel opted out. But when the studio and filmmakers floated the idea of bringing the gang back together as the franchise was rebirthed under director Justin Lin, Letty Ortiz gave fans two of their biggest surprises—a shocking offscreen demise in 2009’s Fast & Furious, and a cathartic return from the dead in the closing moments of 2011’s Fast Five.
She credits Diesel for fighting to keep the core Fast & Furious family together onscreen. “I was like, ‘Damn Vin—I swear to God, you and your Facebook, bro!’ It’s like a Gallup poll. He was like, this is what the people want; give it to them. That’s what I love about Vin, he’s such a gangsta. But that’s the beauty of it: The bottom line is money. The bottom line is return on investment and the bottom line is global markets. And do you know what? He proves that a multicultural cast with good money, great talent, and integrity can really shine at the box office.”
Here's her interview.
Michelle Rodriguez on Why She Almost Quit ‘The Fast and the Furious’ and Her Tears for Paul Walker