When Michelle Rodriguez first signed on to play Letty Ortiz in The Fast and the Furious she had a major problem for the intended story line of her character and almost quit the franchise before it had even started.
“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,” Rodriguez said. “I thought it was the same thing in Hollywood. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
The original screenplay called for a love triangle between Letty, Dominic Toretto (Diesel), and Brian O’Conner (Walker).
“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,” she said. “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.”
Rodriguez went on to tell The Daily Beast, “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 slut! Do you?!”
We applaud Michelle for her decision! Could you imagine someone else playing Letty? We couldn’t either…