8. Rodriguez additionally wasn’t thrilled with the preliminary model of Letty Ortiz, which had her as extra of a one-note attractive Latina girlfriend and concerned a love triangle between her, Dom and Brian.
“It was a actuality verify for them to comprehend that the streets do not work like that,” Rodriguez told EW for a 2021 oral history of the movie. “You do not simply get with a man as a result of he is sizzling. There is a hierarchy there. Can that sizzling man get beat up by who you are courting? If he can, then you do not date him, as a result of why would you wish to lose the hierarchy? So as to maintain it actual, I needed to faculty them: ‘I do know you guys like Hollywood and all that, however if you’d like it to be real looking, that is the way it actually works, and I am not going to be a slut in entrance of tens of millions of individuals, so you are going to lose me should you do not change this.’ They usually figured it out.”
As Brewster recalled it appreciatively, “When Michelle learn her position, she was like, ‘No, I am not taking part in that.’ After which she modified it fully. It went from a trophy girlfriend to this actually layered character.”
Walker informed E! Information of his co-star, who was showing in solely her second film ever after her breakout in Girlfight, “Michelle Rodriguez in all probability performs one of many hardest characters you have ever seen in a film. From knocking out a man to a few of these driving sequences, she’s only a robust, actually cool character.”
Reflecting on the enter she’d had within the franchise through the years, Rodriguez informed Leisure Weekly in 2017, “On the finish of the day, the one leverage I’ve as a person is my participation. That is the one leverage I ever use with something. It is like, look, this does not agree with my ethics, morals. My coronary heart would not really feel proper doing this in entrance of tens of millions of individuals, so I can at all times oblige myself and depart as a result of cash, to me, is not as essential as my traces that you just’re not allowed to cross.”