Fast And Furious Star Found Out They Were Returning In The Worst Way Possible
Michelle Rodriguez found out her Fast and Furious character, Letty, wasn't dead while watching Fast Five in a movie theater.
Back before cars were being launched into space and long-lost relatives started appearing in every movie, Fast and Furious was a grounded franchise that wasn’t afraid to kill off characters. Insider reports that one of the killed off characters was returning without even telling the actress. That’s right, Michelle Rodriguez found out Letty was returning in Fast 6 when she was watching Fast and Furious 5 in the theater.
Nobody told me. Nobody gave me a call. Nobody said anything, I watch a tag ending that says, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
Michelle Rodriguez on how she found out she was returning to Fast and Furious
According to the Dungeons and Dragons star the studio wanted to surprise her, and they did, while she was in public watching the film in Paris. Within minutes of walking out of the theater she was already on her phone calling Vin Diesel. As it turns out, Michelle Rodriguez was given a clue months earlier when she was alongside Diesel during a meeting with Universal executives.
Allegedly, Vin Diesel made the pitch to bring Letty back to the franchise at this meeting in Puerto Rico. Michelle Rodriguez and the Fast and Furious producers all thought that Diesel was joking, after all the character had just died in the fourth film. Keep in mind that at this point, spy satellites were not yet involved, magnets were most famous for Insane Clown Posse lyrics, and Han was also dead.
Today, not only has Letty returned, but so has Han, Cypher, and even Gal Gadot’s Gisele is rumored to be returning in Fast X. The X-Men don’t have as casual a relationship with dying as Dominic Toretto’s crew. Michelle Rodriguez has appeared in only one less Fast and Furious film than Vin Diesel himself, making her one of the series’ stalwarts alongside Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris, which is again impressive as Letty died in Fast and Furious.
The only trope that the franchise uses more than the death fake-out is the villain turning into a hero. Both of the Shaw brothers, played by Luke Evans and Jason Statham, ended up working with the heroes and John Cena‘s Jakob Toretto did the same. Even Dwayne Johnson as Hobbes started out as a villain before finding himself side-by-side with Toretto just one film later.
When Michelle Rodriguez returned as Letty it was even originally as a villain suffering from amnesia, one of the few tropes Fast and Furious doesn’t use on a regular basis. By the end of the film, she was right back at Dom’s side, replacing Chris Hemsworth’s wife Elsa Pataky in the process.
Fast X is coming out later this year and it promises to be the second-to-last film in the franchise, for now. Michelle Rodriguez has stated she hopes to pass the torch to a younger generation for future movies, but the last time that was done in Tokyo Drift, it didn’t over well. Now that the franchise has embraced the absurd, including characters returning from the dead on a regular basis, maybe the next time it will go over better.
