The Fast & Furious movies have been giving audiences some of the most high-speed action sequences across the past 25 years. But you know who needs a bit more credit? Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty Ortiz. There’s not many Latina characters in the mainstream media that have been franchise mainstays like her, and that’s seemingly because the actress made it her own.
As the original Fast & Furious movie returns to theaters this weekend, Rodriguez recently reflected on her first impressions of Letty on the page. That includes the changes she made to make the character the iconic role it has been for her. In her words:
I actually remodeled her after me, because I didn’t like her. The stereotype back then for Latina chicks back then was that backseat of the car with whoever. And, I was like ‘That ain’t happening with me. I’ll go back to Jersey where I came from, but I ain’t doing that shit.’ And, I just followed my street background and I was like ‘That ain’t right. No, that’s not what would happen.’
The Fast and the Furious was only Michelle Rodriguez’s second movie, and yet she wasn’t afraid to make Letty her own. The actress has noted before to EW, when she first read the script, the character “needed a lot of work”. She said it was “guys writing girls, and not knowing what to do”, resulting in her speaking out.
Per Rodriguez, originally Letty was going to try to sleep with Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner in the initial script. But the actress didn’t think it made “any sense” for her character to make those decisions. As she explained: “When you’re with the alpha male in the pack, you stick to that.” Rodriguez said she had to “school these cats in Hollywood in how it works in the streets.”
Michelle Rodriguez is of both Puerto Rican descent and Dominican. She was raised between Texas and the Dominican Republic before settling in Jersey City. As the actress added in new comments while celebrating the movie’s 25th anniversary re-release with Universal Pictures:
The biggest thing is the love story with Dominic Toretto. That’s what I get the most love from. It’s quite beautiful that we have these characters that have the longest standing relationship of any franchise in cinema history.
It wasn’t too long ago when Vin Diesel shouted out Michelle Rodriguez for being his “ride-or-die” over the years in the Fast franchise. Letty and Dominic’s love story has been going on since the beginning and the actors seem to be reuniting all the time in real life.
The pair are set to conclude the movie series with Fast Forever, which is currently dated for March 17. 2028. Michelle Rodriguez has said that she hopes the next Fast movie has the “integrity that we started with”. Perhaps, it’ll take us back to nostalgia of the first films? 2001’s The Fast & Furious is now playing among the other latest 2026 movie releases in theaters now.
