Michelle Rodriguez says she asked for female writer to be added to Fast & Furious team

Michelle Rodriguez opened up about the emergence of a female writer on staff for the Fast & Furious movie, as well as the inclusion of space scenes in the action film series.

The 42-year-old actress, speaking on The Jess Cagle Show on SiriusXM Thursday, said that she successfully lobbied producers to add a female writer to the staff of the film series.

‘My biggest fight was getting a female writer and I’m really happy that they were open to it,’ said the San Antonio native, who’s played Letty Ortiz Toretto in every installment of the films since 2001. ‘Super grateful that they were open to it. I wanted a female writer. I wanted all the females in Fast & Furious to get some love.’

The Machete Kills beauty said it was necessary to integrate a female perspective to the creative side of the action film anthology.

‘I’m just really, really happy that, that it was able to happen and that they brought female writers on board to kind of just cause the thing is, is that all the guys are focused on the guys, period,’ Rodriguez said. ‘It’s just an egoist natural thing.

She continued: ‘For people, people just care about themselves usually, or people who look like them or act like them or have the same genitalia, I don’t know. It’s just how it works. And so I just know that if I bring up a female writer and she might care a little more about the female story.’

The Girlfight beauty said that to add female writers helped add to the breadth and depth of the characters in the story.

‘I think of that a lot of the boys just always like one-dimensionalized all the females,’ she said. ‘So it’s like, if Mia is on screen, they’ll think, “Oh, she’s the mother of the kid with the Paul Walker character. 

‘So we need to stick to the motherly stuff whenever she speaks” or they’ll be like, “Oh, look, we have Natalie, she’s the amazing young, sexy creature, a new, so like let’s always have the boys hitting on her.”‘ 

She said that her own character, Michelle Letty, had long been too ‘alpha and angry and ready to kick some a**.

‘It just doesn’t work,’ she said. ‘It’s not natural. And I think that you need a female voice to understand that.’

Rodriguez was asked about space scenes in the film by the show’s Jess Cagle and Julia Cunningham.

‘How did you guys find that out?’ she said. ‘See what happens? People start talking behind the scenes, man. ‘When a movie doesn’t come out and forget about it, things get out. Nobody was supposed to know that!’

She added that she wasn’t ‘lucky enough to hit space’ in the upcoming film.