Jordana Brewster helped electrify Cannes during the 25th anniversary screening of “The Fast and the Furious,” which she attended alongside original cast members Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez plus Paul Walker’s daughter Meadow. Speaking to Variety’s Angelique Jackson a few days later during a Kering Women in Motion talk, the actor behind Mia Toretto called walking up the Cannes steps “the largest red carpet of my life.”
“And yet I felt so comfortable,” she added. “I had Meadow there and Vin. Michelle and I were dancing. There was something so joyful about it. It felt so good. Once you’re in this career long enough, you know you need to relish the peaks. Your whole career is peaks and valleys.”
The original “Fast and Furious” movie played like gangbusters at Cannes, which probably didn’t come as a surprise to Brewster as she admitted to regularly rewatching the “Fast” movies because “the chronology is so interesting. “Like, what happened when?” But her jaw did drop at the Cannes screening screening because “I don’t think I ever fully appreciated the depth of Vin’s character. He takes a lot of time with the scripts. The integrity of the characters matter to him. Dude, now I get it. It does pay off.”
Brewster has been playing Mia for 25 years across seven films and is expected to be back for the upcoming 11th and reportedly final movie in the franchise, titled “Fast Forever.” She expressed hope that Mia’s agency will be fully restored before the franchise’s goodbye.
“In the final one I would like to harken back to the first one,” Brewster explained. “Mia gradually became more and more passive. I want her to drive her story and not react to everything else around her. Agency, that’s my biggest wish.”
Brewster noted how in “Fast Five” her character is pregnant but still a key part of driving the action storyline forward, noting: “She’s helping them figure out what’s next and jumping off buildings and leading the guys as they’re pulling a safe through the streets of Rio. It is literally being a part of the action and not just standing by.”
But the actor also wants time for the franchise to depict Mia’s life off the streets as a mother.
“There is something so hard about parenting boys,” she said. “I’d love to see how she handles that, especially with all this gentle parenting. I’d love to see Mia lose her stuff on her kids. Hardcore, stripped mom dealing with teenagers.”
Finally, Brewster is eager to see the “Fast” franchise get back to its practical roots. She admitted that “we lost nuance” as the movies “got bigger and bigger” and the action scenes became more VFX-driven sequences. She said some of her favorite moments in the franchise were in the original movie, like doing practical action scenes with the late Paul Walker.
“I could rely on him. He loved driving. He was obsessed with cars. He knew how to make things look really cool,” Brewster said. “It was fun to shoot it more practically. You don’t have to make up the adrenaline. There is something inorganic about being in front of a green screen. It’s like, the mountain is this way! It’s kind of cheating. There is a level of precision [when it’s practical]. It’s also fun with the crew because they’re leaning out of the car with us.”
For more on Brewster’s Cannes experience with “Fast and Furious,” read Variety’s full interview with the star here.
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