Michelle Rodriguez slams Fast & Furious writers for 'forgetting' women

Michelle Rodriguez has slammed male Fast & Furious writers for "forgetting" female characters.

The 42-year-old actress has played Letty in the action thriller franchise since The Fast and the Furious in 2001, and recently vented her frustration at the lack of support for the women in the hugely successful movies.

Blaming unconscious male bias, Rodriguez said she pushed for a female writer to come on board for the ninth instalment in the Fast & Furious saga to finally focus on the women.

"Guys get excited about their own stories. So it's almost like a forgetfulness. And so it's just kind of like having to remind them gently from the sidelines for years that you exist, you know?" she told Jessica Shaw on SiriusXM’s EW Live. "And that you're loud and that you're hardcore and that you won't take s**t from anybody."

She said the writers were only considering the characters played by her male co-stars, including Vin Diesel, Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson, and claimed it was ego that was stopping them from concentrating on the women.

"All the (male writers) are focused on the guys, period. It's just an egoist natural thing. 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," she fired, noting that the writers preferred "one dimensional" female characters.

Fast & Furious 9 is set to be released in April 2021.