Michelle Rodriguez has disclosed that she turned down James Cameron’s opportunity to resurrect her Avatar character.
The 44-year-old actress played Captain Trudy Chacon in the 2009 original film, where she perished while assisting Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in escaping Quaritch’s aircraft.
The actress recently disclosed that Cameron approached her about the possibility of her character returning to the series, but she thought it would be “overkill.”
The actress is no novice to resurrecting the deceased, as her character Rain Ocampo perished in the 2002 film Resident Evil, only to reappear as a clone in the fifth episode, Resident Evil: Retribution, in 2012.
She also witnessed resurrection as Luz in Machete and as Letty Ortiz in the Fast and Furious series.
‘Dude, when I saw Jim recently, he was like, “I was thinking, What if Michelle came back? A lot of the other characters came back [in The Way of Water]”,’ she said in a new interview with Vanity Fair.
‘I was like, “You can’t do that – I died as a martyr. Jim, I came back in Resident Evil, I wasn’t supposed to. I came back in Machete, I wasn’t supposed to. I came back with Letty [in the Fast and Furious franchise], I wasn’t supposed to. We can’t do a fourth, that would be overkill!”‘
Rodriguez also thinks that when her characters don’t have a partner, directors are often at a loss for what to do with them.
‘I guess they don’t know what to do with the girl who doesn’t have a boyfriend. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Should we keep her alive, or kill her?”‘ she said.
Rodriguez has played Letty Ortiz in seven Fast and Furious films and will return in May for Fast X, the series’ tenth installment.
She is also scheduled to star in the Dungeons & Dragons film Honor Among Thieves, alongside Chris Pine, Sophia Lillis, Regé-Jean Page, and Justice Smith.
The actress divulged that her Fast and Furious co-star Vin Diesel is envious of her part in the film because he enjoys the fantasy role-playing game.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly at San Diego Comic-Con last year, she said: ‘If you ever took a look at his closet, he’s got all the paraphernalia of a Dungeons & Dragons fiend. He puts a lot of his Dungeon Master techniques into making movies and producing them.’
Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is released in cinemas on Friday, March 31.