Overkill(ed): Michelle Rodriguez on why she didn’t come back for ‘Avatar’ sequel
Written by ABC AUDIO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED on March 31, 2023
Michelle Rodriguez is pretty hard to kill onscreen. But when it comes to her character Trudy in 2009’s Avatar, she insisted to director James Cameron that she stay dead.
To Vanity Fair, the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves star recalled turning down the Oscar-winning director for Avatar: The Way of Water. “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 movies], I wasn’t supposed to. We can’t do a fourth, that would be overkill!”
She explained, “He was like, ‘I was thinking, “What if Michelle came back? A lot of the other characters came back [in The Way of Water].”‘ I was like, ‘You can’t do that — I died as a martyr.'”
Indeed, her pilot character met her end trying to stop an invasion of fellow humans on the planet Pandora.
The actress went on to tell the magazine, “I don’t understand, it’s so weird. 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?'”
While she stepped away from working in the billions-making blockbuster sequel, she’s in both this weekend’s well-reviewed D&D movie and in May, Fast X, the 10th installment in another billions-grossing franchise.
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