Jordana Brewster Wants Mia to Have Her Edge Back in Fast Forever

Jordana Brewster has been playing Mia Toretto for 25 years, and she has some very specific ideas about how the character deserves to go out.

Speaking at the Kering Women in Motion talk at Cannes — just days after the emotional 25th anniversary screening of The Fast and the Furious — Brewster was refreshingly direct about the evolution of her character and what she’s hoping to see in Fast Forever, the 11th and reportedly final film in the franchise, due in theaters in March 2028.

“In the final one I would like to harken back to the first one,” she said. “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.”

It’s a candid admission from someone who has watched her character arc shift dramatically over a decade-plus of sequels. Mia started the franchise as a sharp, grounded presence — the moral compass of the Toretto family and the love interest whose choices actually moved the story. “What was so beautiful about the first one is that every character was fleshed out,” Brewster told Variety ahead of the screening. “Every person relates to a different character.”

She points to Fast Five as the high-water mark for Mia’s involvement. Pregnant during the events of that film, Mia was still right in the thick of it. “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,” Brewster said. “It is literally being a part of the action and not just standing by.”

That’s the version of the character she wants back.

Green Screens, Grief, and Getting Back to Basics

Beyond Mia’s narrative arc, Brewster has a clear vision for the filmmaking approach she wants in the finale — and it’s rooted in nostalgia for how the original was made.

“We lost nuance” as the movies got bigger, she acknowledged, with large-scale action increasingly handed off to VFX departments. Her favorite moments in the franchise came from the first film, doing practical work alongside 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,” she 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.”

She’s also hoping the finale comes home — literally. “I really think it should be in LA,” she told Deadline at Cannes. “LA was a character in the first one, and again, it’s going back to all the different cultures within LA. Rob [Cohen] shot LA so beautifully, so hopefully it’s set in LA as well.”

The stunts are very practical in the original. There’s less special effects, it’s just less grand — and Brewster believes that’s exactly what audiences fell in love with and what the franchise owes its fans heading into the finish line.

A Bittersweet Night on the Croisette

The Cannes screening itself — Vin Diesel’s brainchild, years in the making — was a moment Brewster called “the largest red carpet of my life.” She walked the iconic steps alongside Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, producer Neal H. Moritz, and Meadow Walker, who stood in for her late father Paul Walker, killed in a car accident in 2013.

“And yet I felt so comfortable,” Brewster said. “I had Meadow there and Vin. Michelle and I were dancing. There was something so joyful about it.”

But joy and grief were running parallel all night. In an interview at Deadline’s Cannes studio, Brewster described the emotional whiplash of the evening. “There was this huge contrast between arriving, and there was so much fanfare, and the steps are so iconic, so there was this high, and then it was also very bittersweet, because you see Paul again, and you remember.”

Having Meadow by her side made it both harder and more meaningful. “I felt very protective of her,” Brewster said. “It was very bittersweet, but I think it’s important that he’s always present somehow.”

She shared a memory that captures exactly who Walker was on set — and who she wanted to be for him. During a shoot in Puerto Rico, she tore her hand open. “I knew that Paul was such a badass with stunts, and he would do everything himself, so I was like, ‘I need to keep it together, and I’m not getting stitches until we’re done with this scene.’ So I kind of earned my stripes.” Was Paul impressed? “Paul was. That’s all that mattered,” she said.

Rewatching the original at Cannes also gave Brewster a new appreciation for her co-star Diesel — someone she’d been acting alongside for a quarter century without fully clocking the craft he was bringing. “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.”

That loyalty runs both ways. When Mia was written out of an early draft of 2023’s Fast X, Diesel personally pushed to have the storyline rewritten. “Vin is really my brother,” Brewster said. “He’s been so loyal for the entire franchise. It could have died a long time ago had he not championed it so fearlessly.” She ended up shooting a major action sequence with John Cena and a family dinner scene with EGOT legend Rita Moreno — “a pinch-me moment,” she called it.

What She Wants for Mia — and for Brian

Brewster isn’t just thinking about Mia the action hero. She wants to see the character’s domestic life get its due, too — specifically, what happens when the woman who survived street racing in Rio has to deal with actual teenagers.

“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.”

And when it comes to honoring Walker in the finale, she has a clear wish. The Fast Forever script is still being finalized, but Brewster is hoping that “whether Brian is shown on film or if he’s just part of the reason they win or succeed, I’d like to see him be the champion of the whole thing.”

There’s also the matter of a Fast & Furious series coming to Peacock, which Diesel revealed at the NBCUniversal upfront presentation — news that was apparently just as surprising to Brewster as it was to everyone else. She’s open to it, though, particularly as a way to keep Brian’s legacy alive. “It’d be fun to have me and my two kids, and they’re getting into all kinds of trouble — it’s almost like karma,” she said. “It would also be a nice way of perpetuating the Brian character and his family legacy.”

In the meantime, Brewster is keeping herself busy — she’s set to play a detective on the upcoming Prime Video series Bishop and has finished writing her first feature screenplay. But the finale is clearly on her mind.

“It’s kind of like the mafia,” she said of the Fast family. “We’ve all got each other’s backs, no matter what. They’re my ride or dies.”

After 25 years, one thing is clear: Jordana Brewster isn’t showing up to the finish line just to stand by.