link (Leon): 2000, I recall the set up was a pizza delivery guy was trying to get through the intersection during a street race gathering. The scene was just a random addition, as far as I can remember and wasn’t in the script, it was added as a cameo for the director, Rob. I asked Rob, “What do you want me to say?” He said something like “just tell me to get lost.” So they rolled cameras, and one of the most silly and unexpectedly iconic lines from the movie was delivered.

link (Leon): One of the aspects of my early career in Hollywood is, I approached characters and roles in films with the methodology of creating a character that I felt most resembled the reflection of real life in the story.

During the time I was street racing cars in the San Fernando Valley, the youth culture was heavily under the influence of rap music, NWA, Ice T, Ice Cube, etc… and later during 2000, I recall DMX, Busta Rhymes, Missy Eliot, etc… Were the popular recording artists at the time etc..

In my personal life my preferred music was rock music, but in the street racing culture there were a lot of White boys walking around with their pants at their knees heavily influenced by the “Rap Culture.” So I decided Leon would be one of those type of guys. All I listened to at the time was rap music, DMX, Wu Tang, Method, Red Man, etc…

So my approach at the time as an actor, was to become the character, to be that person at all times, I even recorded music like that at the time. And the amusing part was the people who I worked with on the film thought that’s who I really was.

Right after filming FNF I flew to North Africa to shoot Black Hawk Down, and when I returned began recording the first Operator record. I recall attending a movie premiere where a few of the people I worked on Fast and Furious were also attending, and when they saw me they said “YO DOG!” In that DMX kind of voice that I used in the film, and I quietly said “Hey, man, how are you…” in my normal voice and the look of confusion in their reaction was priceless, they were like “wait a minute” as if I was speaking a foreign language. 🤣

Here in the film I was improvising a few takes of reacting to seeing Paul Walkers character with another character. I think the line that wound up in the film was “I like his haircut” … but in one of the other takes, one of the lines I made up that didn’t wind up in the film…

“I didn’t know The Beach Boys were in town.”

I recall making a few of the crew bust out laughing on some of these takes. 😆

link (Leon):

Originally the character [Leon] was much darker than it was after it was redesigned during production. Actually the original scene which made me want to be in the film had a really great moment which sold me on wanting to do the movie and today I will share that with you, and I don’t think anyone has ever known about it…

During the sequence where Matt Schulze’s character goes outside to fight Paul Walker, at the beginning of the film where all of our characters are introduced, in the original script, Michelle Rodriguez’ character turns to Leon and says:

“What would you do if (Matt’s character) came after you?”

Leon lifts up his shirt showing off a pistol that he is carrying, and he says:

“I’d shoot him in the face.”

I was fucking sold! I thought now this is raw gangster shit…

Well, bad news, they cut all of that gangster shit out. And honestly I was pretty disappointed. I went into the project sold on what I read and it all suddenly changed once production began.