In an interview with TMZ, Fast & Furious actress Michelle Rodriguez spoke about how profoundly co-star Paul Walker’s death affected her, and how her experience with a Peruvian psychedelic called Ayahuasca made her wish her own death had come first. Heavy stuff.
It sounds like the entire year after Walker’s passing was extremely difficult for Rodriguez, who was clearly very close to him. The interview is a little hard to listen to, and you may recognize some of what she’s expressing if you’ve ever lost someone significant to yourself.
When I lost Paul I was like, I went through about a year of just being like an animal. Like what could I do physically to just get my mind off existentialism, get my mind off how transient life is... I did everything I could possibly do to hide from myself.
[...] My Ayahuasca trip made me sad that he left me here. (Laughs) It wasn’t a sadness that he was gone, it was like a jealousy that he was there first.
As for the drug experience, Rodriguez apparently partook in a ceremony consuming Ayahuasca as part of a documentary called The Reality Of Truth that’s scheduled to come out this winter.
“Ayahuasca is a boiled blend of an Amazonian vine and dimethyltryptamine, containing plants traditionally used by indigenous tribes in medical and spiritual ceremonies. It is said to have healing properties to bring inner peace by purging toxins,” News.com.au explains.
A lot of news outlets seem to be latching on to the last part of what she said in that quote block up above, running with “Michelle Rodriguez says she’s jealous Paul Walker’s death”; out of context that might be the first conclusion you draw but after watching the interview a few times, it really just sounds like Rodriguez is struggling to express profound sadness over a lost friend.
The takeaway here for me is that it seems like the Fast & Furious actors are as much of a “family” off-screen as their characters are.