Joseph Gordon-Levitt would have been the star of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift had director Justin Lin gotten his way. After deals for Vin Diesel or Paul Walker to lead the third film in the Fast & Furious franchise didn’t come together, the series pivoted to focus on Sean Boswell, an American teenager in Japan who learns how to drift.
Lucas Black was cast in the lead role, but he was not the original choice, it turns out. As revealed by Barry Hertz’s new book “Welcome To The Family”, Lin had his eyes on Joseph Gordon-Levitt to play Sean in Tokyo Drift. This was part of a plan to make Sean half-Japanese (Gordon-Levitt has never claimed to have Asian ancestry, for the record).
The director and the young actor met about the possibility, meeting in the editing room of Annapolis so Lin could give him a glimpse at his work. The casting seemingly would have come to fruition if not for Universal. According to Hertz’s book, the studio was nervous about his ability to be a “big-screen leading man,” noting that he was better known for TV and independent films.
It was after Universal’s concerns that Black was cast as Sean, after Channing Tatum’s failed audition, leaving Gordon-Levitt without a role. He’s yet to snag a role in any future installments of the franchise, despite Lin directing multiple of them, while Black reprised his role years after Tokyo Drift in Furious 7 and F9.
Lucas Black as Sean Boswell in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
While Gordon-Levitt is the bigger star nowadays, Universal’s hesitancy about making him the lead of Tokyo Drift is somewhat understandable. He was only a few years removed from playing a major role on the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun. And while he did 10 Things I Hate About You and Disney’s Treasure Planet, he was still far from a household name.
Black was in a slightly better position career-wise. He’d just made Friday Night Lights (the movie, not the TV show) and was seen as a rising talent. Even though Universal wanted to keep costs down on Tokyo Drift and wasn’t sure if it would be a success, casting someone like him made sense.
Still, it’s intriguing to consider what Tokyo Drift would have looked like with Gordon-Levitt in the lead. He could have done a better job of making Sean a memorable character, making him more relatable, delivering lines strongly, and enhancing his overall personality.
The half-Japanese nature of the role (which was dropped after Black’s casting) also would have been beneficial. Rather than Sean being a sort of “white savior” who becomes the best drifter as a total outsider of the culture responsible for making it popular, there could’ve been an element of him embracing this part of his lineage.
There’s no guarantee that The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift would be significantly better, or worse, if Joseph Gordon-Levitt had played Sean Boswell. But, there is a chance the movie could have popped even more, perhaps paving the way for the character to play a larger role in the installments that followed.
“Welcome To The Family: The Explosive Story Behind Fast & Furious, The Blockbusters That Supercharged The World” is out now
Release Date
June 16, 2006
Runtime
104 minutes
AloJapan.com