Nearly 25 years later, the movie remains one of Fox's favorite projects.
Nearly 25 years later, Set It Off remains one of Vivica A. Fox's most special projects. The actress reflected on the 1996 film while co-hosting ET on Monday -- and got emotional while watching a clip from the set of the movie.
"You're going to make me cry!" Fox said. "I love them... like, we made history together and I think that's why I'm so emotional."
Set It Off, starring Fox, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah and Kimberly Elise, follows four close friends who decide to plan and execute a bank robbery. The F. Gary Gray-directed movie was a critical and box office success, and praised by audiences for showcasing women of color in new ways.
"I am so proud of the director, F. Gary Gray, who over 20 years ago when we made that film, he really was a stickler for making the storyline believable," Fox said. "He was so professional, he was just... we were throwing out pages, and rewriting it and making things work because he didn't want us to be laughed at."
"People literally walked out of the theater from Set It Off in tears and moved and went back to see it again," she added.
The role of Frankie was actually supposed to go to Rosie Perez, but she turned it down, Fox recalled. She prepared for her audition with the help of Pinkett Smith's then-boyfriend, Will Smith, whom Fox starred alongside in Independence Day.
"Will coached me for Set It Off in my trailer... He was dating Jada at the time. Guess he was trying to score some points and it worked, Will!" she said with a laugh.
Next up for Fox is her new movie True to the Game 2: Gena's Story, a sequel to the 2017 thriller, which is based on Teri Woods' novel of the same name.
"It was great to do the sequel, because it was an independent film, True to the Game, the first one. Columbus Short asked me to do it and people just loved it," Fox said. "I love taking independent films, producing them and making others' dreams come true. A film like this wouldn't get financed -- it really wouldn't -- but I came on and the project got greenlit."
"I'm very grateful to [producer] Manny Halley that we have now a franchise," she shared, revealing that True to the Game 3 is also in the works.
True to the Game 2: Gena's Story is in select theaters nationwide on Nov. 6.
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