Ladies and gentlemen, he was just kidding.
Vin Diesel cleared the air Sunday night with a bizarre aside during the Golden Globes ceremony. The star of the Fast and Furious movie series stopped on stage to accept film awards and box office results, along with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who was seated at the front of the Beverly’s International Ballroom. It caused a stir when I looked at it. Hilton.
“Hello, Dwayne,” Diesel said cryptically, looking at his former Fast and Furious co-star. Johnson looked back at her with a slightly awkward smile at the moment of surprise. Immediately after, the internet speculated that the long-standing feud between the two action stars had been reignited.
After days of speculation, Diesel put the rumors to rest by posting an old image of him and Johnson from the 2015 premiere of Fast 5 in Rio de Janeiro. The sequel was the former wrestler’s entry into the multi-billion dollar series that Diesel helped launch in 2001. Diesel captioned a photo of the two from 10 years ago: “All the love… always…”
Maybe it wasn’t “all love” originally. The rivalry between the stars began after Johnson jumped into the fifth F&F movie as Luke Hobbs in 2011’s Fast Five, and reprized the role for three subsequent films. By 2016, a battle of egos had caused so much tension between him and Diesel that he soon slipped off a movie set (sideways, on two wheels) and onto the internet. The long-running feud began in earnest in 2016 with a now-deleted Instagram post by Johnson in which she praised the women on the series but criticized some of her male co-stars. He called it “Candy Donkey.”
Johnson later admitted to Rolling Stone that he had correctly pointed out that Diesel had been called a “candy donkey.”
“We have fundamental differences in how we approach filmmaking and collaboration,” Johnson told the magazine.
The two have a classic rivalry, exchanging insults and mocking each other’s statements to the press, which likely helped fill the seats at the first screening. These films are Universal’s top franchise and the eighth highest-grossing film series. The total value currently exceeds $7 billion.
Diesel’s departure from the Fast and Furious series to star in the spin-off Hobbs & Shaw, in which a law enforcement officer character teams up with the series villain played by Jason Statham, has given Diesel a boost in the series. I was able to do it. Subsequent sequels focused on his character Dominic “Dom” Toretto, and members of that character’s family appeared in the storyline.
