Hollywood star Vin Diesel, who has played the character of Dominic Toretto in the Fast and Furious franchise for 20 years, recently said he had a “strange feeling” that Paul Walker sent John Cena to play his brother in ‘F9‘.
When the time came to cast someone to play his brother for the upcoming F9: The Fast Saga, the actor admitted the search gave him a bit of “anxiety.”
“Obviously, I’m multicultural,” said Diesel.
“You could’ve cast anybody to be my brother. So, for two months before I went into filming, I created a shrine where I could do all the combat training, all the stunts, and I had the charger there to simulate the garage to get into the Dom state of mind.”
“Now the idea of the brother worked great on paper, but when the time came to cast it, anxiety. Who could you cast to be Dom’s brother and 20 years into the game? The audience knows our mythology so much,” said Diesel.
That is until John Cena captured the role of Jakob Toretto, a casting that Diesel believes the late Paul Walker, who starred alongside Diesel in the Fast and the Furious films before his death in 2013, had a hand in making happen.
“[Cena] comes into the shrine one morning, and I had this strange feeling…that Paul Walker had sent him,” said Diesel, adding that the moment was “very magical.”
Diesel’s son, Vincent Sinclair, also made his movie debut for F9 as the younger version of his dad’s beloved character.
“I can’t take the credit. It was Justin Lin, the director,” said Diesel detailing the experience of working with his 10-year-old son on the film.
“But we’ve been making these movies for so long that every time one of my children were born, I was usually working on a Fast and Furious movie,” Diesel said. “So the director and the cast all have their relationship with my children. And it was [Lin’s] idea for my son to play young Dom.”
F9, the ninth installment in the iconic film franchise, was initially scheduled to drop in May 2020 but was pushed back by the Covid-19 pandemic. Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Charlize Theron, Helen Mirren, and John Cena also star in the movie.
Justin Lin, who helmed the series’ third, fourth, fifth, and sixth sequels when it was a worldwide success, returns to direct F9. Again, the action spans the globe, from London to Tokyo, Central America to Edinburgh, and a secret bunker in Azerbaijan to the busy streets of Tbilisi. Old friends and foes will resurface, history will be rewritten, and the true meaning of family will be tested in the upcoming sequel.
(With inputs from ANI)
(Edited by Anindita Ghosh and Ojaswin Kathuria)
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