Many cinephiles will see members of the “family” missing from the upcoming F9. Dwayne Johnson has branched off into his Hobbs and Shaw franchise and did not take part in the upcoming film. Why? well, it’s known that there is a long-standing feud between Vin Diesel and Johnson.
We now may have been provided an idea as to why this feud began in the first place. In a new interview with Men’s Health, the franchise lead and producer elaborated on how he worked with Johnson to bring Luke Hobbs, the former Diplomatic Security Service agent turned Toretto crew member, to the screen. Diesel says he took a “tough love” approach in his role as producer to induce the kind of performance that Hobbs required.
“It was a tough character to embody, the Hobbs character,”
“My approach at the time was a lot of tough love to assist in getting that performance where it needed to be.”
“As a producer to say, ‘OK, we’re going to take Dwayne Johnson, who’s associated with wrestling, and we’re going to force this cinematic world, audience members, to regard his character as someone that they don’t know — Hobbs hits you like a ton of bricks. That’s something that I’m proud of, that aesthetic,”
“That took a lot of work.”
It’s an approach that Diesel says finds him doing “anything” to get the performance he’s seeking for these films.
“We had to get there and sometimes, at that time, I could give a lot of tough love. Not Felliniesque, but I would do anything I’d have to do in order to get performances in anything I’m producing,”
While I find this quite comical, as Johnson brought new life to a dying franchise at the time, this reveals sure sounds like a good reason for Johnson to be peeved at Diesel.
