Before finishing the eighth Fast and Furious installment, The Fate of the Furious—a movie that megastar Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson agreed to grace only if he and then-frenemy, the film’s other bald action star, Vin Diesel, would not share scenes—Johnson shot off an Instagram post, calling an unknown member of production (presumably: Diesel) a “candy ass.” Beef followed the candy.
“It caused a firestorm,” Johnson recently told Vanity Fair of the post. “Yet interestingly enough…[it was] as if every single crew member found their way to me and either quietly thanked me or sent me a note.”
The origin of the Johnson/Diesel beef isn’t clear. When it came time to shoot The Fate of the Furious, however, Johnson thought it best to maintain separation on set. “I wanted to forgo drama,” he said. “I thought that that was the best thing to do. For everybody.”
The Instagram post (since deleted) went on to say that during certain scenes, Johnson was not acting; his blood was actually boiling.
While he said Diesel didn’t do anything in particular to enrage him—“nothing specific happened, just the same old shit”—Johnson said the two attempted a kind of mid-production parley.
“I wouldn’t call it a peaceful meeting,” Johnson said. “I would call it a meeting of clarity. He and I had a good chat in my trailer, and it was out of that chat that it really became just crystal clear that we are two separate ends of the spectrum. And agreed to leave it there.”
Of course, things have not been left there.
In the Men’s Health July/August cover story, Diesel, who was also a producer on the film, explained the pair’s tumultuous relationship as the product of “tough love”:
In the Vanity Fair interview, when writer Chris Heath reminded Johnson of this explanation, Johnson reportedly guffawed.
He then responded by calling B.S.:
Johnson balked when asked whether he regretted the Instagram post that launched the firestorm. “I meant what I said. For sure,” he clarified. “I mean what I say when I say it. But to express it publicly was not the right thing to do.” If Johnson has regrets, they come from sharing his views publicly. But he stands by them.
He said that he and Diesel are just “philosophically two different people, and we approach the business of moviemaking in two very different ways.”
Johnson didn’t elaborate on what makes for a Diesel approach, but he shared his own philosophy—one which requires no large leap to infer what Johnson thinks of Diesel’s:
The beef, it would seem, continues.
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