After falling out with Dwayne Johnson and Charlize Theron, the demanding action star has driven his director to despair

Fast and Furious star Vin Diesel CREDIT: Alamy

After taking the wheel for five Fast and Furious films, director Justin Lin has finally been driven around the bend. Lin has just walked away from a rumoured $10 million plus payday with the announcement he’s stepping down from the final two movies in the rubber-burning saga, which he was due to shoot back-to-back.

That’s an explosive setback for a franchise with box office earnings of almost $7 billion. His departure, goes the rumour, was sparked by an onset conflagration involving an excess of Diesel. As the face, voice and glistening pate of the Fast and the Furious films, the buck has landed with actor Vin Diesel (54), aka bad boy with heart-of-gold Dominic “Dom” Toretto.

Diesel is said to have tested the patience of Lin (50) one time too many by insisting on last minute revisions to a script the director had deemed completed. An April 23 “shouting match that ended with a slammed door” was the final straw for Lin, according to a report in the Hollywood Reporter. “This movie is not worth my mental health,” the director reportedly said as he made his exit.

Diesel – who is yet to comment on the story – is said to have arrived for a meeting with additional notes for a script Lin believed done and dusted. Yet while shocking, this final disagreement had not arrived out of the blue. Twenty-four hours previously Diesel had roped Lin into a toe-curling Instagram video in which Diesel celebrated the end of week one of filming on Fast X by encouraging the director to agree they were making the best Fast and Furious to date.

“It feels like the beginning of, uh, of an epic ending,” said Lin, exhibiting a honking lack of enthusiasm. His lukewarm contribution came amid murmurings of egotistical behaviour by Diesel, said to have been consistently late to set and to have strong-armed Lin into bringing back Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) when the screenplay was already locked in.

If Lin really was flabbergasted and furious, then he apparently isn’t alone in finding Diesel intolerable. Though largely known as Dom in the Fast and Furious – his only other major role of note in the past decade is voicing monosyllabic animated tree Groot in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy – Diesel’s reputation as fuel-injected prima donna precedes him.

His most notorious clash on set was with Dwayne Johnson who has played special agent Luke Hobbs in five Furious films (including Diesel-free 2019 spin-off Hobbs & Shaw). Johnson is famously one of the chummiest, most charming a-listers in the business. And yet he was reportedly infuriated by Diesel’s onset deportment.

“My female co-stars are always amazing and I love ’em. My male co-stars however are a different story,” Johnson posted to Instagram on his final day of filming The Fate of the Furious in 2017. “Some conduct themselves as stand up men and true professionals, while others don’t. The ones that don’t are too chicken s___ to do anything about it anyway. Candy asses.”

He added: “When you watch this movie next April and it seems like I’m not acting in some of these scenes and my blood is legit boiling – you’re right.”

Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson in Furious 6 CREDIT: Alamy

With Johnson and Diesel butting heads, executives tried to broker peace talks. Johnson and Diesel had their sit down – which left Johnson even more resolute about never again sharing a screen with his co-star.

“I wouldn’t call it a peaceful meeting. I would call it a meeting of clarity,” Johnson explained to Vanity Fair. “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.”

He may have felt they had reached a place of mutual understanding. Diesel had other ideas. Last November, he took to Instagram pleading with Johnson to return to the Fast and Furious. He went so as to evoke the memory of Paul Walker, the original star of F&F who died in 2013 whilst filming Furious 7.

“My little brother Dwayne… the time has come,” Diesel wrote. “The world awaits the finale of Fast 10. As you know, my children refer to you as Uncle Dwayne in my house. There is not a holiday that goes by that they and you don’t send well wishes… but the time has come. Legacy awaits. I told you years ago that I was going to fulfil my promise to Pablo [Walker]. I swore that we would reach and manifest the best Fast in the finale that is 10.”

Johnson was not impressed. “I was very surprised by Vin’s recent post,” the actor revealed to CNN. “This past June, when Vin and I actually connected not over social media, I told him directly — and privately — that I would not be returning to the franchise.”

Accusing Diesel of “manipulation”, he added, “I didn’t like that he brought up his children in the post, as well as Paul Walker’s death. Leave them out of it. We had spoken months ago about this and came to a clear understanding.”

Even before the disagreement, reports of the clash of egos on the set of the furious film had prompted much scathing commentary. A series mainly devoted to manly men doing many manly things – such as driving cars and extolling the importance of “family” – was, it appeared, packed with divas perpetually one perceived slight away from a hissy fit.

One source of amusement was the beefcake rivalry between Diesel, Johnson and weaponised geezer Jason Statham. The trio of muscle-bound lunks all had contractual clauses mandating they could never be shown losing a fight on screen. Diesel took this to extremes by insisting each punch thrown during a scrap have a “point” allocation. Keeping tally of the points would ensure he was never short-charged compared to his co-stars.

Yet despite Diesel’s vow that he “ didn’t want to look like a wimp” during Fast 7 rehearsals with Statham, the points system was abandoned as too complicated. Universal nonetheless confirmed the stars all had clauses ensuring they would never be depicting coming off second best in a physical exchange. “Every character has their moment, and… all are seen as formidable opponents.”

Diesel also found a way to tick off the imperious Charlize Theron, going overboard in boasting about the onscreen kiss between their characters, in the Fate of the Furious, in which Theron portrays “criminal mastermind” Cipher.

“Do I know she enjoyed it? Oh, my god, yeah,” Diesel told USA Today. “A kiss cannot lie, lips don’t lie. No, they didn’t. She owned it.”

Charlize Theron and Vin Diesel in Fast and Furious 8

“I just don’t get it,” Theron said when asked about Diesel’s remarks. She pointed out the kiss was planted by the chilly Cipher on an unwilling Dom. It was a show of dominance on the villain’s part – and supposed to be the very opposite of passionate. “He’s literally going around saying that I had the best time of my life… It looks like I’m assaulting his face with my mouth.”

If Diesel is as tough to work with as his critics claim, then the true real losers are the crew who don’t have the luxury of walking away as Dwayne Johnson did or of pushing back publicly as Theron could (though she has returned for Fast X). Not that they haven’t fantasised about doing so. Said to have been driven to distraction by Diesel’s constant tardiness, the behind the scenes Fast and Furious “family” was apparently ready to say farewell to the star as far back as Fast 7.

This emerged after it was reported Paul Walker, who had died halfway through filming, was to be replaced with a digital avatar. The first question the crew was said to have asked was whether the very much alive Diesel could similarly be swapped out with a pixelated facsimile. It was the ultimate rebuff of Diesel – an actor who has remained at the helm of a billion dollar franchise seemingly by alienating every other major player within revving distance.