Vin Diesel Praises Johnson’s “Shining” Smashing Machine Performance After Feud Ends
Movie star Vin Diesel is sending good vibes to Dwayne Johnson, suggesting their famous fight might finally be over.
Diesel went on Instagram and posted an old photo of the two actors from the set of their Fast and Furious movies. In his long caption, Diesel celebrated Johnson’s work in the Fast series and praised his performance as fighter Mark Kerr in the movie The Smashing Machine. The source of this information is Vin Diesel’s Instagram post.
Diesel started his message by talking about how important relationships are. He wrote, “One of the greatest gifts in life isn’t something you can buy, it’s the relationships forged along the way.” He also mentioned that he met the real Mark Kerr when he first moved to California and that Kerr even helped him train for his 2002 movie xXx.
Diesel said of Kerr, “In a beautiful way, he was there at the beginning of my action career. That’s the kind of friend he’s been from day one.”
Then, Diesel focused on celebrating Dwayne Johnson. He recognized the effort Johnson puts into his public life, saying, “People don’t understand what it takes to uphold a global perception every single day.” Diesel then shared a story about how their partnership began. He remembered asking fans who they wanted to see him work with, and a fan named Jan suggested Dwayne.
Diesel believes this led to something special in film: “What followed became one of the most dynamic pairings in cinema, two strong personalities who pushed each other and created something unforgettable.” He also said that when Johnson started playing the character Hobbs, he did it “with full commitment and left an indelible mark on Universal’s character hall of fame.”
Diesel finished his post by giving a shout-out to Johnson’s acting in the biographical film The Smashing Machine. He concluded, “Dwayne really did it… He brought us back in time and shined doing it.”
For years, Johnson and Diesel were known for their big fight while making the Fast and Furious films. The public found out about the problem in August 2016 when Johnson posted on Instagram and called an unnamed male co-star a “chicken s****” and “candy a**.”
Everyone soon figured out he was talking about Diesel. Later, in a 2021 interview with Men’s Health, Diesel explained that the tension was because of the “tough love” he gave Johnson as a producer to try and get the best performance for the Hobbs character.
Diesel’s thinking at the time was, “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, ‘Okay, 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.’”
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