“The themes we hit on early on, whether the audience even realised what it was that was drawing them in is irrelevant. The second you lose the family, how significant are we?”

Justin Lin, director of F9, remembers being a teacher’s assistant for a documentary class at the University of California, Los Angeles when he saw the first Fast and Furious.

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“I don’t think anybody ever felt like it was going to be more than one movie,” Lin says. But that Diesel/Walker dynamic “was able to permeate and connect with the audience. It’s why you go to films. And when you see that, you never forget it. They all got together in that exact moment and made something that was so special.”

Diesel has fond memories of making that original movie with Walker. The first scene had Walker doing test drives in Dodger Stadium, “and I remember us feeling like, this is going to be work? This is insane! We’re about to have more fun than we’ve ever had”, Diesel says.

The initial meeting between Toretto and O’Conner, however, is at the Toretto bodega where Toretto keeps this stranger he’ll eventually grow to love like a brother from getting a beating. O’Conner is flirting with Toretto’s sister (Jordanna Brewster) while Toretto is first seen seated, strong and silent behind a cage in the back. It was director Rob Cohen’s “clever way” of giving Toretto “that beginning, to seed him with that stoic character”.

But the bond between Walker and Diesel was cemented early on.

“I remember there being a table reading a week before we started filming,” Diesel says. “And from the very beginning, [Walker] did this strange thing, which was he made me feel like he only cared about what I thought.”

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Fast and Furious was a pop-culture breakthrough for both Walker and Diesel, though Diesel had filmmaking expertise that Walker respected: Diesel had a short film he wrote, directed, produced and starred in, Multi-Facial, that played at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, and his first feature, 1997’s Strays, screened at Sundance.

“There were 50 people in the room: actors, directors, writers, executives, producers, assistant directors,” Diesel remembers about that Furious table reading. “After every other line he would read out loud, he would stop, he’d look across the room and in front of everyone say, ‘Vin, what do you think?’ And I’m like, ‘You’re going to get me in trouble, bro,’” he adds with a laugh.

“Invariably, I would have to say, ‘They could give you a better line. That line’s a little goofy.’ And, boy, did he light up. It was just magic for him. It was just something like, ‘Yeah, that’s what he’s going to tell you all if you try to give me any goofy lines. If you don’t elevate my character, he’s going to fight for it.’ And it was the beginning of what our relationship became.”

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