Vin Diesel Claims That The Rock’s ‘Fast And Furious’ Role Was Originally Meant For Tommy Lee Jones

If the rivalry between Vin Diesel and The Rock is a reality following the filming of Fast 8, you wouldn’t know it from Diesel’s side of things. The Fast And Furious star has nothing but kind words to say about the former WWE superstar. Hidden in the middle of that huge Facebook Live video Diesel dropped at the tail end of last week, the star heaps some praise onto Dwayne Johnson. At the same time he manages to drop a look at the original direction for Hobbs in the Fast movies:

Back in the fifth film, I was asking ‘Who should I work with?’ The reason why we brought Dwayne Johnson into Fast Five was because of you. There was a girl named Jen (maybe, Jan?) Kelly who said, ‘I would love to see you guys work together on-screen.’ And so, we gave a role that was initially written for Tommy Lee Jones but we gave it to Dwayne, and he shined in it.

That’s right, instead of gigantic and hulking, we could’ve seen a Hobbs that was spending his off hours at the Social Security office. Basically, it would be Tommy Lee Jones playing his character from The Fugitive, except this time he’d be driving fast and blowing through every henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse in the area. It’d be much better if he was playing his character from Under Siege instead, going at Vin Diesel in full on rocker mode. The fight might even be a little more entertaining than the one with Steven Seagal.

(Via Slash Film / The AV Club)

×