Key Points
-
Vin Diesel and Jordana Brewster reflect on their late costar Paul Walker.
-
The exclusive clip is from the upcoming 25th anniversary home entertainment release of The Fast and the Furious.
-
Diesel declares that Walker will “always” be Brian O’Conner.
As Fast & Furious reaches the finish line, the family will do so without one of its core members, Paul Walker. But for Vin Diesel, his late costar will “always” be Brian O’Conner.
In an exclusive clip from the special 25th anniversary home entertainment release of The Fast and the Furious, Diesel and Jordana Brewster reflect on the legacy of Walker, who starred as the cop-turned-street racer for six Fast films until he died during a break from production on Furious 7.
“He was very private and authentic and grounded,” Brewster says of her onscreen husband. “But he would say, ‘If anyone comes up to me and they call me Brian, I open my arms and talk to them or sign whatever they want me to sign.'”
“When the character you create consumes you, what happens when you say, ‘I will always be Brian,'” Diesel adds. “If you come up to me and you say, ‘Hey Paul,’ I’m less apt; I know that you’re not really coming after me because of a character that I’ve invested so much of my heart into, so much of my soul into. So when he says, ‘I will always be Brian,’ it’s haunting for us, because he is always Brian.”
In a previous interview with Entertainment Weekly, Diesel first shared Walker’s love for being referred to as Brian. “To be the vessel of a character to this degree for decades, what you end up finding is that you’re pulling from your real life; it becomes that personal,” he said. “For so long he’s played this character, he’s adopted part of the character and the character’s adopted part of him. And maybe in this Fast universe, as complicated as it is, life is a little simpler.”
Paul Walker and Vin Diesel in ‘Fast Five’
Credit: Jaimie Trueblood/Universal Pictures/Courtesy of Everett Collection
Walker died on Nov. 30, 2013, at the age of 40, after a car that he was a passenger in crashed while departing a charity event. He left behind a daughter, Meadow, who has become such a part of the Fast family that she appeared in Fast X and Diesel walked her down the aisle at her wedding. Meadow even recently attended an anniversary screening of the first film alongside Diesel, Brewster, and Michelle Rodriguez.
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
Production on Furious 7 was immediately delayed, and the team picked back up months later, completing the movie with the help of groundbreaking visual effects and Walker’s brothers.
“When Paul passed away, yes, it was incredibly hard on us, but what I didn’t realize right away was how incredibly hard it was on the fans,” Fast producer Neal H. Moritz told EW as part of the oral history of The Fast and the Furious. “So when we had the first test screening for Furious 7, and people were going to see Paul again, we were incredibly nervous. I was standing out in the lobby, and a couple kids came up to me and thanked us for making the movie. They needed the closure with Paul, just like we did.”
Thirteen years after Walker’s passing, Fast is gearing up to shoot its final installment, Fast Forever, due in theaters on March 17, 2028. Diesel has teased that Brian could make a return in the swan song, but Walker’s biggest impact might be the motivation to go out on top.
“He had this ability to see,” Diesel previously told EW. “Every time we’d come out of a premiere, it would just be me and him, everybody would always give us our moment, and he’d always say, ‘Vin, the best one’s still in the can.’ I’d be like, ‘You didn’t hear them, Paul?! They’re going crazy! What do you mean the best one’s still in the can?!'”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly