A Remarkable Tale: Casting The Fast And The Furious Franchise
The Fast and the Furious franchise has earned over one billion dollars across seven box-office record shattering movies. Beginning with the focus on underground Californian street racers, the series has evolved into a globetrotting action franchise. The series made household names of Vin Diesel, the late Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris. But each of these actors took a long - at times painful* - path to Hollywood stardom. This is the oral history of the rocky* path to fame for the stars of Fast and the Furious.
VIN DIESEL — DOM TORETTO
Vin Diesel was born in Alameda County, California, but was raised in Greenwich Village, New York. It seemed his destiny was obvious, but Diesel wanted something more….
Vin Diesel: My neighbourhood [Greenwich] was rough man. No one gave you a chance, they would say, “Oh that’s just the Diesel kid, we know where he’s headed”. It was like you could see the path ahead of you and there’s nothing you could do about it. Even teachers man, they would write you off, “hey Diesel, when are you even trying? All you’re good for is a box office franchise about cars”. It was same on the streets. Kids shouting nasty things like, “why don’t you just conquer Hollywood homs?” That was the expectation and I tried to pull against that.
Paul Walker (Brian O’Conner): Vin definitely struggled with the thought of being a Hollywood star. He felt that it would be living down to expectations. That old cliche, street kid from Greenwich Village, only good for a car movie franchise.
Neal H. Moritz (producer on all the Fast movies): I wanted Vin from the start but he wasn’t ready. I’m talking ten years before Fast One. I was calling him, writing to him. But he had some demons to wrestle, still does to tell the truth.
Vin Diesel: If I was going to do this I wanted to do it on my own terms. But first, I needed to get out of Greenwich Village.
Paul Diesel (Vin Diesel’s twin brother): Nobody got out of Greenwich Village in those days, nobody. It was like Shawshank Redemption and Vin was Andy Dufresne crawling through shit.
Vin Diesel: My dream was to work in an office, something low paid and menial. But all I had was my high school diploma and a state college degree in business management. Who was going to take a chance on a street kid from Greenwich?
Paul Diesel: Hollywood were still pressuring him, saying “just try a few films, no pressure.
Vin Diesel: I needed the money. My moms couldn’t work. I took a few jobs. She never asked where the money came from, but she knew. She knew where it was coming from, but what can a mother from Greenwich do?
Steven Spielberg (director, Saving Private Ryan): He was a good kid, one day I looked at him and I said, “keep your head down, get your lines right and your could go far”. He just shook his head and said, “this is my last job”. They all say that to begin with.
LUDACRIS — TEJ PARKER
For Ludacris, life growing up in Devonshire, England, could not have been more different from the life of Diesel. He attended a string of expensive boarding schools and studied classics at Cambridge. On graduating the expectation was that he would take a Grand Tour of Europe before settling in Billingsgate, London, to work with his father; a 19th century shipping merchant. The leisurely life of an English gentleman lay out before him, but Ludacris did not want to tread this path.
Ludacris: I told my father I wanted to go to Hollywood and make it there. He didn’t understand, nobody did. It was 1844. The concept of Hollywood was alien to everyone, let alone the thought of a series of international box office smashes about car thieves pulling off elaborate heists. My father was worried for me, he just wanted me to stay and be a 19th century ship merchant,
Neal H. Moritz: When Ludacris first came to me he was begging to be in my movie. But I said, “what does a 19th century ship merchant’s son know about car technology?” I was harsh with him, but I thought the kid needed a reality check.
Ludacris: Those first few years were difficult. I did more rapping than acting. The raps were mainly about shipping and the differences between Oxford and Cambridge, that was the only world I knew. But I always wanted to act. Rapping was just a means to an end.
Tyrese Gibson (Roman Pearce): Me and Luda, we were cut from the same cloth. We both wanted it so badly. We were both so far from home.
MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ — LETICIA ‘LETTY’ ORTIZ
If Vin Diesel and Ludacris faced struggles, their achievements pale in comparison with Michelle Rodriguez and the road she took to break into the industry….
Vin Diesel: When I think about Michelle and the journey she made, I just… I am in awe of this woman.
Neal H. Moritz: Michelle was born a Chaos carolinense or a so-called “giant amoeba”.
Michelle Rodriguez: Starting out I was just a versatile heterotroph, I would feed on bacteria, algae, whatever I could get. I could only take in food through phagocytosis.
Vin Diesel: For Michelle to go from only eating through phagocytosis to where she is now, and to be a woman working in such a male-dominated industry. She’s a hero. To all amoebae and women out there.
Michelle Rodriguez: If someone had told me as I kid I would be in all these big Hollywood films I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend it. Literally.
Neal H. Moritz: Sometimes, as a producer, you just have to go with your gut. Nobody, NOBODY saw potential in Michelle, except me. People would point to her cells, they would say she needed thousands, millions more cells to even stand a chance. But I knew, when you’ve got it, you’ve got it.
Michelle Rodriguez: If it wasn’t for Neal I would never have made it. I would probably still be in a petri dish somewhere. He saw something in me, he encouraged me to aim higher.
Paul Walker: For me, she puts the bae in amoebae.
While his co-stars may have felt a world away from Hollywood, Tyrese Gibson literally was. Klepton 9 Quadrant does not possess anything like the mean streets of California. But for a young Tyrese Gibson there was only one place he thought of.
Tyrese Gibson: Kleptons love cars, love them. Everyone dreamed of spoke about competing in pod races. But that wasn’t for me man, I wanted to go where no one had gone before. How? [laughs] I had no idea.
Vin Diesel: Tyrese getting pulled through that wormhole was the best thing that could of happened to the franchise.
Neal H. Moritz: You plan and you plan and you plan, but at the end of the day, it comes down to luck. That was pure, dumb luck that Tyrese would come out here in Hollywood at the turn of the century. But sometimes you make your own luck
Tyrese Gibson: Getting here was the easy part in some ways. But landing a role in Fast Two [2 Fast 2 Furious, the first appearance by Tyrese and Ludacris in the series], now that took a lot of convincing.
Neal H. Moritz: I was already taking a risk with Ludacris. I had passed on him for the first Fast movie. He was still talking too much about scurvy and whaling practices. But for Fast 2 I could take more risks. But Ludacris AND Tyrese? It was a lot.
Tyrese Gibson: That’s the most I’ve ever had to push for a role. Paul stepped in for me in the end. He said, I don’t care what planet he’s from, the kid can act.
Neal H. Moritz: It was clear he was a star in the making, but people sometimes want someone from their own back yard. Tyrese was the only Klepton most of us had ever met. But sometimes you don’t make artistic decisions to make people comfortable.
The main leads may have had a difficult route* into the world of fast cars and big explosions, but once there they became family.
Vin Diesel: We talk a lot about family in the movies, because that’s what we are. Whether you’re a loser kid from Greenwich Village, or a 19th century shipping merchant’s son, it don’t matter.
Michelle Rodriguez: Where else but Hollywood could an amoeba, a Klepton, a gentleman and a kid from Greenwich freaking Village come together and all feel welcome?
THE END
*with the exception of the late, great Paul Walker who had a straightforward route into Hollywood fame
