Moritz couldn’t convince him to come back, he said, so Diesel gave him a call. Nine years later, I really questioned if there was even an audience anymore.” But trends shift overnight with that audience.
“They were talking about my involvement with the fourth one and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Really?’ Obviously, we made the first one that catered to pop culture and a youth-driven audience. So when they were asked to rejoin the franchise for its fourth installment? “I thought it was stale,” Walker said.
He and Diesel made a cameo in the movie but had effectively dropped out of the series. Then, with the third film, “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” “there was politics, studio stuff, a regime decision,” Walker said. But there was trouble making Diesel’s deal, and the actor opted not to star in “2 Fast 2 Furious.” He said he liked them and liked the idea of filming in Miami. Walker said the studio immediately approached him about making a sequel, and that he met with director John Singleton, who’d been brought in to helm the second film, and Tyrese Gibson at a W Hotel in Los Angeles. “The Fast and the Furious” was a huge hit, grossing more than $200 million worldwide in 2001 dollars. Diesel had a burgeoning acting career courtesy of the science-fiction actioner “Pitch Black,” and the filmmakers thought the pairing would be a good one. Getting to hang out with my friends and support my baby seemed like a ridiculous scenario.”īut the actor said Cohen (who would direct “The Fast and the Furious”) and Moritz (who has produced all seven movies in the franchise) knew he “was apprehensive about being ‘the guy.’” So, he said, the filmmakers assured him they’d find a strong supporting costar to take away “some of the pressure and insecurity of, ‘Oh, I’m supposed to be cool in this.’”Įnter Vin Diesel. I wanted to have fun and I needed to put a roof over my baby’s head. I had just recently had a child out of wedlock. But I was younger and impressionable and I wanted to work. If I had the same opportunity today, I’d overthink it and probably squander it.
“I wanted to sign on immediately and they were freaking out. “They said, ‘You’ll be racing as an undercover cop in this world,’” Walker recalled during our telephone conversation. So the filmmakers brought him a Vibe article they’d found about undercover street racing in L.A. He said his dream project would be a mash-up of “Days of Thunder” and “Donnie Brasco” - something in which he could be both an undercover cop and a race car driver. The movie’s director, Rob Cohen, and producer, Neal Moritz, asked Walker what he wanted to do next. His journey with “Furious” began in 2000, shortly after he’d finished filming “The Skulls,” a thriller about a corrupt college fraternity that maybe 10 of you saw, with Universal Pictures.
(I was supposed to meet him just a week after he died to talk about an independent film he’d done called “Hours” - a non-meeting I’m not sure I’ll never stop thinking about.) At the time, “Fast Five” had just been released and had done far better than anyone expected, putting the series back on track at the box office. He recounted his origin story with the franchise during a phone conversation we had in 2011. The actor nearly quit the series - and Hollywood altogether - numerous times during the 12 years he worked on the “Furious” films. Over the weekend, scores of fans bid their own farewell to the actor in “Furious 7,” watching him for the last time as Brian O’Conner, the family man who also fights international villains as part of a street racing crew.īut Walker’s history with the franchise is a complicated one. A California bro ease.īut it’s his work in the “Fast and Furious” franchise that Walker will most be associated with on the screen.
There are lots of things Paul Walker will be remembered for: His daredevil spirit.