Are Vin Diesel & The Rock Friends IRL?

If you don't earnestly love Furious 7 stars Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, I don't know if I can ever fully trust you. Did you see Johnson sing "Franchise Viagra" in his Saturday Night Live monologue? Are you not moved that Vin Diesel named his new daughter after his late co-star and brother from another mother, Paul Walker? Diesel, the king of the Fast and Furious franchise, appears alongside his doppelgänger, Johnson, in the newest addition to the Fast and Furious series, Furious 7. Johnson first joined the epic franchise back in 2011, which begs the question: Are Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel fiends in real life?

Well, they might not be friends exactly (they don't seem to be at BFF status), but they definitely have a mutual respect each other. In an interview with Screen Rant from way back when Johnson first became a part of the Fast family, he talked about how excited he was to work with Diesel, as they had wanted to collaborate for quite some time:

This was an opportunity to work with Universal and be a part of a very successful franchise and an opportunity to work with Vin [Diesel]. I’ve known Vin for a long time an we’ve always talked about doing something together, but as long as it was right and wasn’t forced. This felt like the right opportunity to create a formidable adversary for him and one that was believable and that we could get on screen and rumble and dance and have some fun.

He's talking, of course, about his role as Luke Hobbs, the baddie of the Fast series. As for the rumbling and dancing, Johnson and Diesel provided plenty of both in Fast Five when they engaged in hand-to-hand combat. They were both committed to the scene and gave it their all, Diesel said of the fight in Fast Five in a video promoting Furious 7, "It was more than just physically exhausting, it was emotionally exhausting."

Even though there have been so many high-octane, over-the-top scenes in the history of the Fast series, the most iconic is definitely this fight scene between Diesel's Toretto and Johnson's Hobbs, and you gotta know that the two share a pride about that scene.

And even though Johnson and Diesel might not be close friends, they are bonded in their shared grief for the loss of their late friend and former fellow star in the series who was around since the beginning, Paul Walker. Walker's death has been an dark shadow over the franchise, but it's good to see that after a long hiatus, they did move forward with filming and honor the actor's memory.

Vin Diesel has already started teasing Furious 8 (how many do you think will be made? Is this the next James Bond series?), and though he's hinted that Kurt Russell would be playing a bigger role in the series, he said nothing about Johnson coming back. In fact, in an interview about the franchise, Johnson said that he doesn't know if he'll come back for number eight, because he wanted to close the chapter with his last film being the last with Paul Walker. But does that mean he doesn't want to work with Diesel anymore? I can't imagine that's the case, and I certainly hope not.

So, it's hard to say for sure, if Johnson and Diesel are close friends in real life, but they definitely have great on-screen enemy chemistry, and they've been working together for quite some time. I'd say that's a great beginning to a wonderful friendship.