The casting of John Cena in F9 as Dom Toretto's brother, Jakob, was partly inspired by Vin Diesel's connection to his late friend and co-star, Paul Walker.
Director Justin Lin and the onscreen brothers shared some details behind the casting decision in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Recounting his moment of doubt in the lead-up to meeting Cena, Lin admitted, "The next thought was just pure 100 percent fear. Like, holy crap, how are we going to [cast] this?" After a half-hour conversation with Cena, however, Lin was in better spirits, saying, "Okay, good, I can breathe." Lin urged Diesel to meet Cena that very day, which he did. That meeting, which happened within Diesel's "Dom shrine," was chronicled in the pages of his social media and prompted him to invoke the memory of Walker, or "Pablo" as he affectionately calls him.
Speaking of his introduction to Diesel and his love for the Dom character, Cena recalled, "I literally remember seeing the [signature Toretto necklace] for the first time, and I'm like, 'what the f--- is going on?'" The 16-time world champion and WWE regular was blindsided by Diesel's on-the-spot endorsement, having feared that his early wrestling films had doomed any potential career in Hollywood. Nevertheless, the unseen influence of Diesel's friendship with Walker seemed to make all the difference for Cena, who by his own admission has been part of "a lot of bad movies."
"You could literally have cast anybody to be my brother -- there's no stretch too far," Diesel stated, alluding to his multicultural heritage. "Because of that, once it came time to cast Jakob Toretto, all the men came rushing in from every race, every nationality." However, despite the abundance of choices for the role of the master thief and assassin whose name is never mentioned in the previous Fast movies, Cena was the only actor who received significant attention by the production.
"I didn't ask [Cena] to read anything, I didn't need to look at anything," Diesel remembered. "I didn't really think about it that much, because I don't know if anyone will ever believe me, but I literally just, for some reason, felt like Paul had sent him." Walker was killed in a tragic car crash in 2013 before production of Furious 7 was completed, necessitating multiple rewrites of the script and the casting of stand-ins to complete his scenes. Referring to his meeting with Cena, Diesel, who named his daughter Pauline after Walker, revealed, "If you go back to that day and you read that post, I said, 'Thanks, Pablo,' because, like always, he had a way of removing my anxiety."
Directed by Justin Lin, F9 stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, John Cena, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell and Charlize Theron. The film arrives in theaters June 25.
Source: Entertainment Weekly