Like a car driving through a train then smashing into a helicopter then subtweeting another car, Dwayne Johnson briefly caused the world to rubberneck at his Instagram yesterday with his classic pro wrestler call-out of unspecified “candy ass,” “chicken shit” male co-stars for their behavior on the Fast 8 set. There was much speculation—and a probably disproportionate amount of research—poured into deciphering who might have upset Johnson so, before most concluded that it must be Scott Eastwood by reasons of his face. But today, it is our sad duty to inform you that it is Vin Diesel whose ass is made of candy.
TMZ reports that Johnson and Diesel “butted heads” on set in a way that might be amusing to picture but was not so conducive to filming, with Johnson—a producer on the sequel himself—disagreeing with some of the production decisions Diesel made without him. Tensions were reportedly running so high that “it was almost impossible to shoot scenes,” as all that friction really got in the way of making a movie where guys insult each other before getting in their shiny dick-cars to see whose dick-car is the fastest. Instead, sources say the set has been overrun by “extreme egos,” something that is only welcome when it’s the narrative conceit of an entire franchise.
As is, it reportedly left a lot of Johnson’s co-stars upset over his wholly inappropriate shrewd marketing move, with some of them scrambling to protest their ass’s density—like Tyrese Gibson, who posted a since-deleted Instagram of Johnson singing to Gibson’s 9-year-old daughter, posing the embroidery-ready quote, “Why are you guys so impressionable? A man wouldn’t be singing from his heart and soul to another man’s little angel if he had a problem with her dad.” Meanwhile, the rest of the cast—bereft of such videos or little angels of their own—is “getting hounded” by the press, and probably not looking forward to hearing the words “candy ass” in their every interview for the rest of the year, if not the rest of their very lives.
In the meantime, Johnson and Diesel reportedly held a “secret meeting” yesterday in which they attempted to hash out their differences and remember what brought them all together in the first place: a shared desire to flex their glistening arms at one another, and a love of good storytelling. But if E! and its own “insider” are to be believed, it wasn’t just Diesel who angered Johnson. An unspecified number of “some of the guys did some small things that pissed him off, so he snapped. He called them out and then they were [too] silent to man up and say what they wanted to say”—so Johnson was forced to prove he was the bigger man by chastising them anonymously on social media.
Nevertheless, “all is cool now,” this insider says, even though all the cast members also “need some space.” They ask that you please respect that space, and not make too much out of this entertaining, colorfully worded public feud between the stars of a globally famous, multi-billion-dollar film series. Indeed, one hopes that everyone involved can set aside their differences, in time to somehow build advance buzz for a franchise now entering its eighth chapter. And that Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel’s once-lively friendship will get the proper sendoff it deserves with a wistful Wiz Khalifa song.