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Vin Diesel appeared to revive his years-old beef with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson during the Golden Globes, but the moment wasn’t so much reconciliatory as it was… extremely awkward.
Diesel appeared at the star-studded awards ceremony to present the trophy for cinematic and box office achievement. While Wicked rightfully got its due, viewers couldn’t help but notice the “unadulterated loathing” that permeated Diesel’s interaction with Johnson, whom he starred opposite in The Fast and Furious franchise. Taking a pause (or, given the winner, “holding space”) at the start of his presenter speech, Diesel gave a bizarre shout out to Johnson, whose reaction was caught as the camera panned to the Moana star.
Johnson was seen smiling awkwardly, as a few scarce laughs trickled throughout the audience. To be fair, one must have an understanding of the two actors’ tumultuous history for the moment to truly land, but even then it feels like a somewhat stale joke since Diesel and Johnson had ostensibly squashed their beef. For context, the feud dates back to 2016, when Johnson called out an unnamed Fast co-star as “chicken s**t” and a “candy a**” in an Instagram post.
Later, Diesel revealed himself to be the subject of that roast when explaining in an interview that, as a producer of the franchise, he had used a “tough love” approach to get the best work out of Johnson. While it would be useful for Diesel to remember that this is The Fast and The Furious and is therefore not worthy of this Daniel Day Lewis-like approach to acting, he nonetheless cited his producer strategy as the source of their beef. It was squashed, however, in 2023, when Johnson shocked audiences by appearing as his character, Luke Hobbs, in the mid-credits scene of Fast X.
Since then, all appeared to be well in the Fast universe, with both Johnson and Diesel set to appear in what might as well be the eleven-hundredth installment, next year’s Fast XI (yep, we’ve moved to Roman numerals, because there’s simply not enough regular digits). Perhaps it was the staleness of the feud, or the fact that Diesel hasn’t appeared in a film this year, which made his Golden Globes moment read a little cringe for viewers.
“You could literally see The Rock’s hatred towards Vin Diesel in that shot,” one user wrote on X, with another adding that they got to see “what The Rock looks like when he’s fantasizing about tearing Vin Diesel in half.” Others used a series of teeth-baring emojis to sum up the awkward exchange, or expressed excitement that they “thought some s*** was gonna pop off” in the vein of Chris Rock and Will Smith. “This is the kind of drama the Golden Globes needed,” a fourth onlooker wrote.
While it briefly pulled focus, the interaction was one of multiple talked-about moments at the ceremony, from Kieran Culkin’s deserved win for A Real Pain to Andrew Garfield’s win for being, well, Andrew Garfield. We also got an appearance from the respective winners of the Glen Powell and Timothée Chalamet lookalike contests (yep, you read that right), and celebrated prize-getters like Demi Moore (for The Substance), Emilia Pérez (for best musical or comedy) and Sebastian Stan (for A Different Man).