Vin Diesel on Fast & Furious 9 and how his son has the perfect ending for the saga

To celebrate the release of Fast & Furious 9 in cinemas, ShortList sat down to chat with the driving force behind Fast, Vin Diesel - star and producer of the movies.

Arguably the biggest movie star of the moment, Diesel took time out of his ridiculous schedule to chat about the movies, getting director Justin Lin back on board and how his son came up with a perfect ending for the films (although he won’t tell us if that is the one he’s going with).

Vin Diesel: I had no idea. I told the studio never to do a sequel! I can't believe how wrong I was. I stand corrected. It's such a blessing, to have something that you work on, something you created 20 years ago become this worldwide saga is mind boggling. I never imagined it, and the fact that my character is 20 years older now and a father, it's just all so surreal.

Vin: I did, I did! You know, you just have to imagine what it must be like to create the ninth chapter of a movie where the world knows the mythology so well. You really have to dig deep and you just want to honour the fans. We have the best fans in cinematic history.

Vin: You’ve hit it on the head. It's important and maybe we didn’t realise how much. We didn't realise how much we would miss that congregation, miss that escapism. When it's done as a body of people, as a community, as a collective... I think while something like sports is inherently divisive in some ways, when you come to Fast, everyone's cheering at the same time and that does something. That's a benefit to society. It's needed.

Vin: I've already produced it, which is a lot of work [laughs]. And no, Justin didn't have any idea - he didn't believe that he was going to be directing it. But I knew that we would have the finale in Fast & Furious 10 and I knew that he needed to be the guy to wrap up this era of the mythology. And so even before I did eight with an incredible director, F Gary Gray, I knew that by the time I got to nine, I'd have to open up that path for Justin to drive this home.

FF: I know how it's gonna end. We've been working on it for the last year so whenever I'm talking about it, I have to hold back. But I'll tell you a funny story: just two days ago, my son said ‘I got the perfect ending for part two of Fast 10’. I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘You and Brian [O'Conner, played by the late Paul Walker] are at the beginning of a race, the cars go forward, your car lifts and then you cut the movie and that's the last thing you ever see’. I was like, ‘You’re a genius! That's not bad, that's brilliant!’