John Cena On Working With “Alphas” Vin Diesel And The Rock In ‘Fast & Furious’: “You Get Two, There Can Only Be One”

Fast & Furious fans got some intel on speculated tension between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson from none other than one of their co-stars.

On Monday’s (April 8) installment of Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Expert podcast, John Cena was asked about the “alpha energy” on set and the buzz about Diesel and Johnson being “a rough pairing,” per Variety.

In turn, Cena admitted, “There’s certainly rumors about that. I can’t deny that.”

“You have two very alpha, driven people,” he added. “You get two, there can only be one.”

As reported by Variety, Johnson aired his grievances toward his “male co-stars” of the franchise in an explosive social media post in 2016, noting that “some conduct themselves as stand up men and true professionals, while others don’t.”

“The ones that don’t are too chicken shit to do anything about it anyway,” he wrote. “Candy asses.”

While he didn’t identify said co-stars in the post, Diesel was reported to be the target of his words. Diesel eventually told Men’s Health in 2021 that Johnson’s character, Hobbs, “was a tough character to embody,” and that his own “approach at the time was a lot of tough love to assist in getting that performance where it needed to be.”

Cena also elaborated on his experience making his Fast and Furious debut in F9: The Fast Saga (2021) during his Armchair Expert appearance.

“Man, you gotta remember I got dropped into a locker room where [we have] generational vets,” he explained. “What’d your dad do?’ ‘Wrestle.’ ‘What’d your granddad do?’ ‘Wrestle.’ I’ve been in that environment; know the room and just kind of adapt to what’s going on.”

He noted that it was like “being invited into someone’s home, into someone’s family,” sharing, “And regardless of how they look physically in comparison to another human being, this is one IP that has had nine installments and it’s an action movie — that’s rarefied air. At the very least, there has to be respect for that.”

Cena reiterated that he’s “a guest” in the Fast films, and that he’s “not trying to get the sandbox.”

“That’s not my thing,” he said. “I’m grateful for what you’ve given me, I just want to be be the best firetruck I can.”

As for the current status of Diesel and Johnson’s feud, the latter — after not appearing in F9 and alleging he would not come back in future franchise projects — ultimately made a post-credits scene appearance in Fast X, making way for his involvement in the upcoming eleventh installment, per Variety. On June 1, 2023, Johnson took to X to note that last summer, he and Diesel had “put all the past behind” them.

In February, Diesel teased his intention to continue on with the final series movie on Instagram, two months after being accused by his former assistant of sexual battery.

“Just finished our end of the week Fast meeting with the writers and the whole team… to say the excitement for our finale was incredibly powerful is an understatement,” he wrote, in part.