Vin Diesel Buries Any Feud with Dwayne Johnson in Praising “The Smashing Machine”: 'Proud of You' 

Vin Diesel is shaking off his past feud with Dwayne Johnson to celebrate his Fast & Furious costar's new movie, The Smashing Machine.

Early on Tuesday, Nov. 25, Diesel, 58, shared a photo of himself and Johnson, 53, to Instagram as he praised Johnson's acclaimed performance as UFC legend Mark Kerr and revealed that he and Kerr, 56, are real-life friends.

"One of the greatest gifts in life isn’t something you can buy, it’s the relationships forged along the way," Diesel wrote in his post. "I wanted to take a moment to talk about The Smashing Machine." 

Diesel shared that he and MMA fighter Kerr became friends when Diesel first moved to California years ago. The actor noted that Kerr is "genuinely one of the kindest, most warm-hearted people you will ever meet" and said that Kerr worked with him on his physical training for the 2002 action movie xXx.

"And let me celebrate Dwayne. People don’t understand what it takes to uphold a global perception every single day," Diesel added of Johnson, with whom he famously feuded between 2016 and 2023 over creative differences regarding their approaches to the Fast & Furious franchise.

"I remember asking our global family who they’d love to see me work with, and a woman named Jan left a comment saying her dream was for me to collaborate with Dwayne," Diesel wrote in his caption. Johnson famously joined the Fast & Furious movies for 2011's Fast Five as his character Luke Hobbs and costarred with Diesel's Dom Toretto in four of the series' sequels that followed, including the 2019 spinoff movie Hobbs & Shaw.

Johnson and Diesel's public feud began in 2016 when Johnson shared a lengthy, now-deleted Instagram post in which he called out some of his male costars without sharing names. In 2021, Johnson told The Hollywood Reporter that he did not plan to appear in any Fast & Furious movie following Hobbs & Shaw. He later described himself and Diesel as "philosophically two different people" in a separate 2021 interview with Vanity Fair.

Johnson ultimately made a cameo appearance in a post-credits scene in 2023’s Fast X and announced in June 2023 that he will continue playing Hobbs in future Fast & Furious movies, revealing that he and Diesel had "put all the past behind us."  

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In Diesel's Nov. 25 Instagram post, he described his work with Johnson as "one of the most dynamic pairings in cinema, two strong personalities who pushed each other and created something unforgettable."

"Mark Kerr is so deserving of this moment… and Dwayne really did it… He brought us back in time and shined doing it," Diesel wrote of The Smashing Machine. "Proud of you both."