Never forgotten. Vin Diesel opened up about his late friend Paul Walker and how he coped with the third anniversary of the Fast & Furious star’s death in a new interview. Walker died on November 30, 2013, in a fatal single-car accident when his friend’s Porsche Carrera GT crashed into two trees and a concrete lamppost.
“We’ve felt the loss,” Diesel told Entertainment Tonight at Brazil Comic Con on Thursday, December 1. “The last three years have been some of the hardest of my life because of losing my brother like that.”
The 49-year-old actor said that the Fast & Furious cast came together to support one another on that tough day. “I’d been to Brazil two times before, and both times that I’ve been here, I’ve always been with my brother, Pablo,” he said, referring to his nickname for Walker. "Even if I talked on ET in Brazil or any talk show, any press, or while we were filming in the favelas, it was Pablo and me. It was a lot of tissues, and it was a hard morning for me yesterday because I was here. But the irony is the whole cast reached out, and his [18-year-old] daughter, Meadow, reached out, and all that stuff helps you get through it.”
Diesel explained that filming xXx: Return of Xander Cage helped him have fun on set again after Walker’s death midway through shooting Furious 7 in 2013. “Making this movie came after a very difficult time making Furious 7, and so never in my life did I need to do a movie where I could laugh and smile and enjoy myself more than right now, more than the time I made this movie,” he said. “The irony is, right after doing this, of course, I went to do Fast 8, and Fast 8 was a very dark place and the darkest place [my character] Dom’s ever been.”
The Last Witch Hunter star previously paid tribute to his late costar on Facebook by changing his cover photo to a pic of himself praying alongside Walker. Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster and Ludacris also took to social media to remember their late friend.
