How Fast & Furious duo Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham became best of enemies

Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbs and Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw. Picture: PA Photo/Universal Pictures

Eight blockbuster movies later and the first spin-off is here, centring on Dwayne Johnson’s hulking lawman, Luke Hobbs, and Jason Statham’s lawless mercenary, Deckard Shaw.

Nemeses since they first faced off in 2015’s Fast & Furious 7, the duo are now forced to put aside their smack talk and team up to take on a violent threat to the world.

This comes in the shape of Idris Elba’s genetically and technologically enhanced soldier Brixton in the new action blockbuster Hobbs & Shaw, which gives Statham and Johnson the chance to fill out the fan favourite characters.

“I did a very small tag on part 6, I came in in the shadows for part 7 and didn’t have a lot to say, I just came in and wanted to kill everybody,” says Statham.

“Then we get to learn a little more about him in part 8 so Deckard Shaw was certainly someone that we could pull back the curtain on and have a look at and focus down on what he stands for.

“There has been this misconception that he’s just this ruthless bad guy and we get to know that he’s not exactly that, and it’s the same with the Hobbs character.

“The pair of us really had a lot of on-screen fireworks so it really made sense to go and expand out on that story.”

As you might expect, both the action stars get some formidable fight scenes, but Statham, 52, has a particularly fun one, which sees him brandishing a champagne bottle in a way it certainly was not intended.

“I always get a little bit apprehensive with props,” he admits with a laugh.

“They just stack them all up and go, ‘You are going to bash someone with a toaster, there is the saucepan for the bullet catch, there is the champagne bottle’ – it’s like The Generation Game, pick your prizes.

“Props have been a thing of my action movie physical fights for many many years. I’ve wrapped people up with hoses. I’ve hit them with everything you could put your hands on.

“It’s just part of the fun, you know? A straight-up fist fight gets a little tedious.”

He pauses. “It’s a rubber toaster, mind.”

The film also gives audiences more of a chance to get to know Shaw’s family, including his sister Hattie, played by The Crown star Vanessa Kirby, and his formidable mother, Magdalene Shaw, played by Dame Helen Mirren, after her fleeting debut appearance in Fast & Furious 8.

Dame Helen’s casting in the franchise came as a surprise to many when it was first announced, but it gives the 74-year-old Oscar-winner opportunities not afforded her in her other prestigious projects.

“I just love driving cars in movies,” she says enthusiastically. “I love it – you get empty roads, you can do stuff that you can’t do in a normal car. It just looked like a really fun thing to be a part of.”

That being said, she now has two of these films under her belt and is yet to get behind the wheel of a car.

“Can you believe it?” she jokes, exasperatedly. “What’s the matter with them?”

Instead she got to dive into Magdalene’s East End roots, tapping into her own family history as she went.

One person who does see more than his fair share of action is Elba, 46, who joins the franchise as the self-professed bad guy Brixton, and who has to hold his own in fight scenes with Johnson and Statham.

“Those guys are very fit. They are notoriously known for that and I’m not,” he says ruefully.

“But I turned up. I definitely trained for this film to try and be as fit as I possibly could be.

“Dwayne and Jason are the biggest action movie stars in the world so I looked forward to going to work every day but I went home with a bit of a headache.

“There was a lot of shouting and screaming, a lot of machismo.”

Elba even did a lot of his own stunts – “the fighting was really me because I like to fight!” – and came up with one of the film’s most memorable lines.

“It was part of this really maniacal speech about why I’m so amazing, why enhancements are great, and it just came out of my mouth – ‘Look at me, I’m black Superman’ – and everyone started laughing.

“Now everyone wants to take credit for it. But the case rests here. I don’t want to hear another word about you saying you wrote ‘black Superman’, you didn’t.”

Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw is out now