14 DAY TRIAL // Vin Diesel and Paul Walker were, as per the former’s account, more than just 2 men working on the same movie franchise: they were the best of friends, “brothers.” When Vin’s third child with longtime girlfriend Paloma Jimenez was born earlier this month, he found the perfect way to pay tribute to his late friend.
In November 2013, Walker was killed in a one-vehicle crash, during the Thanksgiving holiday and a break from “Furious 7,” which is coming in theaters at the beginning of next month. Since then, his family, co-stars and fans have been struggling to come to terms with the fact that he’s gone.
A very beautiful tribute
Vin Diesel seems to have found just the thing to keep him going: he may have lost his “brother,” but he is convinced that Paul is still around somewhere. He felt him in the delivery room as his third child was being born, he tells Natalie Morales in a new interview for The Today, which you will find embedded below.
So this is why he and Paloma decided to name the child, a baby girl, Pauline.
“There's no other person that I was thinking about as I was cutting this umbilical cord. I just... knew he was there. It felt like, you know, a way to keep his memory a part of my family and a part of my world,” the actor said.
Vin and Paloma have another daughter and son together.
Vin Diesel, the giant with a gentle heart
This isn’t the first time that Vin Diesel opens up on the pain he’s been feeling since Paul’s death, breaking the hearts of the fans in the process: just a day before, at a screening for “Furious 7” he attended in person, he spoke about how completing the film was the most difficult thing he’d done, hinting that he may have wanted to stop shooting after the tragedy.
Then, as he spoke of how he’d lost a brother and his best friend, Vin got so choked up he could no longer continue speaking, and had to cut his introduction short. The fans helped him out, yelling at him from their seats that they felt his pain and that they loved him.
“Furious 7” is Paul Walker’s final movie. Even though he was yet to shoot key scenes for it at the time of his death, production resumed after a few months and the film was completed with CGI and stunt doubles, Walker’s lookalike brothers.
It is believed that Walker’s character in the franchise will be “retired” at the end of the film, allowing it to continue with more installments.