JD Pardo on Working with Two Strong Filmmaking Families

There are countless things in the Fast and Furious films that look like immensely challenging beats to film, but I maintain that JD Pardo and Vinnie Bennett wind up with an especially high pressure task in the latest installment, F9. After eight films in the main series, we finally flash back to Dom’s (Bennett) youth to cover what happened between him and his brother, Jakob (Finn Cole), and to see how they lost their father (Pardo).

These scenes aren’t just any old flashbacks designed to quickly plug in character details. They’re beats that manage to deeply strengthen the foundation of the franchise in a strikingly authentic and sincere manner.

fast-and-furious-f9-universal-pictures-diesel-john-cena-brothers — Image via Universal Pictures

With the F9 director’s cut now available to own on digital, DVD and Blu-ray, I got the chance to chat with Pardo and Bennett about how they brought Jack Toretto and young Dom to screen so successfully. For Bennett, there was one particular scene from the first Fast and Furious movie that proved especially helpful. He explained:

“It was the scene from the first one where he’s talking to Brian. They’re in his garage and they’re talking about — I could almost [repeat it] word for word — almost exactly about what we see at the start of F9; his dad’s on the last lap of the circuit, someone clips him, he goes into the side. He pretty much just breaks it all down and so that’s kind of exactly what I went off of there that was a big inspiration for me.”

the-fast-and-the-furious-2001 — Image via Universal Pictures

In Pardo’s case, he isn’t teeing up a key character for the films to come like Bennett, but rather, instilling vital ideals in Dom that ultimately bolster a core value of all the Fast films — family. In one scene, Jack tells a young Dom, “Just like a family, Dom – you build it right, you take care of it, it’ll live beyond you.” Perhaps that right there could be considered step one to Dom’s journey fostering his Fast family. Here’s what Pardo had to say about delivering such a pivotal line, a piece of dialogue that isn’t just important to this one film, but one that impacts the entire franchise:

“Especially when you get dialogue like that and you know what it means and how important it is, you’ve gotta believe it. You have to. I’d be doing such a disservice if I just said it. So for me, what I take from it is, what I believe is the truth. You’ve gotta believe in what you’re doing. You have to. If you don’t believe in it and you’re not emotionally connected to it, it’s gonna fall apart. It takes a lot to build something and you can destroy it so easily in just a moment. So then, the more you’re building something, the more important it becomes. I really took pride in that and I felt like I was giving it to my son.”

F9's Vinnie Bennett, Justin Lin and JD Pardo — Image via Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

Pardo is no stranger to cultivating family on screen and behind the scenes courtesy of his ongoing run on Mayans M.C. on FX. Here’s what Pardo told us when asked about his experience going from that family to the Fast family:

“You can easily just sort of dismiss it and just say, ‘Well, a crew’s a crew and cast is cast and a job’s a job,’ but with something like Mayans, we’re building that together, you know? And so we all have to be united in our goal, in our intention and what the bigger picture is. When you jump onto something as big as Fast, that family has been established, the crew, everybody knows each other, so I really went into it as in, ‘How can I serve this family?’ And for me, the crew always comes first. They’re the first ones there, they’re the last ones to leave so I put them first. I put their needs first. And then, how can I help the cast? Because, for me, that’s kind of what acting is; I come with everything that I need to come with, but if I can’t pull it out of Vin, it can be somebody else, you know? My responsibility is to give him something to work off of. So I really think it’s about service. Family’s about serving each other.”

JD Pardo as EZ Reyes — Image via Prashant Gupta/FX

The F9 director’s cut is now available to own on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and digital. All options come with that director’s cut, the original theatrical release and a slew of bonus material.

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