This year is almost over, and Fast X is among the biggest 2023 movie releases many are looking back on in these final weeks. The blockbuster feature depicting the battle between Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes and Dominic Toretto’s crew stands as the fifth highest-grossing 2023 movie worldwide with its $714.4 million haul, and we’re next expected to see Vin Diesel and the gang back in action for Fast 11 in 2025. However, majors news has surfaced concerning Diesel’s personal life, as the actor has been hit with a sexual battery lawsuit that dates back to Fast Five.
This lawsuit that was filed in Los Angeles comes plaintiff Asta Jonasson, a former assistant of Diesel’s who’s accused him of sexually battering her during the filming of Fast Five in fall 2010, when she was working at at his One Race production company. You can read Vanity Fair’s writeup to read the specific details about what allegedly happened when Diesel and Jonasson were in Atlanta back then, but after the incident laid out in the lawsuit occurred, it’s stated Samantha Vincent, Diesel’s sister and One Race’s president, fired Jonasson after she’d been on the job for less than two weeks. According to the suit:
It was clear to her that she was being fired because she was no longer useful—Vin Diesel had used her to fulfill his sexual desires and she had resisted his sexual assaults. [Jonasson’s] “esteem was demolished, and she questioned her own skills and whether a successful career would require her to trade her body for advancement.
The suit also claims that this wasn’t the only “inappropriate incident” that happened when Jonasson was working for Diesel. A few days beforehand, another One Race employee was purportedly called to the actor’s room at the St. Regis while Jonasson was present, and she left the room when Diesel took off his shirt and told this other employee to join him in bed after he got in it.
Furthermore, this suit includes allegations of “discrimination on the bases of sex/gender, intentional infliction of emotional distress, hostile work environment, wrongful termination, and retaliation,” and accuses Diesel and other people at One Race of an attempted cover-up. As a result, Asta Jonasson “has suffered and continues to suffer humiliation, emotional distress, and mental and physical pain and anguish.”
As for why this information is coming to light more than a decade after Fast Five’s release, it’s said that Jonasson signed a nondisclosure agreement when she was hired onto One Race, and she kept silent in the following years. It’s only because of the Speak Out Act, which prevents enforcement of such agreements when it comes to sexual assault and harassment, and California’s AB3777, which temporarily sets aside statute of limitations for sexual abuse allegations concerning incidents from 2099 or later. The suit also mentions that Jonasson felt “empowered” by the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements and she’s now ready to “reclaim her agency and justice for the suffering she endured at the hands of Vin Diesel and One Race.”
More to come…
