Fast And Furious 8 will have Oscar-winner Helen Mirren in the driver's seat

The eighth installment in the Fast & Furious franchise continues to turbo-charge its cast with some truly unexpected additions. The latest surprise comes in the form of Oscar-winner Helen Mirren, who after years of praising the saga has now announced that she'll be appearing in Fast & Furious 8. It's like all of our Christmases have come at once.

The actress casually dropped this piece of news in the middle of an Elle interview while discussing her ambitions for the future. "I want to be making film and theater, but film is particularly relevant," she says. "I like it to be serious. Of course, having said that I'm about to do Fast and Furious 8. But that's for the fun of it. So maybe that's what I want as well, some fun and some relevant, serious, important movies."

Realizing that Mirren had just let slip something pretty big, the interviewer asks her to confirm that she's definitely in the movie. "Yes, I am," she replies, "I've always rather loved driving. I said, 'I'll be in it, but only if I'm allowed to drive if I do drive in it.' But we'll see. We'll see how it transpires."

The franchise's reputation for putting women behind the wheel is already well-established (see: films 1-7), pushing on in this eighth part by also adding Charlize Theron to the roster as the movie's main villain. Now that Mirren's made it clear she's ready to give it some gas, it'd be a missed opportunity to not toss her the keys to a sweet ride.

Directed by F. Gary Gray and starring Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Charlize Theron, Kurt Russell, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Nathalie Emmanuel, Scott Eastwood, Kristofer Hivju and Jason Statham, Fast and Furious 8 is due to open in the US and UK on April 14, 2017.

Images: Universal Pictures, Summit

Scope out Mirren's driving skills from her appearance on Top Gear in 2008:

Gem Seddon is a freelance writer working to keep all of you updated on all of the latest and greatest movies and shows on streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Outside of entertainment journalism, Gem can frequently be found writing about the alternative health and wellness industry, and obsessing over all things Aliens and Terminator on Twitter.