When it comes to the action genre, Maggie Q knows her way around the block. Her resume includes participation in such action-packed features as Mission: Impossible III, the Divergent series, and the fourth film in the Die Hard franchise, Live Free or Die Hard. That film, in particular, has a brutal fight sequence that Maggie Q reflected on as she spoke with us about her latest movie, The Protege. She is the character of the title, and she’s on a mission of vengeance. And in the above clip, she explains why this current film gave her the scariest stunt of her career.
You get a sense of the scene that she is referring to in the trailer for The Protege, which I will include below. And the funny thing is, both of the stunts involve Maggie Q having to be at an extreme height, with the possibility of a very long fall. In The Protege, it’s a plunge she takes off of a very large staircase, with only the wires provided by the seemingly excellent and professional stunt crew keeping her as safe as possible. But when talking about pulling off the stunt for The Protege, she made a direct comparison to the fight in Live Free or Die Hard, because it was the only other time in her career that she felt terrified by a physical stunt.
The fight she’s mentioning takes place in an elevator shaft. John McClane (Bruce Willis) has driven a truck through a room, crashing into Maggie Q’s character. The two of them end up in an elevator shaft, where their fight continues, and the truck dangles. The sequence looks like this:
And the way that Maggie Q explains it, as she compares it to this stunt she just pulled off for The Protege, she tells CinemaBlend:
I’m falling first. And the car is falling above me. So as I look up, there’s an SUV dropping at full speed over my head. And I’m right below it. So it’s like, your life is literally in the hands of the people who are controlling the wires, right? So that was the only other time I have been that scared. It has been twice in my career where I have been like, ‘Whew…’ The adrenaline and the fear was definitely there.
In The Protege, Maggie Q’s character is putting her life on the line to get back at the man (Michael Keaton) who orchestrated the murder of Q’s mentor (Samuel L. Jackson). As the trailer alerts us, it’s from the studio that brings us John Wick, so you get an idea what to expect. And look for that thrilling jump Maggie takes in the opening of this tease.
Want to see how she pulls it off? You can right now, because The Protege has opened, and is playing at a movie theater near you. If you need to keep up to date on the rest of the films coming to theaters for the back half of the year, our guide to 2021 releases is available, and is being updated often.
