Maggie Grace Kicks Ass in Chapter Five of The Faster Chronicles!

Matt Patches: Can you talk a little bit about the training you did in the movie?

Maggie Grace: Yeah, the training process was so much fun, and I don't know how much of what we trained for will make the final cut. I mean there's literally so much action I think they ended up losing some. Like, that's how much we shot. Pretty kick-ass.

Matt Patches: The movie lives up to its name.

Maggie Grace: Oh, it never pauses to take a breath. And I think that gets tighter in the editing process, it's really unrelenting. So there was a lot of training with some amazing consultants, like the CIA and the LAPD - they were just brilliant.

Matt Patches: A lot of weapons stuff?

Maggie Grace: Yeah, a lot of weapons stuff and driving. For the weapons stuff, we would go shooting at outdoor ranges and spend the day shooting. It was so much fun. I got to try Dwayne's gun, which was a Ruger, which they call it the bear-stopper. I think my entire forearm went numb for like an hour afterwards. It was a crazy, crazy thing.

Matt Patches: Were the guns you used on set packing that kind of punch?

Maggie Grace: Well we shot mostly blanks out of respect for the crew's poor eardrums. So we didn't have that many takes. Which, the downside of that is that when you are shooting that many blanks, there's more backfire into your eyes, you know? It kind of gets in your eyes a little bit. There's an upside and a downside. But when you are shooting that much, it helps. And then with the cars it was so much fun.

We spent a day out on the racetrack, out in the Mojave Desert, and we all met up there and it was just so much fun. This is what I love about my job - you never know where you are going to find yourself. You know, I neglected to learn to drive stick. I've just never needed it [laughs]. So, I guess I haven't rented enough cars in Europe to have to learn. They've got this racecar driver to teach me how to drive stick on a Lotus on a racetrack in the Mojave Desert. Yeah, it was a good way to learn.  It was so beautiful, and I just kept apologizing profusely to the driver because he was terribly overqualified and I was barely getting the nerve up to take it past 50 mph. It feels so much faster on the corners, you know?

Matt Patches: Did they let you actually drive the cars when you're filming?

Maggie Grace: Yeah, they do! We train a lot. First you learn the quick turns and stuff, to make sure you're safe and that you know what you're doing, and then once you've reviewed that enough then you can put, like, cones in there to make sure you're safe and you know what you're doing, then eventually on the day when the crew with the camera will be there, you had better know what you're doing.