Justin Long and Bruce Willis in Live Free or Die Hard Frank Masi/Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

When they approached you to do the film, did you think, Oh hell, now I'm going to have to work out and get in shape with Bruce Willis.
Justin: I just went out and bought Depends.
[Maggie laughs]
Justin: Maggie, she's just in shape all the time.
Maggie: I just did a comedy [Balls of Fury], but I was fighting in it, so I was training for that, and the guys who trained for that, they worked on The Matrix.
Justin: Maggie always abbreviates. She'll say, "When I did Mission…"
Maggie: And Justin will say, "Mission? Mission to Mars?"
Justin: And then when she did Balls of Fury, she'd say, "Well, on Balls… When I was working on Balls…"
Maggie: I didn't know that I did that! I had to train a lot for that, but then I did a small movie really quickly. But I didn't really have that much time to train for Die Hard… So I had to train while I was filming.
Justin: I trained by doing this a lot [pretends to cower under table and waves his hands over his head]

What's it like being on a set with a bunch of fireball-type explosions going off all around you?
Justin: Sometimes it is very easy. Funny you bring up Jeepers Creepers. [Doing Live Free or Die Hard] was a lot like doing a horror movie. Because my character is a normal guy in this ridiculously abnormal situation. There's not a lot of room for nuance and subtlety when you're being shot at with a machine gun and your tunnel blows up and you're going through these fantastical things.
Maggie: People come on action movies, and a lot of times they won't know what to do, and they'll wind up doing too little or too much. I agree, there is not much room for subtlety.
Justin: Honestly, if that shit happens to you in real life, you'd shit yourself, then pass out.
Maggie: [Laughs]
Justin: Ideally, you'd pass out first, and then shit yourself, so you wouldn't have to endure the shame. Speaking of which, there was a line that got cut out of the movie that I liked. I was more proud of this line than anything. There's the scene when Bruce is climbing out of the elevator shaft after [Maggie's] fight. In the final cut, they cut away, but we actually filmed a scene where I take Bruce's hand, and I say, "Before I pull you up, will you please tell me that you shit your pants too? Because that would make things a lot less awkward for me." But Bruce said, "Um, why don't I just lift myself up out of here?"
Maggie: That's his way of saying, "I hated your line."

Maggie, how long did it take to shoot that elaborate fight scene?
Maggie: A couple of months.
Justin: It was really cool. They built this huge shaft just for the fight scene…
Maggie: A million dollars just for that shaft. It was huge…
Justin: Again, with the double entendres — "a million dollars just for that shaft" [Laughter] Hey, I would pay a million dollars for a shaft that size…
Maggie: Shooting that scene took so much work.
Justin: You guys worked on that for a long time.
Maggie: Honestly, I felt like I lived in that shaft.
[Laughter all around]

And of course, Maggie, it takes quite a huge effort for Bruce to dispatch you in this movies…
Maggie: It did look great. But, you know, that was Len's big sell on me. Len was like, "You are going to die in the movie, but it's going to be phenomenal." All right, dude. I'll do it. Whatever.