I met Glenn [ Greenwald] briefly in 2009. We were both guests on Real Time With Bill Maher. I was the show's guest and he was on the panel. But this was before the Snowden stuff happened. I didn't have the opportunity to meet him in preparation for the movie, unfortunately, for various reasons. But I was able to dive into the main articles he's written, and interviews with him, and just the function that the character serves in the movie, that was enough for me.

We just have to have visibility. We have to have acknowledgement. We have to have accountability to how we treat one another.

I actually met one of my business partners [Neal Dodson] at the Governor's School summer program, so we've known each other since we were 15 and 16 years old, and we both ended up at Carnegie Mellon together. He started working for a producer out of school after a few years, and then we started the company together.

I think it's always good when you're able to, as an actor, allow your work to be some kind of a conduit for social discourse, and an examination of where we are, as a society.

[Edward Snowden and his team] they're great characters. They're fascinating people. They were in an extraordinary situation.

When I got out of school, it used to be that it was theater actors that ended up doing film and television, and you had to come from the theater to be taken seriously in that world.

I came back and decided that I wanted to go to college for acting and got my family on board. My mom, who was a single mom, was a little reticent, but I think after that summer [in the Governor's School], she saw a shift in me and realized that it was something I wanted more than just a hobby.