It didn't really change my opinion about [Edward] Snowden all that much, but I definitely feel like as a culture, it gave us information that generated a responsibility to protect ourselves as much as we can and also a responsibility to hold our government accountable to honoring our constitutional rights.

I saw how vulnerable we all are and how exposed we all are and how this is an issue that affects everyone who owns a piece of technology. Which is certainly most people in this country.

We [with Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa] spent a lot of time writing, for lack of a better word, this manifesto about what we wanted to do. We wanted to find work that was relevant socially and that didn't take audiences for granted.

I found myself in a pattern of being attracted to people who were somehow unavailable, and what I realized was that I was protecting myself because I equate the idea of connection and love with trauma and death.

My relationship with Leonard [Nimoy] was a byproduct of playing Spock that I never would have imagined, but the more I got to know him, the more I realized, there are no mistakes. I'm playing this role for very specific reasons, and maybe those reasons have to do with where I am creatively in my life, but maybe they have to do with where I am personally in my life. Leonard was such a teacher for me.

I love playing characters that go to extreme places, and I love to explore different kinds of psychological landscapes, so it is ultimately a kind of fun, but it's also complicated and colored by the depth of the nastiness of it, at certain times, as well.

It was actually pretty cool to be in Pittsburgh for those four years. I moved into the dorms and had a pretty normal college experience, even though it was in my hometown. I really thrived there. I feel like it really suited me and served me well in terms of how I grew up there.