Zachary Quinto and Melissa Leo on Getting Their ‘Snowden’ Roles

In Oliver Stone’s Snowden, which releases to theaters this weekend, the story focuses on Edward Snowden who released some of the NSA’s classified information to the media. The biographical drama stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the title character, Shailene Woodley as Snowden’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills, Zachary Quinto as Glenn Edward Greenwald, the journalist who disclosed the leaked information in The Guardian, and Melissa Leo as Laura Poitras, the director of the Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour.

BackstageOL’s Dave Morales sat down with Quinto and Leo to discuss if they had any hesitations about being in the film.

“I didn’t know [Snowden] was being made until Oliver called,” Quinto said. “Then my thoughts when I found out were A: I can’t imagine a more appropriate filmmaker for this story and B: I can’t believe that that filmmaker, who was someone that I’ve admired my whole life, is literally on the other end of this phone line asking me to be in it.”

Leo revealed that she wasn’t concerned at all about being in the controversial film. “It was a very similar experience of receiving a call at home, unannounced basically. I think there might have been a head’s up from my management that Oliver Stone was going to call me…The phone rings, pick it up, and he’s asking me if I will please be his Laura Poitras in his movie. It’s just delightful.”

“There was no hesitation, whatsoever,” she added. “I’m not interested in playing a good one or a right one or a bad one…I’m interested in playing women that are whole and complete and that’s what I’m looking for in the script. And Laura’s an actual human being so there was a wholeness and a completeness implicit in it, so [I was] delighted to be invited.”