Edward Snowden Set To Guest Star In Daniel Radcliffe’s Off-Broadway Play ‘Privacy’

Edward Snowden will be appearing via video in the Daniel Radcliffe play, Privacy, which begins previews Saturday at the Public Theater, according to reports on Thursday.

Edward Snowden To Guest Star In New Daniel Radcliffe Play ‘Privacy’

Snowden has been living in Moscow since June 2013, avoiding prosecution for leaking classified documents about U.S. surveillance programs. He continues to stay in the public eye, tweeting about civil liberty issues and appearing at festivals and conferences as a robotic screen.

Privacy is a work of documentary theater — first staged in London in 2014. The play focuses on how the personal has become public in this age of social media, as actors speak words taken from interviews the writers conducted with politicians, scholars and journalists.

The show’s creators, James Graham and Josie Rourke, tried repeatedly to reach Snowden to star in the production — but they were not successful before London performances.

Graham and Rourke finally got Snowden on board last week, and they began helping him act out his scene, which reportedly comes at a pivotal moment in the play.

Snowden’s lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union said Snowden hopes to educate people who may not understand the concepts behind NSA documents.

“He is hoping that the playwrights and actors here can take abstract concepts and make them more concrete for people who might not read N.S.A. documents at their computers,” said Ben Wizner of the A.C.L.U.

Radcliffe plays a young man known as the Writer, a character loosely based on the play’s co-creator, Graham.

Snowden’s performance has since been recorded, so audiences in the theater will be watching Radcliffe live as he “talks” with him in a one-minute exchange.