Just over 24 hours ago, the U.S. found out who would be their next President, but if Hollywood decided to turn the 2016 election campaign into a movie, who would be cast as its leading roles?
When asked by CNBC, leading Hollywood star, Joseph Gordon-Levitt knew who could be "spot-on" for the job if it ever came about.
"Honestly I think they've been doing it perfectly on SNL," Joseph Gordon-Levitt, actor and director of open-collaborative production firm hitRECord, told CNBC.
"I've watched all of the SNL Trump Clinton with Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon — I think they've been doing it spot on. I've been really impressed."
In the run-up to the U.S. election, Saturday Night Live (SNL) had been hosting a number of sketches based around the 2016 Presidential Campaign, featuring Kate McKinnon as Democrat Hillary Clinton, and Alec Baldwin as Republican Donald Trump.
The 42nd season premiere of SNL alone—which featured an Election sketch—drew in some 8.3 million viewers.
Speaking at the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, when asked whether he thought the Trump Clinton story was a 'movie in the making', Gordon-Levitt appeared torn.
"Oh sure, I hope so. Actually I hope not. I hope we all just move pass this."
Playing Snowden
Sticking with movies and politics, Gordon-Levitt recently starred in political thriller Snowden, which follows the story of whistle-blower Edward Snowden, who in 2013 exposed illegal surveillance activities carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA).
"Well, playing Edward Snowden is of course controversial. A lot of different people feel a lot of different ways about him and I find that fascinating," he said.
"I understand why people call Edward Snowden a criminal because he broke the law — he took classified information and gave that to journalists. On the other hand, the NSA was also breaking the law, quite a lot, and that law that they were breaking was a very important law in our country — it's the Constitution, it's the Fourth Amendment."
Having portrayed Snowden on screen, Gordon-Levitt said he believed Snowden hoped leaking the information "would have a real impact", adding that in the three years since this, there's been an encouraging change seen in this space on privacy and regulation.
"One of the mass surveillance programs that he disclosed—by handing over the information that he did—was ruled unconstitutional and illegal by a Federal court and for the first time in decades there was a law passed that reformed the intelligence community's surveillance abilities."
"It didn't fix the problem entirely but it took a really important step, and I think as slow as these things tend to move, the fact that we've seen that kind of change is really encouraging."
"Not to mention the change that we've seen coming out of the tech community. Silicon Valley and the entire worldwide tech community I think has really stepped up in the wake of what Snowden did and prioritized like 'okay, let's really make sure that privacy is embedded in the software and the hardware that we use'."
Disclosure: Saturday Night Live is a program aired by NBC. NBC is a division of Comcast, the owner of NBC Universal and CNBC.
