If you’ve seen the Snowden trailer, you’ve undoubtedly been struck by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s impression of Edward Snowden’s voice, a deep, rich imitation that occasionally hits a note that makes you want to go ahead and put the lotion in the basket. In a new video with Vanity Fair, Gordon-Levitt discusses the process he used to create his vocal mimicry, which Snowden himself politely praised at Comic-Con. “I found everything I could find on YouTube,” Gordon-Levitt explains. “I ripped the audio off of the documentary Citizenfour and just put it on my headphones on repeat.” After taking in as much aural information as he could, Joseph Gordon-Levitt ostensibly imagined what it would be like to be Edward Snowden, and then he pretended, and acted in that way, on the day.