George Clooney

We saw it in Russia.

We now see it in the United States constantly.

And I feel like it was an important time to talk about the necessity to dig down and constantly bear down on holding people with power responsible, no matter who's in power, by the way.

always you know i wrote it so i had to understand as much as i could about um about those same spheres of influence that we're talking about you know there are very few times that someone had the power to actually affect policy someone in news for instance um when walter cronkite stepped out from behind the desk and said this war in vietnam is unwinnable it's a tie at best

That's when President Johnson said, if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the country and decided not to run for reelection.

When Murrow took on McCarthy, that was a moment when he was the most trusted man in America.

And he said the emperor has no clothes.

That actually changed public opinion.

And, you know, playing Murrow, the thing that was exciting to me

was in the play, which it was very different, the play.

It was much more urgent and much more about what we're dealing with today.

And at the very end of the play, as Murrow, I got to stand in front of an audience of 1,600 people every night and look them all, each one in the eye at the end,

and say, what are you prepared to do?

And we would have violent reactions from the audience.

People would be crying and people would be yelling, resist!

And people would be standing up and cheering and screaming.

And it really felt...

like everybody in that room needed a place to wash their hands and face and remind themselves, not by my words but by Murrow's words, of who we are at our best, who we aspire to be, who we often fall short of, but who we also have accomplished.

We have been the people that defeated

fascism and Nazism.