Amazon Freevee is making Jury Duty funny with the help of some dedicated actors including the much-loved James Marsden.
The actor known for roles in shows such as Westworld and Dead to Me isn’t playing any special character though, instead, he’s playing a heightened version of himself for a social experiment of sorts.
Jury Duty is a hidden camera comedy featuring one unsuspecting member of the public (an eager and admirable young man named Ronald) who thinks he is serving on a real-life jury in an actual trial, not realizing it is a totally fake situation and everyone else is an actor.
So, how did Marsden, an actor who has appeared in several blockbusters, end up in this candid camera situation? “I was approached by a producer friend of mine, David Bernad, who produces The White Lotus, and we’d done a couple of projects before and had similar comedy sensibilities,” the actor explains to TV Insider.
(Credit: Amazon Freevee)
“He knows how much I love improvisational work, like all the Chris Guest comedies and he said, ‘I have something I wanna bring to you.’” Marsden also credits The Office producers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky and Borat producer Nick Hatton for helping sell him the concept that he says was described as an “interesting highwire act of a show which sounds like a prank show, but is not, with the backdrop of jury duty.”
While some of the other jury members may be recognizable to TV fans like The Sex Lives of College Girls‘ Mekki Leeper and Reservation Dogs‘ Kirk Fox, fret not, because Ronald isn’t recognizing anyone as he barely even recognizes Marsden at first upon entering the courthouse to report for duty. Even then, Ronald is made to believe that Marsden is simply an actor who has been called up to serve on a jury in real life.
Overall, Marsden notes that the experience was pitched as a three-to-four-week jury duty run where he and the other participants would get to flex their improv skills. “My mind started to get excited about making fun of and satirizing the world of celebrity through my performance,” Marsden shares. Along with the live theater element of the series, Marsden reveals there were “scripted circumstances and comedic moments that we push as actors.”
But it was important to Marsden that the scenario never felt like a mean-spirited joke. “I don’t wanna be a part of a prank show where I’m making fun of somebody,” he says. Marsden explains that the creatives behind the project agreed and told him, “We want to create what they call a hero’s journey for this guy and surround him with a bunch of weirdos. Hopefully, if he’s the right guy, by the end of it he will have unified all of us and kind of brought us together.”
The question is, does Ronald fulfill that hero’s journey? Only tuning into the fun program will reveal the truth. Check out Marsden and his fellow improv actors as they take on a mighty challenge in Jury Duty.
Jury Duty, Streaming Now, Amazon Freevee