James Marsden had a blast playing a douchey version of himself on ‘Jury Duty’: ‘I did that with glee’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
James Marsden got the role of a lifetime on Amazon Freevee’s “Jury Duty”: James Marsden. No, he doesn’t play himself, but a narcissistic douchebag version who presents himself as a man of the people but also can’t help reminding everyone that he’s very famous. “The version of James Marsden that I play in the show is quite different than who I am day to day, so I was able to put on an imaginary costume, if you will, and be somebody else. It was definitely the more self-involved, Hollywood, entitled celebrity version of myself. In that regard, it was a lot more fun and it was easier,” Marsden tells Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above). “There was an opportunity there to send up the cliché, Hollywood, entitled celebrity, and I did that with glee on this one.”
A scripted reality hybrid, the series follows Ronald Gladden, who believes he’s participating in a documentary about jury duty, unaware that everything is fake. Everything in his life for three weeks was scripted and orchestrated, but it was important to Marsden, who’s an alternate juror on the show, and everyone involved that it never felt like they were pranking Ronald or embarrassing him. The goal of the show was to create a hero’s journey and Gladden was identified as “hero” in the scripts and call sheets. “I didn’t wanna do a prank show. I don’t think it’s fair,” Marsden says. “It’s an uneven playing field to have someone in the dark, especially for three weeks of his life, so I’m not ever going to do anything that would humiliate him or make him feel bad or have him be the butt of the joke. I’ll be an ass and dance around like an idiot, and he can react how he wants.”
Adapting to Ronald’s reactions was one of the high-wire elements the cast and crew dealt with daily. On one hand, he seemed too good to be true because he’d be ahead of story points and proved to just be a good guy. “His attitude and his kindness and his pure-heartedness kind of shone through the whole thing, and we genuinely were like, ‘This guy is perfect for this,'” Marsden notes. But no one could predict how he’d respond to the wacky stuff they threw at him. The scripts did not include dialogue and “it was 80, 90 percent improv,” Marsden estimates, so everyone had to be prepared with contingency plans and zag with Ronald even if the story called for them to zig.
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After Ronald was sequestered at the end of each day, the group would reconvene and prep for the next day. If there was a beat they didn’t hit that day, they would try to work it in the following day. The pressure on the actors, however, is that they only have one chance to ace it or the whole charade could come crumbling down. “When you do have that moment to hit that beat, you better nail it,” Marsden states. “That part of your brain is just constantly going, ‘How do I be the one that doesn’t screw this whole thing up?’ That just made everyone on point.”
The actor points out the irony of the fictional James Marsden dabbling in method acting for the first time “to a really mediocre degree” because “this process was the most method I had to be in some way,” having to stay in character all day in the faux reality they’ve created for Ronald. On the show, James is up for the part of Caleb in a self-serious, pretentious film called “Lone Pine,” which he believes is his “Oscar shot.” In the fifth episode, he has Ronald run lines with him before getting the devastating news in the next episode that he lost the role to Chris Pine, much to his chagrin. Marsden, who’s “dying” to make “Lone Pine” a reality and has a two-point pitch, improvised that line, and yes, Pine is aware of the name-drop.
“I’ve run into him a few times. He’s like, ‘I hear I make a little appearance in your show.’ I was like, ‘You do, you do.’ And he’s like, ‘I gotta check this out,'” Marsden shares. “Chris Pine is Chris Pine now. When we were, like, 10, 15 years ago, we were going up for the same roles. I was getting something that he wanted or he was getting something that I wanted, so I just tapped back into that reality that was a real thing. … And this character I play on the show is so used to hearing, ‘It went to Chris blah blah. It went to Chris Evans, it went to Chris Pratt, it went to, you know, Chris Hemsworth.'”
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