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The Best TV of 2023… So Far
In Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty, a comedic gem from The Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, James Marsden is once again perfectly cast.
Marsden has dazzled as “the other guy” in The Notebook, Cyclops in X-Men, a prince in Enchanted, a set of twins with a whole lot of baggage in Dead To Me, and more. But his latest role on Jury Duty — which I argue is one of his greatest — challenged him to play a parodied version of himself in a courtroom full of actors who banded together to fool one unsuspecting man: Ronald Gladden.
Gladden, a 29-year-old solar panel contractor at the time of filming, was selected from more than 2,500 people who applied to partake in a documentary-style project about jury duty. What he didn’t know when showing up for jury duty, was that the case was fake; his fellow jurors, the defendant, the plaintiff, the bailiff, and the judge were all actors; and the details of the 17-day trial he experienced were all carefully curated.
Among Jury Duty‘s 12 jurors (11 of whom are actors) is Marsden. The 49-year-old infuses the show with star power, and though he doesn’t assume a new identity, he plays what we can only assume to be a far more arrogant, tone-deaf, privileged, hilariously unfiltered version of himself. The experimental comedy’s entire cast — from Judge Rosen (Alan Barinholtz) and a brilliant Lisa Gilroy cameo to jurors played by Edy Modica, Mekki Leeper, David Brown, and Maria Russell — is spectacular. But the majority of actors on the show had the luxury of playing fictional characters, while Marsden was not only tasked with reinventing himself, but acting within that role to practice lines for an audition. His layers!
Through eight episodes so entertaining and unpredictable you won’t want to look away, Marsden reminds viewers why he was the perfect person for this unique job. From the moment he arrives incognito (rocking a Kendall Roy black baseball cap) and starts humble bragging about everything from his roles on Sonic the Hedgehog and Ally McBeal Season 5 to the big director meeting he has later that night, Marsden makes genius use of his comedic talents. Subtle physical humor — such as telling glances, eyebrow raises, facial expressions, and sign flipping — captured in skilled camerawork and spy shots carry just as much weight as scripted jokes like when saying he served on the Cannes jury, calling the paparazzi on himself, or explaining he feels “marginalized” as an alternate juror before asking Lonnie (Ishmel Sahid), a Black man, if being an alt is the only time he’s ever felt “less than.”
Whether Marsden is trying to prove he’s capable of playing “an everyman” by pulling a Michael Scott and illegally trying to drive a forklift or interrupting jury deliberation by firing up his Nutribullet, he never misses an opportunity to steal a scene. In Episode 5, his best by far, Marsden alternates between a profoundly funny line reading session with Ronald and repeatedly denying he took a massive toilet-clogging dump. And the SOAKING. Don’t even get me started on the soaking. If that performance isn’t masterful enough, he’s sure to inspire a guttural giggle fest when whining about losing a role to — wait for it — CHRIS PINE!
Once the jig is up in Jury Duty‘s finale, Marsden tells cameras, “It was a journey for us as much as it was for [Ronald] and every day was different. You couldn’t anticipate how he was going to react. There is a high wire element to this, you know? You’re flying without a net.” In order to effectively pull of a feat such as this, Jury Duty needed a widely recognized actor who was adept at comedy, improv, and unafraid to poke fun at himself. But the show also required a kind, non-threatening star; someone who cared about the wellbeing of the lead as much as the people behind the camera did and wasn’t afraid to form a genuine connection.
“To me, what was important was when you’re messing with somebody — their human experience — for three weeks of their life that’s keeping somebody in the dark for a really long time,” Marsden said in an interview. “So it was important for me, and I stressed this every day with the producers, I was like, listen….we can’t finish this and then go, ‘Hey! Nice to meet ya. See ya!’ Because he’s forged a lot of friendships and so we need to make sure that that is real. That’s not going away. And we still keep in touch. We went for a beer last week. He hangs out with the rest of the cast still. It’s like yes this was all fake, but our friendships and all our times we had together was very much us.”
Gladden, who’s a huge fan of Marsden in real life, told GQ he was “so relieved” when he realized he wasn’t actually an asshole, saying, “Towards the end when I really did truly believe that’s who James was, I was heartbroken. Then after, when I realized that that’s not who he was, I was just so relieved.”
Marsden gave us all a good scare, but in the end, Jury Duty proved he’s such a capable actor that he can make even his biggest fans simultaneously laugh and nervously question his character.
Jury Duty is now streaming on Amazon Freevee.
