In this episode of The Envelope. Marsden discusses how the cast and crew managed to pull it all off, why the role interested him , and how — despite his very believable performance on ”Jury Duty” — he strives to keep ego from ruining his reputation in real life. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
Yvonne Villarreal: Hello, and welcome to another season of “The Envelope” podcast. We’re back to bring you more engaging and revealing conversations with some of the creative talents behind your favorite shows and movies. I’m one of your hosts, Yvonne Villarreal.
Mark Olsen: And I’m your other host, Mark Olsen. Yvonne, it’s so good to be back with you. I’m really excited for some of the interviews we have coming up. Who did you talk to this week?
Villarreal: Mark, it’s so good to see you too. I wish I could just reach into the screen and give you a hug, but. It’s June, and you know what that means: We’re in the thick of Emmys season. And our next guest starred in one of TV’s most delightful breakouts.
I’m talking about James Marsden. He, of course, has an impressive and varied resume with roles in the “X-Men” franchise, “Hairspray,” “Enchanted,” “Westworld” and “Dead to Me.” I could go on. But he has been getting some of the best reviews of his career for his role in the genre-bending sitcom “Jury Duty.”
So, Mark, I don’t know how familiar you are with the show, but the series revolves around an unsuspecting man, Ronald Gladden, who thinks he signed up to be in a documentary about jury duty. He thinks it’s all real, but it’s actually fake. Everyone besides him is an actor, including James Marsden, who plays a satirical version of himself.
It’s an unusual role for him. This isn’t the James Marsden that you, or specifically me, want to be singing “Bennie and the Jets” with on a bartop. (Shout out to “27 Dresses.”) This James is a bit of an egomaniac in the most hilarious ways, and it’s been such a revelation to see this heightened side of him.
Olsen: Yeah, he really is such a reliable utility actor, and so it’s just great to see him get a moment to shine like this. And it’s somehow even better that it’s in part by making fun of himself and the stereotypes of a Hollywood actor sort of lost in the real world.
Villarreal: Yeah, he had a lot to say about that. So let’s get to the conversation.
Villarreal: Thank you for joining me today. So your most recent show, “Jury Duty,” is part prank show, part mockumentary work sitcom. It’s been described as “The Office” meets “The Truman Show.” Take me back to the beginning. How was this show pitched to you?
James Marsden: So. The beginning was David Bernad, a producer friend of mine who produces “The White Lotus.” We did a couple of projects together. He called me and said, “Hey, I’ve got this interesting concept to pitch you and I think you’d kind of be great for it, and it has to do with a lot of improvisational scenarios.” And I was like, “I love that kind of comedy. I love ‘The Office.’” And he said, “Well, good. Let’s get on a Zoom with Lee and Gene” — Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky.
“What we want to do is we want to do jury duty for three weeks but with you playing a version of yourself, sort of heightened, self-involved version of yourself, and a lot of relatively unknown improv artists on purpose. Because there’s going to be one guy who thinks the whole thing is real and it’s actually fake.”
[Clip from “Jury Duty”: MARSDEN: I didn’t ask your name. Forgive me. GLADDEN: Ronald. MARSDEN: Ronald, it’s a pleasure. GLADDEN: Nice to meet you. Yeah, I was trying to pinpoint it ’cause I was like, “I’ve seen you somewhere.” MARSDEN: Yeah, but I’ve been in so much stuff. It’s like “X-Men” and “Hairspray” and “Enchanted” and “Westworld” and stuff like that. “The Notebook.” GLADDEN: Oh s—, you’re in “Westworld”? MARSDEN: Yeah.]
Villarreal: Was it already set up at Freevee? Did you have any sort of brand awareness for that?
Marsden: Yes it was, and no I didn’t. I knew that early on they were saying, “This is going to be on Amazon’s new platform, its ad-based streaming platform.” I said, “Cool.” And in the way back in my head, I was just thinking, “Who’s going to see this?”
Not because of Freevee. It was just like, what is this show? I can’t think of a comp, really. I mean, I guess “The Truman Show,” like you said, “Truman Show” meets “The Office.” It’s as if the character of Jim in “The Office” was a real person and he thought the whole thing was real the whole time. I’ll make an ass of myself and have fun doing it, but I never want him to be the butt of the joke.
Villarreal: Were there any moments during filming where you thought it might teeter that way?
Marsden: Oh, several. Yeah. No, every day. There was a moment where you think, one, is this a nice thing to do to somebody, and, two, is he going to find out? But once we got to know Ronald, after Day 1 or 2, everyone started to slowly fall in love with the guy and it kept all of our — it kept me in check. There were certain moments I was supposed to push harder on, per the script. And I couldn’t do it because it was —
Villarreal: Does one stand out?
Marsden: Well, yeah. The big one was the birthday party. I’m supposed to go to this birthday party. Well, I don’t know it’s a birthday party. I think it’s a pity party for me having lost this role, ’cause again, this James Marsden assumes that the world revolves around him and every conversation should be about him. So if there’s a party, it’s got to be about him. So it’s scripted that I show up thinking it’s a pity party, and I trash the party, right?
I’m supposed to flip the cake. I’m supposed to pop every balloon and throw cake at people and just have a massive Hollywood meltdown hissy fit. And as soon as I flip the cake, I saw Ronald kind of hang his head a bit and turn away, and I just, it just bothered me that it was bothering him and I just was like, “I’ve got to stop. I can’t continue.”
The big important thing for me was that we sort of protected him. By the end of it we’re singing his praises and celebrating his spirit and his humanity, and I think we’ve managed to pull that off, miraculously.
Villarreal: Well, yeah, because I feel like “Jury Duty” would be a completely different show if Ronald wasn’t such a genuinely kind and caring guy. I think that’s the thing that I liked most about it. There’s this real sense of hope and affection and camaraderie that comes through amidst all the shenanigans. It sort of makes you want to be more conscious about being kind and empathetic toward others out in the world.
Marsden: Well, I feel like we were really smart about making sure that that was the most important thing, right? Throughout the process, it always felt like — the feeling was, it’s either going to be really funny — and maybe skewing a little mean, or not mean, but it’s morally questionable — or it’s really what they say it is, and it’s a hero’s journey, and we’re going to hoist this guy on our shoulders at the end of it and celebrate him, and the comedy’s going to suffer for that.
But somehow we managed to walk and chew gum at the same time there. We managed to kind of pull those off, both of them. And you’re right, it would have been a different show if it wasn’t Ronald. I mean, he’s there without a script, right? So no one knew what he was going to do or say.
There were characters that were constructed to, on purpose, make him feel awkward or maybe a little uncomfortable or challenge his patience a little bit. And he just embraced them with open arms. So we got lucky, I think.
It’s, listen, I’m not going to — there’s a lot of unsung heroes in this process. I mean, the writers for the scripts. Nick Hatton, the boots-on-the-ground producer who was just making sure that everything, all the logistics that were just crazy, what had to have happened, all the hidden cameras and the plotting and the choreography of where we’re all supposed to be, that I didn’t have to worry that much about ’cause I just got to get in the room and be a foolish, entitled celebrity.
It was very well constructed and well crafted, but to a certain point, you kind of gotta cross your fingers and hope that it comes together. And he started to win over hearts, for all of us, throughout the process. It was like, this guy is perfect.
Villarreal: Yeah, because Ronald Gladden started out as this regular guy from San Diego, and he’s sort of become this breakout star.
Marsden: Used to be a regular guy!
Villarreal: Do you feel any sense of protection over him that he doesn’t sort of get swallowed up by the trappings of this newfound notoriety?
Marsden: Yeah I do, I feel responsible as a friend. I feel like he didn’t ask for all of this, so hopefully he’s enjoying it. Two things: One, the most important thing was once the curtain is pulled back and we do the reveal for him at the end, I couldn’t get to him fast enough, and the rest of the cast and the producers as well, to basically go give him a big hug and say, “Hey, listen: Yes, this was a show. This was all fake. But it’s going to be hilarious and you are going to be such a super, you’re going to be — people are just going to love you ’cause you’re such a good human being. But it was all fake. But some of it wasn’t. Like this friendship that we created is not fake. This is real and I want you in my life, and we should be friends.”
And all the rest of the cast echoed the same thing. Because it would’ve felt bad if we would’ve been like, “Hey, that was a fun three weeks.”
Villarreal: “Peace out.”
Marsden: “And yeah, see you later.” So that was important to me. And then beyond that, that I was a presence for him after the fact. After he packs up his bags and goes back to San Diego and, like, what’s life now?
So he would call me a couple times. I called him just checking in on him, and then I was going to, I would, like, hey, I want to be a real supportive presence for him throughout all of this as well.
’Cause the show just is, I’ve never been a part of something that’s exploded as quickly as this show has. Even I’m kind of gobsmacked about the whole thing. I’m staying close to him. But he’s handling it well. He’s really enjoying it all, and I think he’s enjoying the newfound kind of fame, and he’s signed with an agency, I think. But again, we got lucky because he could have responded differently.
Villarreal: I’m curious what that meant for you, because some actors like to put themselves in their characters and others like to hide behind the characters. Here you’re doing a bit of both. The ego of James Marsden on “Jury Duty” is this heightened version of you as a celebrity. You want to be known. You want them to know that you’re about to star in this movie. You want the attention. I’m curious what your approach was in playing yourself in character form and what choices you wanted to make for that.
Marsden: It was really appealing from a comedic perspective to me to really send up and lampoon the cliche, entitled Hollywood celebrity.
[Clip from “Jury Duty”: BAILIFF: Juror No. 54. Juror No. 81. LAWYER: Have you ever served on a jury before? MARSDEN: Yes, ma’am. LAWYER: Was that here in Los Angeles? MARSDEN: No. LAWYER: Where was it? MARSDEN: Cannes. LAWYER: In France? MARSDEN: Yeah, it’s the film festival. LAWYER: I mean a civil or a criminal jury. MARSDEN: Oh, no, no. Sorry. No. LAWYER: OK.]
Marsden: I’m just sort of a dolt, a Hollywood dolt who just doesn’t understand the real-world stuff, right? Like, “I’ve never really had to stand in line at the DMV. What is this jury duty thing?” There was something really liberating about being in kind of like a pressure cooker. It was like a chamber piece. We were like all in a room for five hours with cameras nonstop going.
There was no “Cut. OK, let’s do this again.” It was just, it was reality. It’s always fun to play a character that thinks the world worships them and they think that they’re just the greatest thing since sliced bread, and then watching that person slowly unravel and fall on their face and be humiliated and kind of brought down to earth.
So it was just a fun thing to do to kind of make fun of that classic Hollywood celebrity who’s just proclaiming that he’s so normal. He’s just such a, just a normal —
Villarreal: “I’m one of you,” yeah.
Marsden: And is totally not, right?
Villarreal: I’m sort of curious how — with this idea of celebrity and what it can do to a person — how would you describe your relationship to fame now? Because when you’re starting out in your teens or 20s and you’re getting recognized, I imagine it’s hard not to sort of get swept up in this idealized notion of making it in Hollywood. So has there been a moment where you’ve had to humble yourself early on in your career? Like, “OK, chill out, dude”?
Marsden: I feel like not really. Because I feel like that’s the big trap. As soon as you fall into that trap, you believe your own greatness or hype or that you should have won this award or you should — I just, I almost to a fault err on the other side of it. Like, “You’re just still so damn lucky to be doing this. You’ve been doing this for 30 years.” I grew up in Oklahoma. My job before being paid as an actor was mowing lawns for 20 bucks a lawn. It was like, “You’re not the only pebble on the beach.”
I don’t know, I feel like that’s become as big of an asset as being talented in this business. I never thought that that was going to be something that I got work because of, but I start to feel that now. There’s a hundred people that can be cast in this movie that will be just as good as you if not better, but the producers are going to choose the person that has a good reputation as easy to work with.
Villarreal: Mm-hmm. Well, and you know, as you mentioned the role of the writers, we’re in the midst of a writers strike, and I want to discuss the role they play. As we see in the end, while you do have to be quick on your feet and pivot depending on how Ronald responds to things, so much is planned or at least outlined as much as possible. So what struck you about the sort of work and preparation the writers put into this?
Marsden: Well, I mean, talk about unsung heroes. A lot of people — we’re doing press about this show — say it’s full improv, which is not entirely true. The writers crafted seven scripts of some of the funniest s— I’ve ever read. Once I read the scripts at the beginning, before I even signed on, I was howling with laughter about what was happening in these scripts.
And, again, it’s all screen direction. It’s all circumstantial. So there’s a foundation that the writers created over the course of seven episodes that gave me a sort of a jumping-off point to go and play. It was like a playground for me, right? And nothing was really scripted. There were a couple of moments that were kind of specifically “He says this,” but mostly it was like, “Marsden sneaks off to the bathroom and unloads a giant turd in his bathroom.” So obviously I’m not doing that on the fly.
And it was collaborative. We would meet before the day started and we’d meet again after Ronald went home. Talk about what worked. Talk about ideas for tomorrow. I would go home with a thousand ideas simmering in my head about what we’re doing the next day. And I would jot them down on a notepad, like, “OK, this, if he does this, what would be funny for me to say as jackass James Marsden? If he goes over here, what am I armed with? What could I say that just, again, just pushes the whole petulant Hollywood brat thing even more?”
Villarreal: Is there one you’re particularly proud of that you did?
Marsden: Lines that I created?
Villarreal: Yeah. Or moments.
Marsden: The most terrible ones are kind of my favorite. “Let’s all feel sorry for the guy from ‘The Notebook’ who’s not even the guy from ‘The Notebook’” is one of my favorites. It was just such a fun, liberating — I would imagine it’s what Larry David feels playing in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” right? I kind of, why am I enjoying this so much? You’re given permission to be as wrong as you want to be but then kind of subtly cover it back up with some charm.
I would see — I would do something really unsavory and I would see Ronald move away from me because he didn’t want to be associated with the Hollywood dick. But then once he got, if he got too far away from me, then I would reel him back in with just, hey, be nice. Be nice James Marsden for a bit. So he’s thoroughly confused.
Villarreal: Well, that’s the thing. You weren’t trained in improv, but you’ve done a lot of comedy and have worked opposite improv masters like Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey. So what project from your past work do you think helped prepare you the most in taking this on?
Marsden: I think the two that come to mind are “Anchorman 2” with Will [Ferrell] and Steve [Carell] and Paul [Rudd] and [Adam] McKay and those guys because I got to witness how brilliantly they did their improv as a team. And it was not a fight for the microphone. It wasn’t a fight for the spotlight or the best joke. It was watching them generously set each other up for jokes. It was a real learning experience for me.
And then, two, Liz Feldman on “Dead to Me.” I mean, really tight, beautifully written scripts. But once we would get everything as written, Liz would give us a little bit of latitude to mess around and kind of see what else we think would be funny. Just kind of going rogue.
Villarreal: The world of sketch comedy and improv is an area you had interest in early on in your pursuit of a career in entertainment. You discovered Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy at an early age, and I didn’t know until recently that you auditioned for “Saturday Night Live” before. Tell me what you remember about that experience. I think you were really young, but I don’t know. Fill me in.
Marsden: I was like a freshman or junior in high school. It feels like — now, looking back, it feels like, was that a dream? Or did that really happen? I think we got word in our drama class in high school that they were holding auditions downtown, Oklahoma City, to just find — it was like a nationwide search for the next comedy cast of “SNL.” And I went with my friend Brian Long, who I used to do a lot of comedy bits with in high school together, and we went and auditioned together. We just kind of sat there and did impressions and I guess you could call it an audition.
Villarreal: I would imagine coming from Oklahoma, Hollywood probably seems incredibly out of reach. And I know you first appeared on TV at 16 after being recruited by a local news station and you were a student anchor. I have to tell you, James, I watched the video of you in action and I just kept wondering what could have been. Because you did pursue a degree in broadcast journalism before dropping out to move to Hollywood. So what happened? Was there a moment that stands out as a turning point of, “Maybe I’m not going to be this news anchor after all. I need to go to Hollywood”?
Marsden: To be completely honest with you, that was never in the cards for me. That was never an aim. It was never a goal for me to go be a news anchor. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. It was just a sort of a safety valve. Like, “If I don’t move to Hollywood or if I don’t make it as an actor, I could maybe come back and get a degree in that, and I could be, ‘We got a cold front coming in here from the, uh, we get the northwestern winds meeting the Gulf warm air, creating some turbulence.’ You know, I could do that.”
Villarreal: I was thinking more, you could have been an Anderson Cooper, but that works too.
Marsden: Well, I like to set the bar really low first.
Villarreal: When you did make the move out here, was it a shock to the system coming from Oklahoma?
Marsden: It was a shock in the best way. And a lot of people I tell my story to, they say, “Well, that must have been scary for you to leave.” And I was like, “Really? No, it was quite the opposite. I couldn’t get here fast enough.”
That’s not a slam on Oklahoma at all. I love where I grew up and my family and friends. But I was hungry and curious about this world and what my potential place could be in Hollywood, working as an actor. Is that something that I can even achieve? And more importantly than that, is that something that I could sustain?
But when I hit the ground running here, I mean, I shot out of a cannon. I was so eager and so excited to be in L.A. and I had this youthful kind of cockiness about me, to be honest. And it worked. And casting directors were kind of like, “Who is this kid? Yeah?” And I was like, “I’m, uh —”
Villarreal: “I’m James Marsden.”
Marsden: “I’m James Marsden.” At the time, I think I was Jimmy Marsden, and I changed that later because that sounded too teenyboppy.
Villarreal: Where did you set up? Where did you end up living when you first came out here? Did you have roommates? Tell me what rent was like back then, James.
Marsden: Oh, yeah. I lived in — which is a prerequisite to anybody moving to Hollywood — the Oakwood Apartments on Barham Boulevard. Which is, for the people who don’t know what this is, it’s a massive, massive apartment complex that all do month to month, so you can rent month to month. And they have a whole community center and I got this little studio apartment there with a Murphy bed that folds out, and I think it was like $550.
Villarreal: What stands out about some of those early years? Because I would imagine Hollywood in the ’90s seems like such a specific kind of experience. How do you look back on that era of your life?
Marsden: That seemed like the era of guest spots. It was like, here I am on “Blossom.”
Villarreal: “Party of Five.”
Marsden: “Party of Five,” “Saved by the Bell,” you know, all of those. I look at the ’90s as a time of, there was a little bit of snobbery about, “Are you in the TV world or are you in the film world?” And I never subscribed to that.
I was always like, “Well, it’s an interesting role or it’s not. And it’s really well-written material or it’s not.” In the ’90s, it was like, if you’re in movies, that’s usually a longer career. It’s a more respected career. But I used some really great television roles at the time as stepping stones to getting some really more interesting film work.
Villarreal: Was there ever a fork in the road where you imagine your career could have gone down a different route?
Marsden: Yeah, very early on. In fact, about three months into moving to L.A. I was offered to screen test for “Days of Our Lives.”
Villarreal: Oh, wow.
Marsden: I remember this casting director going, after I read for her, she goes, “Want to be on a soap opera?” And I said, “Sure.”
I didn’t know anything about how it all worked. I was just thinking, “I’m going to be paid as an actor.” And, again, I’d been there for two, two or three months in L.A. And my manager at the time was like, “No.” And I’m like, “Why?” He’s like, “Because it’s a three- or four-year contract. You’re stuck there. It’s hard to get out of it.”
There were reasons that I don’t know that I fully agreed with at the time why he was saying pass on it. Oftentimes I think, “Boy, if I’d have taken that role.” And the gentleman who, the actor who took that role has been on it for decades or something.
Villarreal: Wow.
Marsden: So I was like, “Wow, that could — I guess that could have been me.”
Villarreal: Well, to that point, a story that I love is that after you expressed hesitation when Steven Soderbergh offered you a part in “Magic Mike,” Channing Tatum sent you an email to say he loved you in “Enchanted.” Is that the ultimate compliment to know that a performance like that doesn’t cloud how people can see you for another?
Marsden: How a performance like in “Enchanted” can —?
Villarreal: Yeah.
Marsden: Yeah, in fact … it can only help.
Villarreal: Yeah.
Marsden: My reservations with “Magic Mike” were — the role was never really that big. And not that it needed to be, but this movie specifically, you’re dancing around in a G-string through the whole thing. And all I could think was, “Well, if they decide that the movie’s too long, whose part is going to get cut first?” And I was like, “Probably this guy. Probably the guy who doesn’t have much to say.” And then I’m thinking, “Well, then I would just be an extra, a background player who’s running around in a G-string.”
Villarreal: Right.
Marsden: I know that’s a very defeatist way of looking at it, because it is Channing and Steven Soderbergh. I don’t know, I was really nervous about just ending up on the editing-room floor. So if I were to go back, I probably would’ve done it knowing that. Because Channing was like, “No, no, it’s not just what’s in the script. We’re going to get in there and we’re going to play with it. We’re going to improv. We’re going to make stuff up on the day.” And I’m like, “Yeah, but I also come from the school of thought which is like: See it on the page first. You don’t trust the promises of that.” But I was wrong. Boy, turned out to be a massive success.
Villarreal: Well, you touched on this earlier, the sort of view or frame of mind when it came to TV and film back in the ’90s.What I find so interesting about your journey as an actor is the way you have moved between both worlds with such ease. You could be in a superhero franchise like “X-Men” or a love interest in “The Notebook” or “27 Dresses” and then you’re on “30 Rock” or “Mrs. America.” Did you ever feel pressure by your agents or managers or your peers to commit fully to one path?
Marsden: Not really. I mean, the industry on its own wants to put you in a bit of a box. And that’s not me complaining. It’s really not. Because nobody wants to hear an actor complain about how hard it is to be an actor in Hollywood. But, yeah, I think they want to classify you. Like, “OK, he’s the guy with the blue eyes and cheekbones and we’re going to only have him do this.”
Villarreal: Right.
Marsden: And I resisted that. “X-Men” was a great, big, huge project for me because it put me on the map globally and I’m really grateful to be a part of those movies and fulfill a childhood fantasy and be in a gigantic movie for the time. But I also know that that just scratched the surfaces of my talents. I didn’t really get to do much in those movies. And again, that’s not me — I’m not complaining about that at all. It’s just ironic that that’s the thing that you’re most known for at the time. It wasn’t a representation, a true representation, of what my abilities were.
So once I got that movie and it gave me notoriety and people knew who I was and other opportunities opened up, I made a conscious decision to seek out roles in different types of genres. Musicals, you know, “Enchanted,” “Hairspray,” those kinds of things, to show you in a different light. Or even comedies, you know?
I think my strengths are jumping around. And moving from a drama genre to a comedy genre to a musical genre to a superhero genre to a romantic thing — that’s where I feel I’d be better, is if I treat myself as more of a Swiss Army knife.
Villarreal: Yeah, I would imagine moving between both mediums has maybe helped you navigate the shifts happening in Hollywood now.
Marsden: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, you talk about adaptability. You want to feel like you can exist in any genre or any world.
Villarreal: Well, before we wrap things up, James, can you take a guess: Which is my favorite James Marsden role? Let’s see how obvious I am.
Marsden: Your favorite James Marsden movie is going to be “27 Dresses” or “The Notebook.”
Villarreal: “27 Dresses.”
Marsden: Ah!
Villarreal: “27 Dresses.”
Marsden: I should have stopped right there.
Villarreal: Perfect movie. Still want a sequel. If you’ll ever do it, please. Indulge me.
Marsden: Well, that sounds like it would be a lot of fun… Twenty-seven kids.
Villarreal: We can get Ronald in there somehow.
Marsden: Yeah! Ronald in there. He’s a new reporter at the wedding section of the newspaper. Yeah.
Villarreal: I love that. Well, James, it was such a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks so much for taking the time.
Marsden: Same. I really appreciate you taking the time. It was nice to chat with you.