If you didn’t groan loudly when you got a jury duty summons, you’ve undoubtedly heard the whispers from someone else. The perfect setting for a sitcom, isn’t it? Well, just imagine that the eclectic assortment of personalities you’d find while serving as a juror were cast with unknown improv actors to try a fake case – and you were the only one who wasn’t in on the joke. . That’s exactly what Amazon Freevee has done with their new show called “Jury Duty”. And, according to executive producers Nicholas Hatton and Cody Heller, it was quite a complicated undertaking.
The concept was an amalgamation of ideas from writer/producers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, who wrote a script about jury duty in the style of their previous hit “The Office”, with longtime Sasha Baron Cohen collaborator Todd Shulman and producer David Barnard was involved. , who collectively came up with the idea, What if Jury Duty were a real person at the center of the show?
“Essentially, what if Jim from ‘The Office’ was a real man who just thought he was participating in a documentary about being in a workplace and then found out at the end of it, ‘Wait, I was kind of a star, “Junkie Duty” executive producer Cody Heller told TheWrap, “the protagonist of the sitcom that happened to be all around me.” “So the idea was, without realizing you’re the star or an actor yourself. Can make a sitcom without being?”
Executive producer Nicholas Hatton said, “Why don’t we combine [ideas] And it ended up being a real master stroke because putting them in that environment, which is something that you have to take very seriously, and doing your civic duties and not getting out of line and being unruly or what have you Is . Then they throw all these crazy things at this poor fellow and see how he reacts to them. It is the perfect environment to test this thesis. And it worked really well.
The first challenge was to secure the cast, the most important of which was the only non-actor. “We needed to find that person, and the process was really quite extraordinary,” Hatton said. “We had about 4,000 tapes sent in, apparently by people who were under the impression they were told they were on a documentary-style television show. We really wanted our protagonist to be someone who Be someone that people can appreciate and respect and admire.
And then he found Ronald Gladden. Hatton said, “We were struck by Ronald’s apparent sense of goodness and decency.” “He blew us away because there were so many moments where, you know, we would have stuff planned and he would impress us, first of all, he, he really took his job very seriously as a person. And , And he really cared. And he was a really good citizen. And in many ways, Ronald restored my faith in humanity.
To make the scenario even funnier, the producers needed a name, a recognizable actor with a comedic flair and a gift for adlibs.
Heller said, “We wanted someone who was famous enough that Ronald would hopefully recognize him, and James Marsden was one of the first people to come.” “And as soon as his name came up, we were all like, ‘Oh my God. That would be great. Will he do it though?’ It’s like asking a famous movie star to sit in a courtroom for sometimes eight hours a day like nothing is happening, pretend it’s just real life.
Heller and all the other producers couldn’t be happier with that choice. “His improv skills, I mean, he blew me away. I was in shock at how funny he was. I was cracking up nonstop,” she said. “And his willingness to make fun of himself and to be the clown for this really crazy experience that we were creating was not conventional in any way, shape or form.”
Then came filling in the roles of jurors, judge, lawyers and many others with improvisational actors. “There was a lot of work going on trying to accomplish this mammoth effort,” Heller said. “My goal, basically, was to have as many people in the writers’ room as possible who were also actors and improvisers and, hopefully, some legal people.” mission accomplished.
But the real trick was to keep everything real enough where Gladden didn’t get suspicious and think he was on a hidden camera show. And there was the very real “terrible” possibility that he would find out. “There’s no way to guarantee it because, what happens if the guy finds out in a few days and you’re blown?” Heller asked. “This man is not a mark, he is not a target. He is our hero. We want to send him on a hero’s journey where we surround him with eccentric people, but hopefully he builds a little family, which makes me Looks like he really did.
The scripts were “kind of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ in style,” meaning that each episode was a seven to eight page long outline that stated what was to happen, along with examples of dialogue. But nothing was firmly written. Everyone’s improv skills were used. And if something spontaneous happened one day, the next day’s outline would be toned down to include something less crazy.
The abundance of footage was shot as the camera would be running nonstop for the length of the mock test. Heller said, “What you see in the show is one-tenth of the footage we shot.” “We would shoot boring stuff every day for hours on the court where nothing happens.”
‘Jury Duty’ is currently streaming on Amazon FreeVee.
