Jury Duty Trailer Summons James Marsden for Fake Case Comedy Series
Amazon Freevee has served the first trailer for Jury Duty. A docu-style comedy from the producers of The Office, Bad Trip, and The White Lotus, the new series premieres with its first four of eight episodes April 7th on Amazon's free ad-supported streaming service. A genre-bending, multi-camera courtroom comedy, Jury Duty chronicles the inner workings of an American jury trial through the eyes of one particular juror, Ronald Gladden: a solar contractor from San Diego, California. What Gladden doesn't know is that the entire case is fake, everyone except him is an actor, including James Marsden, and everything that happens — inside the courtroom and out — is carefully planned.
"Jury Duty originated with a question: Was it possible to make a sitcom like The Office about a trial, populate it with brilliant comedic performers, and put a real person at the center of the show who doesn't realize he's surrounded by actors?" said executive producer Todd Schulman. "We honestly had no idea but when we pitched it to Freevee we pretended like it was a sure thing. Thank God we pulled it off."
Co-created by executive producers Lee Eisenberg (WeCrashed, The Office) and Gene Stupnitsky (Hello Ladies, The Office), Jury Duty puts a Truman Show twist on the docu-style comedy. Schulman (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Brüno, Who Is America?), Ruben Fleischer (Superstore), Cody Heller (Dummy), Nicholas Hatton (Borat 2), Jake Szymanski (The Package), and Andrew Weinberg (Great Minds with Dan Harmon) also serve as executive producers on the series showran by Heller and directed by Szymanski.
"There are no guarantees but there's ambition, creativity, pure comedy, and the desire to do something different but with great care. That's what drew us to this wildly inventive idea from this incredible group of producers," said Lauren Anderson, head of AVOD Original Content and Unscripted Programming, Amazon Studios. "How does one respond when the most outlandish moments happen in something as seemingly mundane as jury duty? We hope audiences are pleasantly surprised by what they see and delighted by what the show says about humanity."
Added Marsden: "What interested me was the challenge of creating a hero's journey for someone who has no idea the world around him was completely manufactured, and whether or not this high wire act could lead him to unite this family of wonderful weirdos and in the process become an inspiring leader for us all under the process of serving Jury Duty."
Jury Duty stars Marsden (X-Men, Sonic the Hedgehog) as an alternate version of himself alongside an ensemble cast of comedic actors that includes Alan Barinholtz (History of the World: Part II), Susan Berger (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Cassandra Blair (Hacks), David Brown, Kirk Fox (Reservation Dogs), Ross Kimball, Pramode Kumar, Trisha LaFache (Westworld), Mekki Leeper (The Sex Lives of College Girls), Brandon Loeser, Edy Modica (Made for Love), Rashida "Sheedz" Olayiwola (South Side), Kerry O'Neill (Murderville), Whitney Rice (Suits), Maria Russell, Ishmel Sahid, Ben Seaward, Ron Song, and Evan Williams.
The first four episodes of Jury Duty drop Friday, April 7th, on Amazon's Freevee, with two new episodes releasing Fridays until the April 21st finale. Jury Duty is free to stream on Amazon Freevee in the US, UK, and Germany, and will stream on Prime Video in Australia and New Zealand.