The creative minds behind The Office set their new docu-style comedy in the courtroom. Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty, which just released a trailer, focuses on 12 jurors…but only one doesn’t realize he’s not sitting on a real jury.
“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 (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm). “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.”
The Office‘s Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky created the series and serve as executive producers. David Bernad (The White Lotus), Ruben Fleischer (Superstore), Nicholas Hatton (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Cody Heller (Dummy), Jake Szymanski (The Package), and Andrew Weinberg (Great Minds with Dan Harmon) also executive produce, with Heller guiding the series as showrunner and Szymanski directing.
Ronald Gladden, a solar contractor from San Diego, is the one juror kept in the dark about the fact he’s the star of a comedy series and not actually serving jury duty.
Gladden’s surrounded by actors including Alan Barinholtz, Susan Berger (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Cassandra Blair (Hacks), David Brown, Kirk Fox (Reservation Dogs), Ross Kimball, Pramode Kumar, Trisha LaFache, Mekki Leeper (The Sex Lives of College Girls), and Brandon Loeser. The ensemble also includes Edy Modica (Made for Love), Rashida “Sheedz” Olayiwola (South Side), Kerry O’Neill (Murderville), Whitney Rice, Maria Russell, Ishmel Sahid, Ben Seaward, Ron Song, and Evan Williams.
James Marsden also stars as an alternate version of himself.
“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,” said James Marsden, “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 will premiere on April 7, 2023 with the release of the first four episodes. Episodes five and six arrive on April 14, followed by the final two episodes on April 21.
“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.”
The Jury Duty Plot, Courtesy of Amazon Amazon Freevee:
Jury Duty chronicles the inner workings of an American jury trial through the eyes of one particular juror, Ronald Gladden. 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.
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