Freevee
It only takes a minute of watching Jury Duty to arrive at the question: “How the hell did they pull this stunt off?”
The answer is short—it wasn’t easy—which is to say the answer is actually quite long and complicated. The Freevee series sees everyman Ronald Gladden dropped into an outrageous comedy: He’s summoned for jury duty, but everyone else around him is an actor and the case is fake. James Marsden appears as himself, a stuck-up Hollywood actor with better places (like an audition for a splashy new western) to be. The mockumentary is in the vein of Borat or The Rehearsal, but with a nicer twist: Ronald is never being pranked, he’s simply reacting to foolish behavior.
This has paid off for Jury Duty, which has seen an influx of fans on TikTok sharing adorable videos of Ronald showing his jury mate A Bug’s Life or throwing one of them a birthday party. Executive producers David Bernad (The White Lotus) and Lee Eisenberg (The Office), who also created the show with Gene Stupnitsky, orchestrated heartwarming sitcom conventions (like a will-they-won’t-they, or the “tired employee”) throughout the production to see if Ronald would move the story along.