All rise. Amazon Freevee has announced a new docu-style comedy series, Jury Duty, premiering April 7. 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.
Produced by Amazon Studios, this genre-bending, multi-camera comedy consists of eight episodes, with the first four episodes premiering on April 7. Two new episodes will then be released each Friday until the finale debuts on April 21. The series will premiere exclusively on Amazon Freevee in the U.S., UK, and Germany. The series will also be available on the same day on Prime Video in Australia and New Zealand.
The series is executive produced by David Bernad (The White Lotus, Bad Trip), Lee Eisenberg (WeCrashed, The Office), Ruben Fleischer (Superstore), Nicholas Hatton (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Who Is America?), Cody Heller (Dummy), Todd Schulman (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Brüno, Who Is America?), Gene Stupnitsky (Hello Ladies, The Office), Jake Szymanski (The Package), and Andrew Weinberg (Great Minds with Dan Harmon). Eisenberg and Stupnitsky co-created the series, Heller serves as showrunner, and Szymanski directs.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
Gladden, a solar contractor from San Diego, CA, is the hero of our story, and is completely unaware this is not an official jury duty summons. Marsden stars as an alternate version of himself alongside an ensemble cast of comedic actors: Alan Barinholtz, 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.
