Forget Mary. There's Something About Ronald Gladden.
Forget Mary. There's Something About Ronald Gladden.
The man at the center of JURY DUTY is America's new greatest hero.
Good people still exist — a lesson I learned after working my way through all 8 episodes of Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty, a hero’s journey told through the container of a mockumentary. Ronald Gladden, our protagonist, is unaware that his jury duty summons is, in fact, not real, and everything he’s experienced in and out of the courtroom is an intricately constructed ruse.
“We’re all actors!” Gladden is told in Episode 8 by who he moments earlier thought was a judge, but who, in actuality, was an attorney trying his hand at acting for the first time. “It was all fake,” the “judge” concedes. “Except for one important element… you.”
Trust fall. High-wire act. Leap of faith. Lightning in a bottle. These are all terms that the various cast and crew members I spoke with used when describing what was both a high-stakes experiment and a television series. “On a regular show or movie you have your start day, your wrap day, your wrap party and then you go home; it’s in the rearview mirror and it’s onto the next job,” explains James Marsden, one of the stars of the show. “This one lingered a bit. ‘What did we just do to someone?’”
Co-creators Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (The Office) teamed up with Todd Schulman (Borat) and David Bernad (The White Lotus) to create a show with optimism and warmth; one that never punched down. It’s a lofty goal, especially when the central figure is entirely in the dark. As such, they needed someone who both the cast and the audience would deem deserving of being celebrated. And so they went about searching for their version of Matt Kennedy Gould, the lovable protagonist on the first season of The Joe Schmo Show. “No one’s ever done this, so we didn’t really know if it was going to work,” Cody Heller, the showrunner of the series, told me about the days leading up to filming. “But we’re gonna try.”
This is the inconceivable story of Ronald Gladden's meteoric rise to heroism. “Yes, we did deceive him, but it’s kinda like when you throw someone a surprise party,” Heller explains. “Yeah, you have to lie to your partner or your best friend to deceive them for a couple of weeks, but it’s ultimately in order to celebrate them.” That lie included 12 “witnesses”, 28 pieces of “evidence”, and over 30 hours of fake in-court testimony.
It all hinged on Ronald Gladden, a then 30-year-old out of work solar contractor who answered a Craigslist ad. “I thought this was going to be a serious, professional, educational documentary,” Gladden says of why he initially agreed to be a part of a show that turned out much different than what he signed on for. “Essentially, I just wanted an experience I had never had before. Plus, I had never sat on a jury, so it was like I could just kill two birds with one stone. They were going to pay me for my time, plus, I could continue to job search. Well, [laughs] I thought I could continue to job search in my free time.”
Gladden was selected over 2,499 other applicants. But had it been a pool of a million, they still might not have found as perfect a fit as Ronald Gladden, a man being hailed as “America’s greatest hero”. A writers’ room that spent 10+ weeks mapping out all of the possible variants of where this could lead could all be for not if the audience wasn’t invested in Ronald — or worse, if Ronald wasn’t invested in the show. “If it was the wrong guy, it could have fuckin’ sucked,” Heller explains. “It could have been mean. It could have been not fun to watch. No one could have predicted how perfect he was. He was so open to having an experience. And had we not found him, all that work could have been for not.”
Finding a hero who fulfilled the brief so perfectly meant even the actors were disarmed by his charm. It’s evidenced in so many moments on-screen, but here’s one that isn’t shown: In Episode 3, Noah (played by Mekki Leeper) shares with the group that his girlfriend has gone on vacation with a group of her friends — Brenna, Francisca and most importantly, Cody. “Is Cody a girl?” Jeannie (played by Edy Modica) asks, planting the seed that Noah’s girlfriend is cheating on him. Later, Noah brings it up before the group, asking if Cody is a girl’s name. “Cody can be boy or girl,” “I have a nephew named Cody,” “It’s a girl,” come the responses. Ronald remains silent. “In real life, Ronald’s very best guy friend’s name is Cody, and he chose not to bring it up to Noah because he did not want to make him worry that his girlfriend was cheating on him,” Heller reveals.
In many ways, Heller elaborates, this cemented Ronald as the type of guy who typically wouldn’t be cast on a reality show: someone who avoids gossip and drama, never back-stabbing. “To be honest, a lot of scenes might have been funnier if he had been more of an asshole,” says Executive Producer Andrew Weinberg. “But Ronald's goodness made the show so much more than just funny. I actually told Ronald that I've seen pretty much every minute of footage he appears in, and we couldn't make the a-hole version of this show if we wanted to. There's just nothing.”
Knowing details like that, it’s easy to understand how the cast and creatives fell in love with their hero. “We’re good actors, [but] we’re not that good,” Cassandra Blair (Vanessa) tells Gladden in the finale, indicating something that is so clear from body language, smiles and laughter alone. “Ninety percent of what you saw is really a part of us,” Blair continues. “Yeah, here’s the deal,” Susan Berger (Barbara) adds. “We all fell in love with you.” As I wrote in my Instagram post exalting Gladden: Beyond its rightful place as one of the best television shows of the year, this show and its star restored a faith in humanity that I didn't even realize was in decay.
How were they able to keep the ruse going for nearly three weeks undetected? “There were so many steps taken to make sure that all of these things felt real and that we made deposits into the reality bank, which would be, for instance, five hours of literally nothing interesting happening and just court stuff so that then we could do something funny the next day,” Heller recounts. And though there were a few slip-ups, it was never enough to make Gladden truly suspicious. That didn’t stop the writers and actors from taking big swings within what was already a huge swing.
In Episode 3, we are introduced to Todd’s (David Brown) chair pants (or as he calls them: “chants”), two crutches that he attached to knee pads and affixed to his backside. In Episode 5, Gladden discovers a huge shit that James Marsden has taken in his hotel room. These are just two examples of risks the entire creative team was willing to take in an effort to create the comedy around Gladden, as opposed to making him the joke. And it was a critical element: Had the show been too saccharine, it wouldn’t have worked the way it does, balancing laughs and heart with scientific precision.
In one instance during Episode 6, they nearly took it too far. In the episode, the group gathers in a park to celebrate Ross’s (played by Ross Kimball) birthday. James Marsden shows up, angry that the party isn’t for him, and flips Ross’s birthday cake. “Our stomachs dropped,” Andrew Weinberg recalls, who was watching from an iPhone hidden in a car in the parking lot. “For the first time, we had made Ronald's little world dark and upsetting. Ronald and James had become real friends by this point. Even though we knew he would soon find out this incident was all fake and James Marsden would never really behave that way, in that moment we had made Ronald lose basically all respect for him. I don't think I anticipated how awful it would feel to see Ronald get upset or angry over something we had planned.”
It’s a scripted show, in theory, but with the lead character unknowingly improving, everything can pivot on a dime. Eventually they landed on beat shows, which allowed the actors to come in with key moments that needed to be achieved but afforded them the means to adapt on the spot. Unlike Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, a similar-ish show by way of premise, Jury Duty paid particular mind to uplifting Gladden. The writers/producers went to great lengths to make sure this wouldn’t be a situation in which Ronald was traumatized by finding out that the reality he had been living for the last three weeks was a lie.
For instance, Gladden met regularly with a therapist, which is something he believed all of the jurors were doing. Still, no amount of preparation could properly brace them for the possible range of response. So on Day 17 (the big reveal), both the cast and creative team were stiff and anxiety-ridden by the imminent revelation. “The only thing I was prepared to do was spring up there to the witness stand, give him the biggest hug, look him in the eye and tell him that we weren’t trying to make you the butt of the joke; the friendship we created was real and we’re here to celebrate you,” Marsden recounts.
Below, an edited and condensed conversation with America’s greatest hero, Ronald Gladden.
I want to start by asking what it’s been like for you to watch the show — a show that you did not, in fact, know you were making.
[Laughs, sweetly] The first time I watched it back, I was a little bit embarrassed. This is the first time I’ve ever been on camera, so it was just a very weird feeling. Every time I watch it, there’s always things I pick up on, little things I missed, so it’s a different feeling every time. It’s really cool to see the cast interviews that they did because we would just be in the deliberation rooms at times and they would just say, “Okay, we need James, Jeannie, and Ken… we’re just going to pull you guys out for interviews.” I assumed they were doing interviews like I was doing. [Chuckles] Obviously that wasn’t the case. So it’s cool to see what they were really doing.
Do you remember the earliest instances when you started to think, “These people are rather… quirky.”?
Literally on the first and second day. I actually started writing a journal for myself after the second day because that was when they did — I think it’s called voir dire, a jury selection process. Like, there were crazy excuses that people were just throwing out there, ones that didn’t even make the final edit, and there were so many of them that I just remember thinking at the end of the day, “I have to write this down because I don’t want to forget any of this stuff. Like, this is just absolutely nuts.” I would say my biggest takeaway — and the best thing I'm taking away — from this is literally the friendships that I made with these people. If this would have never gone viral, if nobody would have seen this [show], I would be content simply from the fact that I met all these amazing people. We still stay in touch. I get to hang out with them. That's the coolest thing to me.
I’d love to talk specifically about Marsden. There are some moments in Episodes 7 and 8 when he’s looking at you — both when you’re in the deliberation room and when you’re in the courtroom itself — and the look on his face is one of pure love. It’s just unbridled love. He clearly developed these real feelings for you over the course of this experiment. I was wondering what that was like on your end, and how you see James Marsden now — as a human being and not just as an actor.
During filming, it was such a rollercoaster of emotions for me when it came to James. It did take me a little bit to realize who he was, but once I realized who he was, I was like, “Oh wow. This is James Marsden, you know? But then once I saw his character, obviously I did not like it. I would literally walk away from the guy at times because I just couldn’t be around him. He was so full of himself. Towards the end, when I was truthfully believing that’s who he was, it broke my heart. I was like, “Oh man, this sucks. This guy is not cool at all.” So on the day of the reveal, when I found out that’s not who he is, I was so, so relieved. It was this cascade flowing over me of, “Thank God that’s not who this man really is!” Outside of this, getting to know James, he’s amazing. He’s literally one of the best human beings I’ve met.
I, too, was relieved.
And something that I think is so cool about James — and I was told this from multiple people, from production, from the cast — everybody gave me essentially the same feedback: If there was one person who was really pushing to make sure that we weren't crossing any moral boundaries or we weren't punching down, it was James. Every single day, he would show up and he'd make sure that like, “Hey, you know, I want to ensure that we're not laughing at this guy. I don't want to put him in situations where we're making fun of him.” He's like, “I will be a jackass all day and you can laugh at me.” He was just my biggest proponent, making sure that I wasn't the one who was the butt of the joke. And I think that's absolutely amazing. It speaks volumes to who he is as a person. Adding on to that, getting to know him outside of this has been — it's a dream. It's an absolute dream. That’s the best way I can put it. It's so cool. I'm starstruck all the time. Anytime I see his name pop up on my phone, like, I get giggly, you know?
Getting into the reveal that happens in Episode 8: What's so interesting about this series is knowing that this could have gone a lot of ways. You could have been angry, you could have been annoyed. What do you remember about the moment of the reveal?
Funnily enough, I never imagined that all of this was fake because that would have been such a crazy thought for me to have. It was just utter disbelief. You can't just tell me that for the last month, you created a whole world for me and it was fake and then just expect me to just be able to accept that. Like that was too much. The best way I can describe it is sensory overload. The only thing I could do was just accept my reality for what it was — just accept what they were telling me as the truth, just to get through the day. And truthfully, like months and months down the road, I was still processing this stuff. I didn't even begin to really process it until about three days after the reveal, because I was texting James, kind of freaking out a little bit. I felt like maybe there were still cameras following me. So as soon as I'm texting him, he calls me up instantly. And he reassures me that there's no cameras following me. And he just really helped talk me through these feelings, because I just — I didn't know how to handle them. So thank you so much, James, for that. But yeah, that's again why I say James was such a great person, because he didn't have to do that, you know, but he definitely reached out to make sure that I wasn't panicking.
You've known these people for a few weeks, but then you have to like, meet them, because you actually don't know them. I’m wondering what that process was like of getting to know people that you thought you knew, and quite well, in fact, and then to have to sort of be at square one. But they know the real you.
I want to make this very clear to people, because I think there might be a little confusion on this part. These people were in character for so long, and this was such a, as James calls it, a “high-wire act” that they could not afford to get tripped up on small details and blow the whole thing. So, for example, you couldn't have Vanessa telling me the story about her kid, and then maybe that's not real, she doesn't even have a kid, and then she slips up and forgets and then she says something like that, and then I catch her in the lie. So, like, 90% of what these people were telling me were true stories that were real things about themselves. These were real instances that happened to them. Maybe locations had been changed, and maybe a name was different, but the majority of what they were telling me was really true about themselves. So there was never really an adjustment period where I had to completely get to know a different person. The exceptions of that would obviously be Todd, Noah, and Ken, because they play characters that are the complete opposite of themselves. And still to this day, I'm fascinated by those three individuals, because all I want to do is just get to know who they really are, because everybody else told me a ton of true stuff about themselves. Those were the only three that were a real adjustment. It's like, “Wow, I really need to get to know who you are.”
What about the moment with Marsden and his giant shit?
The only thing that I remember in that instance was I just saw another human being who was embarrassed and was asking for help. So that was an easy choice for me to make. It was really just that simple.
Today will be the day that you break 100k on Instagram. I feel like you only have a few hours left before that. I'm sure this was not even a life that you imagined because again, you were not pursuing acting, you were not pursuing fame. How are you wrapping your head around the fact that 100,000+ people are tuning into the things you say, the pictures you post? I mean — that's just such a paradigm shift. Most people build it up over time. And here you are, going from being — I don't want to use the word “nobody,” because everybody is somebody — but someone who was not in the public eye, to now being someone who is extremely in the public eye.
I'm not insulted by the word choice at all, because in the grand scheme of things, like yeah, I was a nobody before this. But that was kind of — not necessarily by design, but like you said, I never had intentions to pursue fame. I was never that kid who was like, “Oh, I'm gonna be on TV one day.” That was never me. I'm actually the exact opposite. I would prefer to be in control, pulling the strings behind the curtain. I don't have to be the face, essentially, if you will. I don't need the recognition. It's cool to have and it's a great feeling, but it's definitely still an adjustment. I haven't fully wrapped my head around the fact that, like you said, there's 100,000 people just watching what I do now. That still hasn't hit me.
I’m of the mindset that analyzing it for yourself won’t do anything for your greater good. Sometimes, I think that thinking about it too much is sort of a fruitless task in the end. So sometimes it's good to just accept it as it is. Now what about the fact that not only are people reaching out, but they're calling you a hero. I talked to David Bernad (one of the executive producers) and he said that when he first pitched the show, it was trying to capture a hero's journey.
I'm not mad about that in the slightest. But it's also a very weird feeling to me because, like you said, I was just being myself. I was just trying to be a decent human being. I was trying to be kind and respectful to everybody by default. Again, we were all in this shitty situation of being locked up and having all of our technology taken away from us. So really, I was just trying to be as helpful, kind and respectful as possible. Obviously, we don't see enough of that in the world, and that's why it's getting such an overwhelming positive reaction, but it just blows my mind that that's not the default for people.
You talked about when you were growing up, and not having aspirations towards fame.
I mean, truthfully, I hadn't.
What did you want out of life before this show?
I kind of — I tend to live in the moment. And I'm not saying that I don't plan for the future, but I've been doing construction for 13 years. It's what I've been doing since I was 17. I'm a project manager still, currently. I was setting up my life in Southern California. I moved to San Diego in 2019. I just got my Corgi puppy. I kind of just saw myself continuing on that trajectory.
Do you plan to stay in construction now?
I'm content with where I'm at, but I'm open to hearing the opportunities. And obviously, these opportunities are coming in and I don't want to turn them down because this has been such a wonderful experience. I definitely would not mind staying in this industry in some form or another. I can't give anything away yet because it's not concrete, but it does look like I will be in something here pretty soon.
What does your family make of all of this?
Yeah, they were definitely shocked. [Laughs] I kept the majority of people in the dark. Everybody knew I was going to do a documentary. That's what I told everybody. I didn't give them any details because I don't think anybody would have believed me to be honest. It's such a crazy thing to say. How do you tell somebody you got Truman Show-ed in real life? So it was something where I was like, “You guys are just gonna have to see this to believe it.”
How are they reacting to your newfound fame?
I mean, they love it, you know? Just like with everybody else, they're reaching out and they're expressing how proud they are of me, like, “I'm so glad to see the person you have become.” I mean, because I didn't always used to be this nice, obviously. When I was growing up, I was a bit more selfish and I acted a little bit more in my own self-interest. I didn't always used to be like this.
So what led to you becoming nicer? I feel like a lot of people have that ability, but perhaps don't seek it out. How did you get to the place you're at now?
I don't think that there was a singular moment or a tipping point for me. I think it was just that when I would give back and help other people, it would just make me feel so much better about myself, as opposed to me going out and doing something for myself when I would get a little bit of joy and that instant gratification. Helping other people and seeing the difference that would make in their lives — not only did it make me feel better, but then I would think about how that would impact their life, in hopes that they would pay it forward and they would be kind and help out the next person that needed it as well, too. So just realizing that that made me feel better really put me on this path.
I’m a believer that good art can really impact the way that people live their lives, the way they express themselves in the world. Part of why I feel so strongly about this show, in addition to finding it hilarious, is that I think this is one of those shows that will better society. Do you agree with that? Do you think that's a bit too hyperbolic?
I hope that's the case, obviously. If there is one thing people take away from this, I hope it's to just be a decent human being. Just be kind to each other, be good to each other, because it really is that simple. If there's any message that I'm trying to spread, it's literally that. This shouldn't be that hard. If you see somebody who needs help, take a second and help them out. If somebody needs advice, why would you not just — it takes a minimal amount of effort, a minimal amount of time. It's such an easy thing to do and you're helping other people. It's gonna make you feel better. It's gonna make them feel better. Everybody wins in that situation.
It's clear that this show has changed your life. It's also evident, just from what I'm seeing on social media, that this show has changed the lives of all of those involved. As the person sort of at the center of it all, there are the obvious ways in which your life has changed, right? But I'm wondering how your life has changed on a more introspective level as a result of this show and experience?
Truthfully, not a lot of changes really occurred up until a week ago, I would say, when things really started happening. Something that people need to realize is that I sat on this for a year. I literally had to live my life like this didn't happen. I couldn't tell anybody about it. I couldn't post about it. People wouldn't believe me anyway, so I just had to pretend like none of it happened. At one point, it did almost feel like I had this crazy dream, because nobody's talking about it, there's no media coverage, the other actors aren't talking about it. So it's like, “Oh my God, did this actually really happen to me?” So changes just started happening, and I would say probably the biggest one outside of my social media presence blowing up is that it's really just made me question the trajectory that I want my life to go on, because like I said, I was content with where I was, but I'm always open to hear about new experiences. That's how I found myself in this position to begin with.
It sounds like what you're saying is it's almost like there was a second reveal, right? You had the first reveal in the courtroom when you found out about the show, but then you have this year where you're sitting on the show, and now there's this second reveal of then having the show out in the world. I feel like you were really put through it twice.
I would agree with that. I would say that is a very accurate statement, because obviously I knew what this was going to be. I mean, I didn't know it was going to be this popular, but I knew what it was going to be going into this. So yeah, it's just been — it's just crazy. It’s absolutely crazy.
If you were to analyze why this show has blown up the way it has, what would be your analysis?
I think that people are responding to it the way they are because they couldn't have found a better group of people to make a wholesome, feel-good comedy. At the core of everybody who is involved in this, these are all just wonderful people. And even though they were acting and playing different versions of themselves, or whatever it may have been, these were really just good, decent-hearted people — and it's more than just the cast. I cannot stress that enough. I'm talking executive producers, showrunners, directors, you know, people who are operating the cameras, the audio. All these people were just such great people, and I think that kind of shows through. I think that really resonates with people as well, because it's more than just me being kind. It’s this entire group. If there's one thing people take away from this, I just want it to be: Just be a good person. Be good to each other, because it really is that simple.
This was a great read! It was really refreshing seeing how kind he was on tv - we rarely see that.
Love this piece, Evan! We recently wrote Ronald Gladden an open letter and he sweetly responded. He’s a great guy on and off the camera!