James Marsden's Hero's Journey
"I've never been more focused and more prepared in my life."
James Marsden appears as Eddie, a cater waiter, in the pilot episode of The Nanny. “Mr. Sheffield! I was just…” he says after being caught smooching his daughter. “You were just leaving,” Mr. Sheffield demands. “Right,” he says. He’s back again in Episode 4 when he takes Maggie on a date. The date goes well, and he even wins over the affection of the irritable Mr. Sheffield. He’s never seen again. I always wondered about Eddie. Why things didn’t work out between him and Maggie. Did he break her heart or vice versa? Did he stay cater waitering or did he find work in his true passion for acting?
We’ll never know. But as for the actor playing Eddie, his fate in Hollywood is a bit more storied. Marsden would go on from that 1993 appearance to make a name for himself as Scott/Summers/Cyclops in four X-Men films, as John Wilkes Booth in Zoolander, as Lon in the The Notebook, Prince Edward in Enchanted, Corny Collins in Hairspray, Malcolm in 27 Dresses — and that’s just the first half of his film career! The thing about James Marsden, as you quickly learn when you spend time with him, is that he just loves working. Fortunately for him, there’s never been a shortage of opportunities or offers. But even so, there developed an itch.
“When the world began to open up again after COVID, it was everything at once for me. It was the last season of Westworld. It was Sonic 2. It was the last season of Dead To Me. It was the sequel to Enchanted. It felt like a lot of sequels, or third season of this, fourth season of that, and I got hungry for something new and different that wasn’t from a previous job.”
Cruising into the holidays last year, Marsden knew he needed a break. He gave himself January off and then come February… “I started getting itchy.” That’s when his friend, The White Lotus producer David Bernad, called with an ambitious pitch for a show called Jury Duty that would have Marsden join an ensemble of improv actors chronicling the inner workings of a jury trial through the eyes of juror Ronald Gladden, a solar contractor from San Diego, who is unaware that everyone in the courtroom — aside from him — is an actor.
“After he explained it I thought, ‘Please, can I be a part of this?’ With creative choices, I always want to do something different than what I just finished, and this came along and it’s scary, but it’s an opportunity to show some different kind of comedy chops, and if it works, if it works, it could be really great.” The result, wouldn’t ya know it, worked. And it was really great. I’d even wager really, really great.
If I were to introduce you, what are three of the credits that you would hope that I would read off?
Oh, man, you want me to pick just three? From 30 years? [Laughs] Well, now that I'm not getting my whole IMDb resume let's see… maybe more recent stuff like Dead to Me, Sonic the Hedgehog, Westworld? But then going back a few decades, you're going into Enchanted, Hairspray, The Notebook…
Are you someone who is good at the work/life balance?
No. I don’t idle well. I have this fear that there’s going to be a massive regret later in life that I look back and see giant gaps. I missed my daughter’s first tooth, or my son’s play — or you miss them simply growing up. I make sure that when I’m not working, I take the work hat off and I’m present with them. And then that classic actor… I don’t want to say insecurity, but that thing that comes into your mind that you gotta stay at the table, stay relevant, stay working. You’re always afraid that your last job is going to be your last job ever.
Imposter syndrome.
Right. That motivates an urgency, not a panicked urgency but definitely a “Hey, what’s next?” kind of feeling. So I’m always kind of insatiable when it comes to working. It feels like a non-stop hunt for the perfect thing. And maybe that hunt is what the career is. Maybe it’s never-ending. Maybe the goal is the journey. It sounds proverbial but it’s true. I’m always looking for something that’s going to challenge me in a certain way or show me doing something I’ve never done before. Not because I’m out to prove myself to anybody, it’s just that it’s an exciting component to what I do. “What have I not done before?” Not just to push the boundaries per se, but to get in a bigger sandbox to play in. And it’s also that balance of art and commerce. You have to satisfy yourself from a creative perspective but also pay your mortgage.
I feel like people have this often false impression that success as an actor equals wealth when it’s really, increasingly, fame that is more bankable than the actual craft.
You think movie star and you think of a person in a 10,000 square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills and a house in Paris. Some people have that, sure, but I’ve kind of been an actor for hire for 30 years and just now am I starting to branch out and thinking, “Hey, there’s other ways you can monetize this.” I’m not the greatest at going, “Hey, here’s my tequila company” or “here’s my fragrance line.”
You joke, but the reality is, if you started a tequila line, I’d be buying it. I’ve had conversations with many actors who have been forthright about the fact that it’s those brand deals that pay the bills and less the acting jobs these days. These are opportunities that weren’t around during the Disturbing Behavior era of your career.
I don’t think Disturbing Behavior would have gotten me those opportunities anyway, but yes.
I did rewatch it recently and it’s very… of its time.
Very of its time.
What do you make of this shift? Even if you’re not cashing in on it, you’re certainly seeing it.
I mean, look, people are out there hustling and making money in an ever-changing landscape. It used to be there were five movie stars in five movies over the summer and that was it and they were getting $25 million a paycheck, and now there’s so many shows and different platforms and ways to earn money. My thing is that I don’t want to feel like I’m ever selling myself out for a paycheck. It’s got to have an organic thread to it. To me, money is such a God for so many people that I never want that to be something that’s the driving engine of what I’m doing. I’m very lucky to be successful in what I do. I make enough money to support my family and pay my mortgage, but I don’t want that to be something that I chase.
I believe you are the first actor that I've interviewed who appears in the “Imagine” video. I know that the video was made with an earnestness with which it was not received. How do you look back on that experience?
I never thought it would be something that we'd be sitting here talking about. [Chuckles] I think I probably could have gone back and put a little more thought into it. It was just a couple of friends just reaching out and quickly going, “Hey, want to be a part of this?” And yes, I think in those really sensitive times it was probably a good idea to vet more of what the tone was going to be and what the ultimate application was going to look like. I remember asking the question, “What key are we doing it in?” And my friend said, “I don't think it matters.” And I went, “Um…” Because there's the tone deaf element of it, just sort of through the sensitivity lens, and then there's literally the tone deaf element: We’re all in different keys. [Laughs] But I think yes, all of our hearts were in the right place, but we didn't really read the room at the time.
You've been in this industry for 30 years. You've done the press thing quite a bit. I imagine that you're in a lot of situations in which you're forced to speak about a project that you maybe feel mid about at best. Jury Duty doesn't seem like one of those situations.
I've done tons of press over the years and it's not fun when you have to hawk or shill a show that’s not great because you have to pretend like it's great. And this one, it was such a risk. You just didn't know if it was gonna work. I've always been inspired by Christopher Guest and The Office, The Larry Sanders Show, Curb [Your Enthusiasm] — all those great, sort of outline-scripted shows because the dialogue’s not really scripted and you sort of get to be in the zone and flow with it. And then all of these other parts of Jury Duty that were just new territory for me, which is this sort of reality show thing. You have one person who's there who doesn't know that it's all fake. And then on the other side of it, the opportunity to kind of send up the Hollywood, entitled celebrity a little bit.
And there's multiple high wire acts here, right? You have two weeks of rehearsal and almost three weeks of filming in which you're essentially planning for a specific moment that could deflate the tire entirely.
A specific moment that we potentially wouldn’t even get to. We were always in danger of not getting him to the finish line.
One of the most interesting things about the show is how many risks you took within the umbrella risk that is the show itself. I'm thinking specifically about your shit, which is one of those moments where Ronald could have gone into the bathroom and tried to flush the toilet, exposing the fact that the shit was fake. That could have been a moment where Ronald realizes this is not real and everything blows up. The premise is already quite absurd. And then you guys just kept pushing it and pushing it.
I think that's one of the reasons why it works. It was a delicate dance throughout, because we were tasked with creating a show like The Office where we're actually pushing these comedic beats, but we also needed to make sure that we kept him in the world of believability so he bought that all of this was actually organically happening. I don't think anything has been done like this before, where you could get two weeks in and he could figure it all out and Amazon now has two weeks of footage they can't use. But I think that was kind of the appeal. I've never been more focused and more prepared in my life. All of us were on pins and needles and just on our sharpest game because nobody wanted to be the one to sink it.
Talk to me about day one. You have this opening scene where all of the people that have been summoned to be potential jurors are gathering in the room, and you walk in. You don't even know whether or not he's going to recognize you. The variables begin from the outset and I feel like of everyone, you have perhaps the tallest order in that you are both James the human being and then James Marsden the actor, whatever that may mean to Ronald. You have to interpret in that moment, and you can sort of decide he might have an association with you where he might be a superfan of yours for all you know.
It was live theater. It was flying without a net. It was: be adaptable, be nimble, be able to evolve with the situation and once he starts to reveal who he is, then you kind of tailor what you're doing to that. I had these different roadmaps in my head of where it could go, but it required a level of focus and being really present. All I knew about him was he was this really tall, six-foot-six guy who was a solar panel contractor out of San Diego. He ended up being one of the kindest, most pure-hearted people that I've ever met, and he was a good sport about the whole thing.
I spoke to several people, including executive producer David Bernad and showrunner Cody Heller, who spoke about the fact that when Jury Duty was conceived, they had titled Ronald’s part “the hero.” The fact that he ended up being received by the audience as the hero is part of the lightning in a bottle that is this show. Is there a particular moment when you looked at Ronald and thought, “He is the hero that we devised him to be?”
He was always very playful. He was always very accepting of the absurdity that was unfolding around him. We were all on the same page tonally of what this should be, which was: the comedy is going to come. What really needs to work is a meaning for this whole thing and the reason why we're doing it and the kind undertone of the whole thing. The spirit of the show needs to be uplifting without being heavy-handed or overly sentimental.
Because you can go too far in that direction too, right?
You can end up feeling like, “Well, this is a little soggy and it could have been way more fun.” And while we were filming it, it felt like an either or. Like it's either gonna be really funny, and maybe skew a little mean, or it's gonna be really sweet and sentimental and the comedy is gonna be muted because of it. And somehow they both worked on this. I remember thinking very early on that if “a hero’s journey” is really the identity of the show, you're not gonna do any better than this guy. There were moments and characters that were supposed to put him off like the character of Todd, who was his roommate at the hotel, doing weird things like slipping notes under his door. Todd was a highly eccentric character and we didn't know how [Ronald] was going to respond to that, but he ended up putting his arm around him and taking him on a shopping spree and showing him A Bug's Life. This guy is just really, really kindhearted.
When it began to emerge just how kindhearted he is, did you begin to worry at all about his reaction to the inevitable reveal?
Imagine questioning your reality like that. Not to get too Westworld-y, because I like to bring my old roles back. [Laughs] But imagine that: Nobody knows what's going to affect him in a negative way or in a positive way. This is a really jarring thing to do, messing with someone's human experience for almost three weeks of their life. I don't care how much you're celebrating them at the end of it. The thing that was most important to me was yes, we're going to tell him that this journey was fake. The court case, these proceedings, the bizarre, absurd situations that he was put in. But there was a whole other chunk of this adventure that was very real, which was the friendships and connections that we made. A lot of that you don't see in the show because they edited a lot of the stuff out; they kind of trimmed the fat and kept the comedy. But there are moments where Ronald and I are laughing hysterically with each other and forging a real friendship, and he did that with every actor on the show. And it was the most important thing to me that he knew that that was all real.
You’ve had a 30-year career working on a breadth of big-budget projects, so I think that there could be a level of apathy that could develop for someone like you when a project like Jury Duty comes along where you have to sit in a courtroom with these fluorescent lights and listen to six hours of legal proceedings each day. But one of my key takeaways from watching you in this and from talking to Ronald is how invested you were in this show, in the humanity of Ronald, and in this cast. You didn't just clock in, do the job and go home. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I would be lying to you if I told you there weren't moments where I said, “What have I done? What have I gotten myself into?” There's a line in the show where they say, “In one word, say what today was about,” and I of course say a whole phrase in mourning for my career. [Chuckles] And there was a moment where there was a tinge of that seeping through my consciousness where I was like, “What the hell is this show? What did I sign up for? Was this a good move? Is this gonna work?” And my career objectives are always to not ever get comfortable, to take risks, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. But if my initial gut instinct on a project is that it really excites me — it also scares me to death, but it excites me — I've tried over the years to always make sure I lean into that. I remember that on this one, when I was reading the scripts, I was just laying at home howling out loud with laughter. And what a fun thing to play! Completely lampooning myself from the Hollywood celebrity thing and getting in a room with all these brilliant young improv artists. The material is good and there's potential and promise for you to sort of do something that's never been done before, which is a rare thing nowadays.
I do want to mention that this show was shot quite a while ago, so not only did Ronald have the reveal that we all saw, but then he had a year sitting with an experience that he couldn't quite explain to anyone, because who would understand? Ronald explained to me that all throughout this process, you've been texting him, you have stayed present, you will follow up with him just to make sure he's doing okay. I also feel like there's sort of a hero's journey here with you, if I may. You made a point to really stay connected to this human being, to be in his life, to nurture him, to make sure that he's comfortable with all the machinations that come not only with fame, but the meteoric rise of fame.
We're all human beings, and I don't care how many movies I've ever done, this was as much of a journey for me as it was for him. I don't think I'll ever go through life and have another [comparison] for this kind of experience. You're in there, you're playing yourself — yes, it's a version of yourself, but it’s still me in there. If we're saying we want this to be a hero's journey, and we want to hoist this guy on our shoulders at the end and celebrate his character, there's not any part of me that can genuinely do that unless it's real. And if it's real, I'm not gonna be like, “Okay. That's a wrap. See ya later, that was fun.” This is a guy who I feel like we all could be a little more like, and it's important to me that he knows that I genuinely care about him. And he doesn't know this business. This guy has been shot out of a cannon, and who knows if he's prepared to deal with any of that. He doesn't want to bother me by asking me questions every day. So I'm always going to him going, “Hey, what's going on? The world's in love with you, and how does that feel? Does it feel good? Maybe it doesn't feel good?” I don't know.
I kept thinking about your friend and collaborator Mike White while watching Jury Duty. Have you watched Mike on Survivor?
No. Mike White was a contestant on Survivor?
Mike White was a runner up. I bring this up because Mike playing Survivor is so unexpected. He's this big Hollywood guy working on all these incredible projects. Why would he want to go and live on an island for 39 days with a bunch of strangers? And it's because Mike White seeks out experience and understands that the most real relationships can be gained when you step outside of your comfort zone. In this moment, you remind me of Mike because you're forging a connection with someone that’s so real.
That's outstanding that he went on. And I know him well enough that that doesn't surprise me. He's not somebody who is going to be your normal Hollywood guy, like, “I don't do that.” He's like, “No, I'm a human being who is curious about human behavior. And certain things in life make me laugh, and I'm here to experience whatever I feel like I want to experience.” So I applaud Mike White for having the purity of heart to be in a creative space where there are no boundaries. Like, “I'm gonna go for whatever is going to float my boat at the time. I like the weird.” And Mike likes the weird — you can tell — and I gravitate towards that. I don't want anything that's cookie cutter.
I think you also recognize that you don't have to be the biggest name to be important to a show.
One of the things I love about [Jury Duty] is that it proves that any sort of formula that Hollywood wants to put together — like, “This is what you need to have a successful show or to have a successful movie” — this show kind of takes it and flips it on its head. None of these people are recognizable. None of these people have gazillions of followers. And here we are with this massive hit. It's a testament to taking the big risks because you believe in a concept. I just want to celebrate the rest of the cast on this show. The superstars are the ones that aren't the movie stars nowadays, right? I think every actor in this show deserves that kind of recognition and notoriety.
Great art has the power to change viewers' lives. This show is not just funny, it's not just heartfelt; I think that I plan to move through the world differently as a result of meeting Ronald Gladden on my screen. I don't want to be so jaded. There are Ronalds in the world. Yes, the show is a hit. But even more than that, I think that this show is making people feel things, and I don't think you come by that a lot.
We need it, right? The response from people has been that most are surprised by how emotional they actually got at the end of it, and how moved. Because you don't anticipate a reality show-style, goofy comedy improv thing to strike those chords in the end. And it's a testament to that human being.
This does not exist yet — it’s fanfiction at this point — but would you be down for a Jury Duty reunion?
Yes! I just don't know in what capacity and if I would be spoiling the party if I do that. But of course! I had so much fun with this character and getting in the room and messing around with all the other improv actors that I really want to do more of this. And I just don't know what that looks like, but we're exploring it. And as far as another season, I would totally do it, but I'd have to know that we could still fool everybody.
Any final reflections?
It's insane. It's really insane. I'm getting texts from people and you know when you see a number pop up on your phone, and you're like, “Who is this?” And someone says, “Hey, how's it going? Just checking in.” Or, “Hey, I saw your show! It's really funny.” And you still don’t know who it is so you go back to your previous text. I've had maybe 50 of those, and my last text conversation with that person was from like 2009. The reach of the show has been insane. So 1) I need to change my phone number, and 2) I'm just really proud of it. Ronald for President!