Jury Duty has reached a verdict and come clean to Ronald Gladden, the kind-hearted target of Amazon Freevee‘s hidden camera experiment. The unsuspecting everyday guy was shocked to discover that the case between a business owner and ex-employee was entirely fabricated, along with the rest of his jury members, the judge, the bailiff, and more.

Among the planted jury members was movie and television star James Marsden (Westworld, Dead to Me). Along the way, the actor has forced the jury to become sequestered for the case, clogged up toilets with faux feces, and leaned into the stereotypes of celebrity personalities for this grand ruse only to be faced with kindness from Ronald. So, what was it really like to serve jury duty for the Amazon Freevee series? Below, Marsden opens up about embracing a heightened persona and highlighting kindness.

You’re the reason the jury has to be sequestered, and then you don’t even participate in the sequester. How did it feel to play an antagonistic version of yourself?

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Freevee’s new series Jury Duty is gearing up for its finale on Friday, and executive producer Nicholas Hatton and star James Marsden spoke with Deadline about all that went into creating the docu-style comedy with no one finding out. An exclusive featurette for Jury Duty can be found above.

Across 8-episodes, the series chronicles the inner workings of an American jury trial through the eyes of one juror, Ronald Gladden. Gladden is unaware the entire case is fake, everyone except him is an actor, including Marsden, and everything that happens — inside the courtroom and out — is carefully planned.

Hatton— who collaborated with Sacha Baron Cohen on Borat Subsequent Movie Film and Who is America—opened up about how difficult the process was from the show’s inception to its conclusion because everything could fall apart at any point of production. The key ingredient here was secrecy.

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James Marsden knows where the line is. You need to if you’re going to spend multiple weeks of your life playing a fictional version of yourself for a TV experiment that’s never been tried before.

The veteran actor of many genres is the most recognizable piece in the new series “Jury Duty,” an eight-episode original for Amazon Freevee with one key twist: everyone on screen throughout a run-of-the-mill workplace dispute trial is an actor, except for Ronald Gladden, an unassuming jury member who thinks he’s part of a documentary project. Throughout the process, Marsden plays along as the lone celebrity in the jury pool, dropping hints about upcoming auditions and reminiscing about past roles.

This latest Marsden role became a puffed-up version of a recognizable Hollywood actor who fancies himself man of the people while also constantly inferring that he’s above it all. (He filmed “Jury Duty” right after playing a similar A-list superhero jerk in the most recent season of “Party Down.”) Taking on the challenge, along with the dozens of actors convincingly playing all the other moving parts in the “trial,” meant keeping a fine balance between making a comedy and a believable, benign immersive experience for Gladden.

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James Marsden wants to make one thing clear: Jury Duty is not a prank show. Indeed, looking at the new Amazon Freevee series, which premieres today, centering on one man (Ronald Gladden) who is placed on jury duty for a completely fabricated case and trial, one could assume the focus would be on doing the most ridiculous things possible, then pointing out a camera and mocking his reactions. But even following other fake reality shows with the same concept like The Joe Schmo Show, Jury Duty is distinct in its end goal.

“What the producers told me at the beginning when they pitched it to me,” Marsden explains to Parade.com, “is that we’re creating a hero’s journey for this man. So that, at the end of it, he can have hopefully have—if we do our jobs, fingers crossed—his Twelve Angry Men moment at the end, where he’s uniting all of these weird characters and, and becoming the leader of this jury.

Read on for James Marsden’s full interview with Parade.com. The first four episodes of Jury Duty are currently available on Amazon Freevee, followed by two more on April 14, with the final two episodes arriving April 21.

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James Marsden had quite the unique experience serving on jury duty.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE about his new Amazon Freevee series Jury Duty, the 49-year-old actor discussed his own real life experience serving on the jury of a Los Angeles court.

“I just served once before and it was a bizarre experience because it was here in L.A., and I walked into the courtroom and there was a wall of headshots of actors who have served jury duty before — in a government building!” said Marsden, who plays a heightened version of himself and a member of the jury in the new docu-style comedy.

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Tired of being Hollywood’s No 1 guy who doesn’t get the girl, the star of everything from The Notebook to Westworld has finally found his dream role – taking a solar panel salesman for a $100,000 ride in Jury Duty

In Jury Duty, an inspired new docu-style comedy series that blurs fact and fiction, James Marsden plays an obnoxiously awful caricature of himself who boasts about auditioning for a soon-to-be-disgraced director, throws a hilarious tantrum at a birthday party and gets involved in a bizarre sex act known as “soaking”. Marsden stars alongside Ronald Gladden, very much the Truman in this blend of The Truman Show and The Office, and the two first encounter each other as they’re about to enter a jury room, with Gladden eventually twigging that he recognises Marsden from his X-Men role as Cyclops. Marsden then mentions his recent part in Sonic the Hedgehog. “Oh, I didn’t see that,” says Gladden. “I heard it’s a really bad movie.”

Marsden, the real Marsden, gives a hoot as he finishes telling me this story. “That’s comedy gold,” says the actor, who also played android gun-slinger Teddy in Westworld, and the poor guy Rachel McAdams dumps at the end of The Notebook. Marsden, it soon transpires, likes nothing better than getting a laugh at his own expense. We’re meeting at a fashionable hotel on the Sunset Strip, the actor’s LA base since moving to Austin, Texas, during the pandemic. He is still boyishly handsome at 49, all piercing blue eyes and cheekbones that could cut glass, but he insists that beneath the leading man looks, he’s a clown at heart. “I love playing the buffoon and the ass,” he says. “Someone who thinks they’re great at something but are clearly not. I’d much rather do that than play James Bond.”

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James Marsden opened up about what it was like to play a self-absorbed version of himself in his upcoming project Jury Duty.

If you were unaware, The 49-year-old actor stars in a docu-style comedy about being on jury duty that is coming to Amazon Freevee next month.

Instead of portraying a character, James plays a version of himself who attempts to use his star power to get out of serving on a jury. During a new interview, he explained what it was like to dramatize himself and how he used the casting as a chance to make fun of a certain breed of celebrities.

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There’s no denying that James Marsden’s energy is infectious; his passion for timepieces and appreciation for the value of fine craftsmanship instantly fill a room, inspiring those around him. Haute Living went on the clock with Marsden at the new IWC Boutique in Palm Beach — as the brand hosted an intimate evening celebrating watches and bespoke cocktails from The Glen Grant — to better understand his affinity to timepieces, find out his all-time favorite watch, and get his take on the rapidly-evolving watch industry.

HAUTE TIME: You have been an avid watch collector for years; how did your passion start?

JAMES MARSDEN: When I was younger, I did not know much about watches — they weren’t something I could afford. Then, I was given an IWC as a gift from David E. Kelley, the executive producer on Ally McBeal. It was one of the nicest gifts anyone had ever given to me, so I wanted to learn more about the [watch] and why it was so special. This became the first in my collection in 2003.

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We may all love James Marsden’s dreamy, prince-like hair, but there’s one person who doesn’t love it. And that’s James Marsden.

The actor tells PEOPLE that if it weren’t for his job as an actor, he’d get rid of his hair completely.

“The hair bothers me,” he says of his tousled coif. “To me, if I wasn’t an actor I would just have one of those military cuts. I’d just shave it off all the time. It just gets in the way.”

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James Marsden doesn’t do things halfway.

The Disenchanted star, who has partnered with IWC Schaffhausen for years, admits that he’s a “nerd” when it comes to watches — and all of his hobbies — because he wants to know everything there is to know.

“I just have to immerse myself in all of it,” he says of his hobbies, one of which is collecting watches. “I have to master it, not to prove anything; I just can’t get enough information about it.”

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