Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
From WQXR and Carnegie Hall comes Classical Music Happy Hour, a new podcast hosted by me, Pianist Maniacs. Each episode, we'll speak with a special guest, listen to musical gems, play music-inspired games, and answer questions from our listeners. The first episode drops March 4th. Listen on the NPR app. This is Fresh Air.
I'm David Bianculli. Jury Duty is the prime video streaming series about one unwitting regular guy who becomes part of a staged fake jury, not knowing that everyone around him is a professional actor. Season two of Jury Duty premieres today on Prime, but in a new setting, the corporate retreat of a fake hot sauce company called Rockin' Grandmas, which is in the midst of a corporate takeover.
Again, one lone employee knows nothing of the ruse and is surrounded by actors. The new season is called Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat. Today, we're going to listen to our 2023 interview with James Marsden, the most well-known of the actors in the original Jury Duty.
In that show, a regular guy named Ronald Gladden had agreed to participate in a documentary about the experience of being a juror in an L.A. courtroom. He doesn't know that everyone around him—the rest of the jury, the judge, the witnesses—is an actor who is improvising. They're all kind of odd, and their behavior is unpredictable, even more so than in a regular reality show.
Marsden plays a satirical, self-absorbed version of himself, serving as an alternate juror. Marsden's other recent TV shows include Westworld and Dead to Me, and next month he joins the cast of Jon Hamm's Apple TV series Your Friends and Neighbors. His films include The Notebook, the 2007 version of Hairspray, and Disney's Enchanted. He also played Cyclops in the X-Men film franchise.
We're going to listen to Marsden's interview with Fresh Air's Sam Brigger. Let's hear a clip from the original Jury Duty. The potential jurors are sitting in the courtroom waiting area, and Ronald realizes that the man sitting next to him is James Marsden. Dude, that's where I know you from. You're an X-Man.
Oh.
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Chapter 2: What is the premise of the 'Jury Duty' series?
I've been f***ing thinking that this entire time. I didn't ask your name because Yeah, James. Pleasure. Nice to meet you. Yeah, I was trying to pinpoint it, and I was like, I've seen you somewhere. Yeah, but I've been in, like, so much stuff. It's like X-Men and Hairspray and Chanted in Westworld and stuff like that, but Notebook. Oh, shit, you're in Westworld?
Yeah, yeah. I know him from the Notebook. He's in the Notebook? Nuh-uh. What is he in the Notebook? The other guy. He's the other guy? The guy she really should have got together with.
Oh, my God. I haven't seen that movie in so long. I didn't even... I didn't realize. I was looking at his socks over here. It looked like it said Sonic. And I'm in that movie Sonic. And I was like, does he have Sonic socks on? Oh, shit, you're in the movie Sonic? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the new one with Jim Carrey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard that was not a good movie.
That's a scene from Jury Duty with Ronald Gladden and my guest, James Marsden. James Marsden, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you, Sam. Happy to be here.
It's great to have you here. So I just want to ask you first, when you heard about what the show was going to be about, did you have any reservations about doing it?
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Chapter 3: How does James Marsden describe his role in 'Jury Duty'?
I only had reservations. Yes, I did, of course. It was a very ambitious conceit. I was approached by my friend David Bernad, who is a producer of The White Lotus. We've done a couple of projects together before. And he asked if I'd be interested in getting on a Zoom with Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stipnitsky at The Office, who I was a huge fan of that show.
And he gave me sort of a basic one-liner idea of the concept of the show, which is basically we're taking the Truman Show and we're dropping it in the middle of jury duty. And I said, okay, well, let's expound on that. What's my part? What am I doing? And I got excited about... all of the sort of improvisational element of the show and the sort of live theater part of the whole thing.
So, yeah, I'm a big Christopher Guest fan. I loved the Larry Sanders show. I love, obviously, Curb Your Enthusiasm and everything Larry David does. So I was always looking for an opportunity to get in a room and play.
But something like this was so unique, so different and original, and I was enthusiastic about being a part of something like this, but also apprehensive because I didn't know if it was going to work. And, yeah, I had many reservations. And the biggest one was...
the wild card of this one human being who's being dropped into this situation that is all fake and manufactured, and what that's going to be like. But I made it clear that it was important to me that I didn't want to be a part of a prank show. I was not interested in... being cruel or mean-spirited at all. And they said, no, we're not interested in doing that either.
What we're doing is we're creating a hero's journey for somebody. And what we're surrounding him with are this cast of bizarre, eccentric weirdos, and hopefully carving out a path for him to become the leader at the end and have his 12 Angry Men moment where he inspires us all and unites us. And then we pull the curtain back and celebrate him as a human being. Show him what it was all about.
And hopefully he takes that in stride. But, you know, who knows how he's going to react. So the sort of unknown was appealing to me, but it was also terrifying.
So when you were thinking about making this satirical version of yourself, did you think about things about yourself that you don't really like very much and amplify them or did you come up with like a completely different character? Like what did you base that person on?
You know, to me it was just the idea of lampooning the cliché, you know, entitled, self-absorbed, egocentric Hollywood actor was really exciting to me. And I could, you know, I could do it as myself and hopefully by the end of it everyone would know that I'm satirizing that character and it's not really me. There's something about playing someone who...
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Chapter 4: What reservations did James Marsden have about participating in 'Jury Duty'?
Like I'm an actor or something. Yes. It was very, back in the day in the 40s or whatever, they were just taught speech. They had speech lessons and whatever. And with the singing, I mean, I know that was an a cappella bit, but when we actually recorded that song, I had vocal lessons from a coach who was taught operetta-style singing. It was sort of Mario Lanza.
You know, it wasn't... Because back in the older Disney movies, that's the kind of singing it was. It was a style of music or a style of singing that I wasn't that familiar with and had to get up to speed. But yes, it was... You know, I thought Edward was someone who always, every statement is as simple or complex as it would be.
Not that he was ever saying anything too complex, but it had to be a proclamation, right? I'll have a bagel! You know, and it had to have an exclamation point at the end of it. And I just think there was such fun to be had, to just be this unabashed...
romantic prince who just is in love with being in love he's in love with the idea of Giselle and he's in love with the sound of his own voice and just moves through life with just you know an optimism that's unmatched and it was a lot of fun to play because obviously I'm wearing the big giant puffy sleeves and swinging the sword and the hair is flopping around and It was a blast.
It really was so much fun.
You've had quite a few roles where you play the passed over romantic interest. There's this movie and The Notebook in particular, but you can even say your character Teddy in Westworld, there's a little bit of that. Why did you think that you've had those roles? Were you typecast, do you think?
I don't know. I mean, for a while, it started getting more traction than I ever had intended, right? I mean, there were roles in between all of those big projects where I wasn't playing the guy who doesn't get the girl or the simp or whatever, you know.
But it just so happens to be the ones that became big successes were those ones where the roles were, you know, whatever the movies I was playing, you know, the guy who ends up kind of getting cuckolded or whatever you want to call it. And yeah. It started to look pathological, like I was choosing these on purpose. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. This is not by design.
It just sort of happened that way. So we didn't know Enchanted was going to be just a massive hit. The notebook became like, you know, this still to this day is incredible how the legs that that movie has.
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Chapter 5: What unique aspects of 'Jury Duty' does Marsden highlight?
Performed by my guest, Roy Bookbinder. You know, I think there are a couple of traps that some white northern performers have fallen into when performing southern-based music. And I'm thinking, for instance, that some people seem to have almost lost their own voice when they sing.
If they're singing black-based music, they get a completely different voice and try to sound like an older black man from the South. And I wonder if it was ever hard for you to find your own voice in your singing.
Well, I started out with very little and it's growing. I remember when Bob Dylan's first record came out, I said, OK, I'm going to be a singer. If he can get away with that, I'm going to get away with this. And back in the early 60s, I moved south when I was 18. The first time I joined the Navy, ran away to sea and moved to Virginia. And I've been headed south ever since.
And I've been lucky to have been associated with some great masters of the industry. Some of them knew they were masters and others didn't.
Well, you spent some time trying to track down one of the musicians who you like most, Pink Anderson. And he's someone that probably a lot of our listeners aren't familiar with. Tell us a little bit about him, and then I'll ask you to do a song by him.
Pink Anderson was from Spartanburg, South Carolina. He made two records in 1929. That was that. He disappeared from the recording industry. He spent his entire career working medicine shows, little carnival deals throughout the South. He worked with Chief Thundercloud's medicine show up until about 1959. When I met him, he was retired. He had a heart attack and didn't tour at all.
And when I met Pink, he was not in great shape. But me and my friend Paul Jeremiah started to visit him. At one point, we realized the worst thing about his health was he was starving to death down there. And he started to play again, and we took him out on tour once before he died, and it was quite a deal.
Pink Anderson's music, he was a carnival performer, and his songs were white, black, and blue. You know, they were mixed up. The song that I'm going to do next, Traveling Man, has become my theme song, and it's a song that everybody in the folk field always identified with Pink Anderson, knowing that he probably didn't write it. But it's a song that goes back to minstrel shows.
and it was probably a song written by a white man on Broadway. Like, so many times you get a song from a New York writer on Broadway, what was Tin Pan Alley, and it filters down to the rural community, and then it's found by some folklorist as a, what a find. It happened throughout the history of country music and blues.
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Chapter 6: How did Marsden prepare for his satirical character?
His home was down in Tennessee. He made his living, he was stealing chickens and anything that he could see. That Popeye's man said he'd run so fast that his feet never stayed in a row. When a freight train passed, it didn't matter how fast, he'd always get on board. He was a traveling man. Certainly was a traveling man. He was the most travelingest man that ever was in that land.
Traveled everywhere, known for many miles around. But he didn't get caught and he never got whooped till the police shot him. You know that the police shot that man with a rifle. The bullet went through his head. People, they were coming from miles around just to see if that boy was dead. They telegrammed down south where his mama lived, and she was all upset with tears.
She walked up and opened up the coffin's lid, but that fool had disappeared. He was a traveling man, certainly was a traveling man. He was the most travelingest man ever in that land. Traveled. Everywhere, known for many miles around. Didn't get caught in and never got whooped till the police shot him down. You know this boy went down to the spring one day to get himself a pail of water.
distance that the rascal had to go was about two miles in a car tire he got there and got his water and he started back stumbled and fell down he ran back the house got himself another bucket caught the water before it touched the ground he was a traveling man certainly was a traveling man he was the most travelingest man ever in that Traveled everywhere, known for many miles around.
He didn't get caught and he never got whooped until the police shot him. Now listen, this boy was out on a Titanic ship the day it was sinking down. He was standing out by the railing, had his head hung down. When that boy jumped overboard, everybody said he was a fool. But about two minutes right after that, well, he was shooting dice in Liverpool.
He was a traveling man, certainly was a traveling man. He was the most travelingest man ever in that land. Traveled everywhere, known for many miles around. But he didn't get caught and he never got whooped until the police shot him down. Oh, pick it, Roy. ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ Traveling man.
Did Pink Anderson teach you that one?
Well, he didn't directly teach it to me, but I watched him play it.
Right.
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Chapter 7: What makes Ronald Gladden a compelling hero in 'Jury Duty'?
You just tell people Pink Anderson born and getting ready to die. And Spartanburg, South Carolina used to pick a guitar and sing.
Roy Bookbinder in the Fresh Air Studios in 1987. More after a break. This is Fresh Air.
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Let's talk a little bit about Reverend Gary Davis, who you also met. And I think this was before he had become rediscovered. He had already been rediscovered.
Oh, he was semi-famous when I met him. He already was living in a little house in Jamaica, Queens.
What's some of the strumming or finger-picking style that you learned from him?
Well, Reverend Davis, he had a number of styles. He had his simple little style, like he did Candyman, and he did the cocaine blues, and he did Delia. And then he'd get a little more complex in his blues, like the hesitation blues. Nickel is a nickel and a dime is a dime. A house full of children ain't one of them mine.
It was one of his other styles, and he had an instrumental style where he imitated the piano and played ragtime pieces, which was really fascinating to the young guitar players that came around. There was a lot of interesting things going on in there. It took a lot of time for some of us to get it, some longer than others.
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