Jury Duty: How A Parks And Recreation Actor Could Have Blown The Whole Operation

Amazon & Freevee's "Jury Duty" was a tricky thing to pull off from the very start. Disguised as a documentary about what it's like to serve on a jury in the United States, the show placed innocent everyman Ronald Gladden amongst a cast of over-the-top actors — plus James Marsden, playing a beautifully insufferable version of himself — all of whom were essentially tasked with acting as weird as possible to see if Gladden would do the "right thing." 

These actors included character actor Kirk Fox, who played a recurring role as "Sewage Joe" on the hit NBC series "Parks and Recreation." Unfortunately for production, Gladden was a fan of the show... so Fox got pulled so he wouldn't unmask the whole operation.

"I believe it was either the second or third day, I was telling James [Marsden] about how much I enjoyed Ben Schwartz and his character Jean Ralphio on the show 'Parks and Recreation,'" Ronald Gladden said during an interview that airs in a TikTok clip. "As soon as they heard me say that, obviously they pulled Kirk back immediately. He was supposed to have a lot more interactions with me, a lot more dialogue. I essentially took away Kirk's screen time — sorry, Kirk! — because they couldn't afford to do it, because once they knew I was a fan of the show, they said, 'we can't risk blowing this, so Kirk, you just have to just stay on the other side of the table, don't really interact with him.'"

In the finale, Ronald ends up getting rewarded for his unfailing kindness and drive to really dive into the facts of the case presented to him; though he initially thought he was being paid $4,000 for participating in a documentary, he was overwhelmed when he learned he was actually being paid $100,000 for being the show's hero. Executive producers Lee Eisenberg and David Bernad spoke to The Daily Beast after the series ended, revealing that they got extremely lucky when it came to Gladden, who served as a man on a hero's journey who didn't know he was on one in the first place.

According to the two producers, finding Gladden was like finding lightning in a bottle — the cast and audiences alike immediately warmed to him, and he proved himself to be one of the nicest people they'd ever met. Asked about scenes where Gladden is exceptionally kind to one of the odder jurors, Todd (David Brown), Bernad said, "Ronald is an incredible human. Everything you're seeing is real. It sounds bullshUt-y, but when we pitched the show, another idea was that every day we're on trial and every day we're presented with moral decisions."

Ultimately, Gladden brought the oddball jury together to decree a decision and was then told he was part of a major experiment. So how did he take it, and how did it affect him?

Gladden did admit, in an interview after "Jury Duty" finished airing, that he felt a little "Truman Show-ed" by the entire experience. Speaking to TODAY, Gladden said that, unable to tell any of his friends or loved ones about the experience until the show actually went live, he started to wonder what was actually real.

When asked if it was tough to just go back to his real life, Gladden said, "I wouldn't say it was difficult. But after the reveal I took a month off, easily. I did not work for a month after this. Every single day there would be something that just hit me, like, 'Oh my God, was that fake? Was this an actor? Was this setup?'"

The really heartwarming outcome of "Jury Duty," though, is that Gladden is still friends with the cast, having totally charmed them during filming. As James Marsden told NPR's Fresh Air after the finale, he still regularly talks to Gladden, and he and the rest of the cast formed real bonds with him throughout this insane process. "I was like, I can't do this and then let him know that it was all fake and go, 'hey, see you, bud. Nice to meet you,'" Marsden said, laughing. "'That was cool.'"