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And now, hes done the unthinkable: Made us care about service for judicial proceedings.
Like a backyard experiment.
I mean this with great respect: You shouldve had Emmy recognition years ago.
What took the TV Academy so long to get its act together?Well, I dont know.
It seems like they were waiting around for me to play myself.
I wasnt expecting it.
I know people always say that, but I really wasnt.
I made the mistake of peeking online at predictions.
I was like, What are actually the odds here?
I was always in the third tier or whatever.
I was like, All right.
Well, dont get your hopes up, but thatd be fun.
Itd be a nice little bonus.
Then I got a nomination and just about levitated off my sofa.
Its not familiar territory for me.
Theres cameras filming for five hours a day, and Im like, Whats going on?
What we were doing is so different than anything Ive ever been a part of before.
Hes getting to bask in the attention and the love.
It feels so good.
I must know how you and Ronald plan to celebrate.Maybe a trip to Margaritaville.
Listen, I tried to sleep in yesterday.
I didnt want to be pacing back and forth for hours before the nominations.
I saw Christina Applegate got her nomination forDead to Me, and texted her immediately.
We continue to celebrate this guy.
The world is full of his superfans.
That was my main concern through the whole thing.
I never wanted to do anything to make him be the butt of the joke.
You cant fake that.
As long as he knew that, that halved the anxiety.
It was all of these unknowns.
I knew we were doing something funny and had the potential to do something really moving.
I just didnt know if the two could coexist.
Maybe the comedy might be muted because of it.
Somehow we struck lightning in a bottle, and it was due to Ronald.
If we didnt have him, Im not sure we would be sitting here talking.
We know how TV shows are made not everything makes the final cut.
Theres plenty of footage of us shooting the shit and having a great time together that we didnt use.
You see a lot more jackass James Marsden on the show than you did when we were actually filming.
There were plenty of hours where Ronald and I were hanging out, joking and goofing around together.
But I made a point to make it realistic.
If I was too friendly or buddy-buddy, it might set him off.
Hes a smart guy.
You balance it out.
That was all sort of choreographed.Balanceis the word I keep coming back to.
How didJury Dutys identity evolve over the filming process?
On a regular scripted show, you know the beginning, the middle, and the end.
We had it all planned out with seven scripts that were like, This is when we get sequestered.
This is when I take a crap in his bathroom.
This is when I destroy the birthday party.
But Ronald was the wild card.
A great deal of adaptability was required to be able to flow with it.
The phrase I heard most on this show is,This has never been done before.
We would have a conference at the end of every day.
We were rewriting the script every day.
We had to grow with him as we went along.
We wanted to celebrate Ronald for his humanity.
There were moments where it was like, This isnt going to work.
I was like, Guys, this isnt going to work.
So how do we get out of it?
We came up with the arm-wrestling challenge.
It was something we could actually control.
Was there a contingency plan if Ronald found out?Yes.
It was, Ronald is onto us.
Tomorrow, get ready for six hours of no comedy and the most boring court experience youve ever seen.
Theres going to be a lot of sitting around.
Theres going to be a lot of mundane chitchat.
Theres going to be a lot of legalese in the court.
This isnt going to feel like a show.
It would take Ronald down from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 2.
We saw you and Ronald bond over the delights ofSonic the Hedgehog.
I was like, Thats the movie you remember me from?
And probably a movie that would not be able to be made nowadays.
What do we do with this?
I dont know why we scrapped that idea.
We were all trying to hide our laughter and couldnt but it was okay because it was so absurd.
If this was a real case, you wouldve been laughing at it.
But the hardest part was the group interviews, because we were all in each others shot.
You couldnt walk away and get a bag of Doritos.
You could kind of get away from Ronald.
But in the group interviews, it was tough.
Ron Song, who plays Ken, sat in front of me.
He was one of the funniest characters because he would always speak so slowly.
I couldnt go anywhere.
There would be moments where I was really trying to hold it together and pinching my leg.
You know that trick?
You start to laugh and you inflict pain on yourself so you dont.
Ive always been a fan of Christopher Gueststyle comedies a real mockumentary.
Nothing is better thanWaiting for GuffmanandBest in Show.And, of course,Curband Larry David.
Ive never been given an opportunity to do it.
I want to be looking other actors in the eyes and have a level of unpredictability.
I wasnt trained in long-form improv.
I still dont know what Im doing.
I just know what I think is funny.
It was exciting to send up the entitled Hollywood celebrity.
I got to wake up every day and do what I thought would be funny to make fun of.
I love playing a character whos a buffoon.
I love making an ass of myself and have fun doing it.
This was the perfect role to do it with.
That was as sharp as it gets.
I remember feeling ill-equipped for that show.
I would think to myself,Jon Hamm is here?
Matt Damon was just here?
And now they want me to play the boyfriend?
Im not sure I qualify.But I had so much fun with Tina Fey.
It was pros knocking out home runs every take.
