After several long days of deliberating, the cast of Amazon Freevee’s “Jury Duty” got a night to waste away in Margaritaville. While the restaurant was staged with hidden cameras, actors and even one producer made up to look like a Margaritaville manager, the cast and one Ronald Gladden still got to enjoy real food and drinks along with each other’s company.
“Everyone needed that night,” said “Jury Duty” director Jake Szymanski. “Everyone really was kind of bonding in a special way, and that all came together at Margaritaville.”
While the actors had to improvise some of the scene, the field trip was born in the writers room along with certain beats. The overarching goal was to make the experience believable to Gladden, which is what they had been doing throughout the whole show.
Leaving the court room, there were a few changes that had to be addressed. For sound recording purposes, there was no music playing inside the restaurant. “How is he gonna walk in a Margaritaville and it be silent?” wondered Edy Modica, who plays Jeannie. The crew had to build three Margaritaville-esque camera blinds out of mirrors, bamboo and parrots so that the camera men could properly hide. There were no cuts, no breaks so the camera crew had to stay fully hidden and even the background actors had to remain in character the entire course of the cast’s dinner.
One objective was getting Gladden to sit in the right place to be filmed. By staging a quick interview outside with him so that all the seats were filled up, Gladden had no choice but to sit right where they wanted him. Another was getting Gladden to win an arm-wrestling battle with Marsden to see who would pick up the $1500 check.
Still, some things just worked out by the grace of improv. On the ride home, Mekki Leeper, who plays Noah, unintentionally vomits through the school bus window after drinking too many sugary drinks at Margaritaville. This provided a small problem for filming as Szymanski revealed that they had actually set up a vomiting sequence for the following day, but like all things “Jury Duty,” the crew and cast swiftly pivoted for the more organic moment.
Although very fun and consistently changing, the overall shoot itself wasn’t an easy task. “This process itself was draining, because you have to be on for five or six hours a day,” Marsden said. He would then go home and keep a journal of potential bits to be used the following day based on what happened that day.
Margaritaville, and the rest of the series, was an ongoing chess game that everyone but Gladden was constantly playing, even when shooting wrapped. But in the end, the show made people laugh and it made people look a little differently at humanity.
“I’m honored that people are calling me a hero. The reason why I feel so weird about that title, though, is because if you look at what I did, all I was doing was trying to be a decent human being,” said Gladden.
Watch the full episode above, Variety’s “Making A Scene” is presented by HBO.
