‘Jury Duty’ Showrunner Cody Heller: “Just making it through was my biggest concern.”

Ronald Gladden thought he signed up to make a documentary about the American judicial system. In reality, everything around him, from his fellow jurors, to the judge, lawyers, and courthouse, was fake—an elaborate set-up for an Amazon Freevee show titled Jury Duty. The aim was to see what happens when you throw an ordinary guy into some pretty weird circumstances. It turns out that Gladden is a great guy, an everyday hero. And when you sequester a group of strangers and take away their phones, people are capable of connecting in unexpected ways and treating each other with genuine kindness.

Here is where I should mention that Jury Duty is also hysterically funny. From chair pants, hookups, incompetent witness testimony, and a very smelly turd; Jury Duty remained fully committed to embracing the absurd, and the result is one of the most refreshingly original and side-splittingly hilarious TV shows produced in ages.

The Jury Duty gamble paid off big time. The eight-episode series became a word-of-mouth hit with millions of viewers and heaps of praise—the show received four Emmy nominations, including Best Comedy Series and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for James Marsden, who plays a heightened version of himself.

Showrunner Cody Heller joined Awards Daily‘s Shadan Larki to discuss all things Jury Duty— including how she fostered a kind work environment, the funniest moments that didn’t make it on TV, the attention to detail needed to maintain an alternate reality for weeks, and her constant fear that it could all fall apart at any moment.

Awards Daily: This show came into my life in a very strange moment where I was feeling cynical and kind of terrible, and I just appreciated how nice everyone was and how much compassion the show had, not just for Ronald, but for everyone. It was just nice to see people be nice to each other. You’ve spoken about how your goal was never to trick anyone or anything like that. Can you tell me about fostering that positive environment?

Cody Heller: That means so much, first of all, that you could feel that because honestly, I have to say that was always the show’s intention, even before I was involved. Gene [Stupnitsky], Lee [Eisenberg], Todd [Schulman], and Dave [Bernad] came up with this idea and sold it, and then they brought me on to show-run. So it was built into the DNA of the show already; this was never meant to be a prank show, a mean show. It was meant to highlight this guy in a good way, to show his humanity, to make him go on a hero’s journey and be that hero. So that was always built into it. 

But, I will say that as a showrunner, I put a lot of intention behind the way that I lead. And I sound like an asshole saying it like this, but I started off as an assistant, so I have seen many different productions from many different positions. And it is my opinion that for years and years, it was just the culture of Hollywood that showrunners, bosses, directors, and people in power were allowed to be abusive, and it was okay and it was accepted. Like, ‘That’s just part of the deal.’ And I have a strong negative reaction to that and believe truly that great art and great entertainment can be created in many ways, but I don’t think anyone needs to be crying at the end of the day when you’re working on a TV show that’s made to make meant to make people laugh.

Especially with this show— it’s such a collaborative thing by its very nature—that I just wanted to foster this environment of everyone working together. Like, ‘We’re all at the same level, doing this crazy experiment and trying to see if we can pull it off.’ Everyone participated in a truly amazing way. And I say this a lot, but Ronald restored my faith in humanity. But also, in the project itself, everyone involved, top to bottom, became a little family and continues to this day to be a family. Like everyone in the cast, a lot of the crew, Ronald himself— everyone keeps in touch. And with the strike going on, a lot of us go picket together. And it’s a very family vibe that was created, which Ronald is a core part of. So the fact that it comes through on the screen means so much to me because that was part of what I very intentionally went about trying to lead the show with.

AD: What moment or scene made you laugh the hardest? Because for me, it was definitely the chair pants; that just knocked me out.

CH: There were so many moments. I could laugh a little bit because I was in the control room. I was constantly in awe of the fact that the actors were holding it together. I think the funniest but most terrifying moment for me was probably when both videos were shown in court. Because we made the mistake of not showing the actors beforehand, the videos that would be presented as part of the evidence are hysterical in different ways; both the plaintiff’s ridiculous and the defense’s ridiculous. And seeing all of the actors watching it for the first time and doing their best, they nailed it. None of them broke enough that Ronald noticed, but in the finale, you can see some almost breaking.

One of my favorite things always was with David Brown, the actor who played Todd. He has the CamelBak thing with the straw he drinks out of, and whenever he was about to laugh, he would just suck hard on the straw and drink through the straw. And that would always make me laugh so hard. Because I’d be like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s so funny that the people in the scene itself are actually on the brink of laughter,’ which felt like an SNL kind of thing. There were so many things that made me laugh. One of the funniest moments was in episode two when Ronald and Todd realized that they had an adjoining door, and then Todd went around and came, and then Bailiff Nikki [Rashida Olayiwola] was standing there. That was not planned; to me, it felt like such a highly choreographed Marx Brothers routine. I was like, ‘This is insane that this just happened.’ I can’t speak highly enough of all the actors, but at that moment, the comedy coming from Rashida and Todd, and then Ronald, just being the straight man in this insane thing, was just like gold. 

And we didn’t plan this at all; this is just one of the many things that happen when you set out to make something that’s never been made before. You have kind of an idea and storylines, but there are so many places it could go— the possibilities are endless.

AD: And there’s so much that was shot that didn’t make it in the final cut. What’s something you wish could’ve been included?

CH: Yeah. There was a whole storyline that wound up getting cut just because we didn’t have time for it; we just had so much material. But, in the first episode, with the character of Todd, who’s already very eccentric and into weird things with his body parts, transhumanism stuff, we find out during the voir dire that he’s also an ex-felon. He’s just had his rights restored. He was in jail for something, and we do not find out what it is the whole season. It’s funny because we see Ronald quickly accept Todd into his orbit, and not only accept him, like when he opens the door to him, but then shows him A Bug’s Life and takes him on a makeover trip to the mall, which was, again, not scripted things, those were Ronald’s things. The audience just thinks, ‘Yes, this is a weird guy, and it’s nice that Ronald’s doing that”, but they don’t know there’s an additional layer that existed within Ronald’s reality, which was he also thought that Todd had a criminal past, which he politely never dug into and was so accepting of him.

AD: You’ve spoken about how during the making of Jury Duty, you were always in this state of anxiety, of, ‘Is this whole thing going to fall apart?’ Can you tell me about that? And was there a moment in particular where you thought, ‘Okay, this is it; we’ve lost the thread?’

CH: When I said yes to the job, there was always this part of me that was like, ‘There is a chance that this could fail.’ And that made it kind of exciting to take the job in a way, which is crazy. Because when you sign up to make a show, no matter what— even if it’s a bad show— at the end of the day, you’ll come out with a show. And with this, there were no guarantees. So that was frightening. Just making it through was my biggest concern— Can we hold up this reality for long enough to get through the entire trial and hopefully get Ronald to a place where he has this sort of 12 Angry Men moment with the deliberations?

Chair pants day was the day that I was the most worried about. It was the moment with Mardsen, and they’re in line with the whole chair pants thing going on, and Ronald says, ‘This feels like a fucking reality show.’ And I remember just melting onto the floor and crawling under the desk and being like, ‘Oh, we’re done. He figured it out.’ But he, in fact, did not figure it out; when he said that, he was expressing that ‘So many crazy things are happening.’ He would never have expressed to Marsden that he guessed that so many crazy things were going on. It would take a very narcissistic person to think, ‘Everyone else is an actor. This whole thing is a production solely for my benefit. I am the hero of this sitcom that I don’t know is going on around me.’ It would take a pretty narcissistic person to think that, and Ronald is so the opposite of that. So, I think that worked in our favor in holding up the reality for him. But in that moment, I was like, ‘Oh, we’re screwed.’ And then I was like, ‘Wait, he’s just remarking about how weird it is.’ And I very soon realized, ‘Oh, that was just kind of an expression. He doesn’t think this is actually a reality show.’ He just thinks this is a documentary where a lot of insane stuff is happening, the bureaucracy of the court system is crazy, and the characters around him are crazy. That was the scariest moment. And that was kind of early on. The biggest thing was, can we get him on the hook enough to be selected for the jury, then get into the hotel, and what about when he finds out his phone is getting taken away? That was a huge thing; a lot of people are not cool with that. To his credit, he was just so cool about it; I think he had a conversation with his girlfriend the night before the phones got taken away, and she warned him that might happen. 

So he was already prepared. I think that was also part of the beauty of the whole thing, too disconnecting from technology. And there’s that moment where you see that when everyone had to put their phones away, they start talking and connecting. That was one of those hopeful, humanity, happy moments for me.

AD: The attention to detail and advanced planning needed to pull this off is insane. What was one of those little details that you had to obsess over that maybe I, as the viewer, just wouldn’t be able to appreciate?

CH: There were so many things. We were on call 24/7, and my phone was always on. There were always things coming up. One example, we wanted Ronald to have a good time; we didn’t want him to have a terrible time just for the sake of the show; we wanted the whole experience to be fun for him. So while they were sequestered, there were PAs dressed as bailiffs who were always at the hotel 24 hours a day. They would switch shifts and were always available to help Ronald or anyone staying at the hotel with anything they needed: ordering food, getting entertainment, taking them out. During the first weekend, I think Ronald and the others staying at the hotel were going to go to get brunch and have some mimosas. And we realized, and I might be misremembering this because so many things like this happened, that the actors had fake IDs with their character’s name on them. But they didn’t look very realistic because [the prop department] didn’t have much time to do it. So we were very worried about the actors because it’s like a situation where you happen to get carded at a bar, and you’re with a friend, and you go, ‘Oh, let me see your picture.’ But one of my biggest fears was, ‘Oh, no, Ronald’s going to see one of their IDs and think it looks fake.’ For whatever reason, it didn’t wind up coming up. But, that was the kind of attention to detail at every level, going into maintaining this reality of, ‘These are who these people are for three and a half weeks.’ They also have to pretend they don’t have their cell phones. The people that are supposed to be staying at the other hotel every morning would meet and talk before Ronald and his hotel arrived. The other hotel people were actually just staying at home and would arrive early, and we’d have a morning meeting where they would go over what happened in their reality the night before. So it was a lot of thinking ahead of potential things that could come up that could poke holes in the reality.

Everyone was so committed to the project and really cared about Ronald and the entire thing working. Everyone just put their best foot forward. You can see it a little bit in the finale when Rashida accidentally says ‘Cassandra’ instead of her character’s name. And then Ronald’s like, ‘Who’s Cassandra?’ It’s not like we, as the producers, were like, ‘You got to fix this.’ We weren’t worried about it. Rashida was the one who was like, ‘I am taking this upon myself to fix this thing that wasn’t even going to be a problem.’ But that was the level of care that every person involved in the show really took to maintain the reality, look after Ronald’s well-being and mental health, and make sure that there was never a moment where this was uncomfortable for him or where he was having a bad time.

AD: We need to talk about James Marsden! Was the plan always to have an actor involved? Was it always going to be James? He’s perfect and just the right amount of famous.

CH: That was already built into the DNA of the show when I came on, that there was going to be a celebrity character. And I love that because it’s L.A., and it’s true: I’m really good friends with some people that are kind of well-known, and they get called into jury duty. One of my friends was just an alternate a couple of years ago. I thought that was so weird. I would think that lawyers would worry that [celebrities] carry more influence and therefore not want them on the jury for some reason. But that’s not true. I love the idea that jury duty is the great equalizer. Everybody, every citizen, gets called in, and everyone shows up. So, you’re creating a situation where people from all walks of life who normally would never cross paths will have to work together.

So, I love the idea of a celebrity being in it. We didn’t know who the celebrity would be for a long time. This is a funny anecdote about the script—the reason why James’ character in Lone Pine has the name Caleb is just that for a long time, the script just said “Celeb,” and then when we had a celeb, we just changed the “E” to an “A” for when he was playing the Caleb character. We didn’t know who it would be for most of the writer’s room, but we had an idea of what we wanted out of this guy. We knew what kind of person what kind of celebrity we wanted. Dave Bernad, one of the producers, is good friends with James and approached him about it, and James was so down to do this crazy thing. It’s a tall order because, first of all, he needs to be willing to make fun of himself. But also, for three and a half weeks, there were a lot of days where nothing happened. It was just boring court stuff for hours and hours. And there’s no special treatment; there’s no trailer. This is a different kind of making of a show. Once he signed up to do it, he was just so into it and just became a part of the family. I can’t even imagine anyone else ever doing it. He was just so perfect for it.

AD: I can’t think of another actor who could have pulled it off the way James did.

CH: There’s not even anyone who comes to mind that would work at all. He’s just so perfect. And we definitely wanted, like you said, someone who’s famous enough that they’re recognizable because part of the reason to have a celebrity is that they do sometimes carry more influence. So, we might have needed to use him to help sway Ronald, our hero, in some way or another.

But it was really interesting to see in episode six, the party scene, when Marsden flips the cake, and Roland freaks out on Marsden because Ronald is protective of his fellow jurors and doesn’t care that Marsden is a celebrity. He’s just all about doing the right thing. We had conversations with Marsden about that before, and even though Marsden was playing an asshole, and that was part of it, we still didn’t want Ronald to have a bad time and hate Marsden for an extended period of time. So that’s why you see in the finale, we had him come back with the, ‘It’s a girl’ cake and make up for it because we were like, ‘We don’t want to truly put Ronald through a thing where he’s become friends with Marsden and then suddenly feel that ‘Wow, this guy’s really a dick.’ We wanted to kind of split the difference a little bit.

But yeah, there was no one else I could imagine doing it. His improv skills blew my mind. I always knew he was funny and capable of being funny, in addition to being insanely objectively attractive. But I had no idea that his improv skills would be that impressive, that I would be doubled over in laughter constantly. That’s how it was with the whole cast. It was such an impressive thing to behold every day to just watch them all run with these storylines that the writer’s room came up with.

And because of how most shows work— as we’re learning from the strike— many times, writer’s rooms end, and there is no money to continue paying the writers to be on set. So knowing that was the case, a workaround was, ‘Can I hire writer-performers so that they can move from their writer position into a performer position once we start production?” So that is what we did. Most of the writers in the room were in the show as some of the main characters. For example, Kerry O’Neill, who is the one who came up with the chair pants in the writer’s room, is the security guard who checks everyone’s stuff at the front, the metal “detectors,” as I call her.

Mardsen just truly became part of what felt like a little comedy theater troupe. Everyone was in it on the same level and on the same page.

AD: You have spoken about potentially doing a season two in another universe. I do want to hear about that. But also, just in listening to you, I’m thinking, “Are you not exhausted from this?” Where do you go from here? Have you been able to recover from the highs and the lows of this crazy journey? 

CH: It’s been crazy. Once we wrapped production, then getting into editing was a whole thing. I feel like in most of the interviews I’ve done, I haven’t had the opportunity to speak enough about just how incredible our editors were because this show could have gone a million different ways. And all of our editors were so remarkably talented and committed. 

We had to try so many different things; there were so many ways the show could have gone. The editing process was hugely important. That was another labor of love and a whole giving birth process after production. We finished that at the end of last year. Then it’s just been crazy between the show coming out and getting the crazy reception, which none of us anticipated— we could not have possibly guessed that it would blow up like this; that was insane. And then getting the Emmy nominations. But also being on strike and the SAG strike happening on the same day as the Emmy nominations—it’s been a lot of contradictory emotions of high highs and low lows for this entire creative process. But I think that is the nature of creativity, which is part of what makes stuff special.

I think this show was lightning in a bottle and kind of a magic trick. I mean, weirdly, the way it all unfolded felt imbued with magic. There haven’t been any real discussions about what season two would look like because of the strike. But, I think there’s room to explore this basic concept of putting a real person into a show where they’re unaware of what kind of show they’re participating in. It was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I don’t know how I will ever replicate the feelings of the true adrenaline rush of doing this thing that had never been tried before. We had no way of knowing if it was going to work. There were simple things like finding a courthouse, for example. 

When I first signed up for this, I felt like, ‘Okay, I’m going to show run this thing. I know what I need to do. I need to assemble a room. We need to talk about the story.’ And then, as we started talking about the real stuff, I was like, ‘Wait a second. Okay, so we’ve got to find a real courthouse because we can’t just say to a guy, ‘Hey, yeah, show up to jury duty at the Sony lot or a random building in the Valley.’ They’re going to know. So, thank God we had every team member, like Tara O’Brien, who was our locations manager—she’s also the voice of the. Marsden’s agent when he doesn’t get the role in Lone Pine— participating. Everyone was part of the family; it just felt so special. But Tara found us this real courthouse that had not been operational for ten years. It looked like a real courthouse from the outside, but inside, it had only been used as their community Halloween haunted house every year. It had goblins and cobwebs all over it. Our amazing art and set department came in and, within a couple of weeks, transformed it back to looking like a real courthouse. I have to give so much credit to the day-to-day people who made it possible, like Nicholas Hatton, an executive producer. He worked on Borat movies and knows how to create these realities. There was Alexis Sampietro, who found Ronald, and Andrew Weinberg was one of the other writers and EPs with me—all of the writers, all the performers, and all the editors truly were part of a team effort. I was just such a small part of it. It was such a village, and everyone was like, ‘Let’s do this insane thing together.’ And the fact that we actually pulled it off felt crazy. No one expected it to blow up like it did. And now with the Emmys. I’m just so grateful for this incredible experience.

Jury Duty is streaming on Amazon Freevee.