Jury Duty has been the talk of the town since it's debut on Amazon Freevee earlier this month.
The mockumentary series follows a group of jurors sitting on a trial, but the kicker is that this whole thing is a prank and everyone is an actor, except for one juror named Ronald Gladden, who thinks the whole thing is legit.
And since I devoured the series in a day, I obviously couldn't function until I'd Googled every single thing about the show, the actors, and how it all went down. Here's everything I learned:
1. Ronald was genuinely in the dark about the entire thing — he actually thought he was filming a documentary about jury duty, which was why he wasn't phased by any of the cameras, mics, or reshooting of scenes.
2. Ronald actually applied for the series through an ad on Craigslist.
3. About 2,500 candidates volunteered to participate in the "documentary." So, when searching for the perfect non-actor to cast in the show, the producers fell in love with Ronald because he's just such a "good person" and they felt he was a great contrast with the rest of the actors involved.
4. Ronald never anticipated becoming a celebrity or even a reality TV star. But since the series debuted the positive fan reaction has been surreal for him.
5. The series was created by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, who both worked as writers/producers on The Office, so they understand the mockumentary-style verrrrry well.
6. To really drive home the "documentary" facade, Ronald only ever saw "three camera people, a producer, and a couple of sound people working on the film," even though the series' production team employed about 100.
7. But since the "documentary crew" couldn't be with the jurors during after-hours they installed hidden cameras and fake mirrors.
8. Literally every single person who appears in the series was a paid extra or a production team member.
9. The trial itself lasted 17 days and included 12 witnesses and 28 pieces of evidence, so there's over 30 hours of in-court testimony that was filmed. But we only got to see about four hours of it.
10. In the series, the bailiff explains that they split the jurors up into two hotels, because one was fully booked. But actually, those other actors couldn't spend weeks away from their families so they'd just go home for the night.
11. Even though they were playing characters, the other actors tried to be as real as possible with Ron. When they could, they told him real stories about themselves so they could build a genuine friendship — they even still talk and hang out.
12. Before Ronald knew the whole series was a prank, he said that he was closest to fellow juror Inez, who's played by Maria Russell.
13. Ken (Ron Song), Noah (Mekki Leeper), and Todd (David Brown) were among the jurors who played characters who were very different from themselves IRL.
14. David Brown was in a particular situation because he actually shared a door with Ronald at the hotel. Afraid of ruining the whole secret, he stayed in character pretty much the entire time.
15. Ronald even said he was "so relieved" that James Marsden was much kinder IRL than how he presents himself in the series.
16. Ron's girlfriend was also in on the whole prank and she helped convince him that it was totally normal for the jury to be sequestered and have their phones taken away, especially since a famous person like James Marsden was a juror.
17. A majority of the series was improvised, but just so producers could maintain some sort of structure, they gave certain actors earpieces to guide them.
18. The courthouse used in the series wasn't even functioning anymore — it'd literally only been used as a haunted house in recent years — so the production crew rehabilitated it to look as real as possible.
19. Finally, Ronald also explained that he "couldn't process it all" when he first found out the last three weeks had been a joke. It took him a few days to fully make sense of it all.
