'Jury Duty' Auditions and How the Cast Landed Their Roles

Vanity Fair

Jury Duty casting director Susie Ferris takes us through her casting process that all started as a blank canvas. From the first audition tapes submitted by Susan Berger, Edy Modica, Mekki Leeper and Ron Song to reaching out to James Marsden to join the show to play "a heightened version of himself," Susie breaks down the intricacies of meeting David Bernard's vision through her stellar casting.  Director: Funmi Sunmonu Director of Photography: AJ Young  Editor: Tajah Smith Producer: Juliet Lopez  Line Producer: Romeeka Powell  Associate Producer: Emebeit Beyene Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi  Production Coordinator: Kariesha Kidd  Associate Talent Manager: Paige Garbarini  Camera Operator: Oliver Lukacs Sound : Gray Thomas-Sowers Production Assistant: Ariel Labasan  Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James Supervising Editor: Kameron Key Assistant Editor: Lauren Worona

Transcript

00:00 all kind of started talking about James Marsden.

00:03 And the more you talk about him,

00:04 there's no reason not to hire him.

00:06 You just cross your fingers and hope that he says yes.

00:08 - No! - No!

00:09 - Judge!

00:10 - Something's wrong.

00:11 I'm as sober as a judge.

00:13 - No!

00:14 - I'm gonna make a movie out of the movie

00:16 that's being made here.

00:17 This is [beep] insane.

00:19 - Hey, Vanity Fair.

00:20 I'm Suzy Farris, the casting director for "Jury Duty."

00:23 And today we're gonna break down how we cast the show.

00:26 [upbeat music]

00:29 [upbeat music]

00:32 Normally when you're casting a scripted show,

00:37 you'll start with a breakdown of all the characters

00:39 that you're looking for.

00:40 In this particular instance,

00:42 we didn't have any character breakdowns.

00:44 It was really a blank canvas for me

00:46 to stretch my casting muscle and figure out

00:48 the best people who could populate a jury.

00:50 Dave Brunette and I had an existing relationship.

00:53 He called me to say, "I have a comedy for you.

00:55 "It's an ensemble comedy.

00:57 "We don't need any names.

00:59 "You can have a really good time with this.

01:01 "It's kind of 'The Office' meets 'The Joe Schmo Show.'"

01:05 My reaction was, "It sounds really great.

01:08 "Thank you for calling again.

01:10 "And why don't you send me the script and I'll read it,

01:13 "and then we'll go from there."

01:14 At that point, he said,

01:15 "Why don't we all just jump on a call?"

01:17 And that's basically when I learned

01:19 that there was no script.

01:20 [upbeat music]

01:22 - I will arrest every last one of y'all.

01:24 - Is Sativa in it?

01:26 - Yes. - Sit, drink.

01:27 [claps]

01:28 - Our first step diving into the whole process

01:31 was two basic breakdowns that we had.

01:34 One was just for a male juror,

01:36 and the other one was for a female juror.

01:38 And the only requirements really were that you were 18 plus,

01:42 so you could legitimately serve on a jury.

01:45 We did say improv skills would be great.

01:48 That was really all.

01:49 We asked people to tape themselves,

01:51 and we gave them two prompts,

01:53 and they could choose one of the characters to be,

01:55 and to send us a tape no longer than 60 seconds

01:58 of them talking in that character.

02:01 - Yeah.

02:02 I came out here in the '70s with my band.

02:06 We were gonna make it big,

02:08 and then something happened in the '80s.

02:12 Odessa was overdoing the drugs, and we broke up.

02:15 - There's always a right actor for the right part,

02:17 and we got so lucky that, you know, that this was her part.

02:20 What she was doing in her self-tape,

02:22 we thought maybe we were gonna have

02:24 like an old rock and roller type female.

02:27 They ended up having the character

02:28 go in a different direction.

02:29 That was just an example of,

02:31 we love the character of Susan Berger,

02:33 so we're gonna find something to make it work for her.

02:36 - Shows my gross sales for the calendar year of 2021.

02:39 - And what do you notice from July to December 2021?

02:45 - Edie did not have a character description

02:49 that we had asked her to play.

02:51 She was just responding to one of the prompts

02:54 that we had suggested that actors give us,

02:56 and what I love so much about Edie

02:58 is that she made a really bold choice

03:00 and committed to it to the nth degree,

03:03 and it really worked.

03:05 - The next day, Craig comes home,

03:07 and he got a free Willie tattoo.

03:10 - I decided to wear my fake breasts plate,

03:14 their G cup, their $100.

03:16 When casting directors are often saying to actors,

03:18 "Make a choice," it may not always be right for the role,

03:22 but when it's right, it's right, and she's undeniable.

03:26 She's 1,000% committed to having just a strong sense of self.

03:31 Basically, I was just trying to come up

03:35 with super interesting, kind of quirky,

03:38 normal-seeming people who you would see

03:42 on a jury in Los Angeles,

03:44 every shape and color and size and age,

03:47 and make it feel as real as possible

03:50 so that we didn't give up the whole thing

03:52 before it even started.

03:53 We got 1,000 and some for the jury pool,

03:57 and then when we started to get a little more specific

04:00 about the judge and the prosecutors,

04:03 we got another 500 there

04:05 'cause we were asking for those people

04:07 to actually have legal backgrounds

04:09 so that they were okay with the legal jargon

04:11 that they were going to have to come up with themselves.

04:14 - Good afternoon, Mr. Greggs.

04:16 It's true, isn't it, sir, that you were once arrested

04:19 for masturbating in a public movie theater?

04:21 That's correct, isn't it?

04:23 - That's, yes, that's true.

04:24 [upbeat music]

04:29 - He said that Trevor was a really nice guy,

04:32 but then it came out later

04:33 that he masturbated his penal off at The Grove.

04:37 - For "Callback," it happened during COVID,

04:40 so everything was a self-tape in the beginning

04:42 for the first step,

04:43 which actually worked really well for our purposes.

04:45 And then we had a really wild callback,

04:48 which was set at a focus group company.

04:51 So the focus group pulled in half the people,

04:53 and then we had the other six people per group

04:55 would be actors,

04:56 and they were the actors that we wanted to call back.

04:59 They watched a trailer for "West Side Story,"

05:01 and it was really just meant to be a conversation.

05:04 One of our producers was the moderator

05:06 and would just ask them questions and get them talking.

05:09 To try to figure out the chemistry of the cast,

05:12 that was the big intention

05:13 behind having a focus group callback.

05:16 One of our producers, Nick Hatton,

05:17 had worked with Sacha Baron Cohen a lot,

05:19 and he was very used to sort of trying to figure out

05:23 scenarios like this in his previous work.

05:25 They were given prompts the night before by the director

05:28 about what sort of type of character he wanted them

05:31 to play within the framework of during the focus group,

05:34 and it was fascinating.

05:36 It was wild.

05:37 That's where some of the actors actually really cemented

05:39 their place on the jury in our minds.

05:41 Sadly, some of the people who we had really high hopes for

05:44 didn't really rise to the occasion.

05:45 Susan Berger, who plays Barb,

05:47 was one of the standouts of the day.

05:49 She was hilarious.

05:51 She started talking about being a freegan,

05:53 which none of us knew anything about,

05:55 but apparently a freegan does not like to spend money

05:57 on anything, specifically food.

05:59 A freegan will go around sort of as we knew it,

06:02 like dumpster diving.

06:03 She committed to this.

06:05 It was such a strong choice.

06:07 It was incredible.

06:08 We were sure that she was definitely

06:10 making it onto the jury.

06:11 [upbeat music]

06:13 - Fashion-wise, does it look okay?

06:15 - My margaritas, my margaritas!

06:17 - I got an arm wrestle, James.

06:18 - Come on, let's just go!

06:20 - The whole casting process was about 12 weeks.

06:23 We started late October, and I think by December,

06:27 we had an idea of who our jurors were.

06:30 That's when the writers started figuring out

06:32 who their characters were actually going to be.

06:34 - Who has she been there with?

06:37 - She's there with her friends, Brenna,

06:39 Francisca, and Cody, I don't know.

06:41 But they're all just like a nice little girl group.

06:46 - Is Cody a girl?

06:47 - Yeah.

06:49 - Are you sure about that?

06:52 She might be there with her friends.

06:54 - What?

06:57 - Mekki Leeper is one of my favorite jurors on the cast.

07:02 He was actually also a writer on the show.

07:05 Once they saw his initial self-tape,

07:08 they were thinking that he was like a post-college kid

07:11 and that he had come from a religious background,

07:15 a really conservative upbringing.

07:17 - My girlfriend and I have our six-month anniversary trip.

07:19 We're going to Miami because my friend Derek said

07:21 that God can't see what happens there

07:22 'cause of the humidity.

07:24 - Cassandra Blair read for a couple roles.

07:27 - They are rude as hell.

07:28 I told number 12, I said, "Sir, I cannot let you leave

07:32 "this room until six o'clock in the morning.

07:34 "It is now 4.45, you got an hour and 15 minutes."

07:37 He was like, "You don't have no authority.

07:38 "You look like a busser from the Cheesecake Factory."

07:40 - Initially, we were thinking maybe she would be

07:42 a good bailiff.

07:43 She also read for a juror,

07:46 and she came to the focus group as well,

07:49 and she was really great, just sort of deadpan

07:52 and calls a spade a spade.

07:53 - RBI?

07:54 - Yes, ma'am.

07:55 - What's RBI?

07:56 - Reddit Bureau of Investigations.

07:58 I mean, yeah, I'm into true crime documentaries,

08:01 podcasts, all that stuff, you know?

08:03 So when I got the summons, I was like, "Hell yeah, finally!"

08:06 But nah, this case is dumb.

08:08 - I love Ron's song.

08:11 My mom and I used to watch it on television

08:16 on Thursday nights in court TV.

08:21 - Ron's song "In Life" does not speak that slowly.

08:24 His tape just really cracked us up.

08:26 He also was one of the actors who cemented his role

08:29 on the jury from his focus group callback.

08:31 When asked the question,

08:32 who would he take to the premiere of the movie,

08:36 he kept repeating that very slowly,

08:39 that he would take his mother,

08:41 and then kept pressing that only, only if he had to.

08:45 He would never wanna see this movie.

08:47 And he was just hilarious.

08:48 We all walked away and we felt like,

08:50 "Okay, he's definitely a juror.

08:51 "Tick that box, who's next?"

08:53 When we got Alan Barinholtz's self-tape,

08:55 I was so over the moon.

08:57 This is exactly what every single casting director

09:00 wants all the time.

09:01 All we want is for somebody to come in and nail it.

09:04 - I've got two rules.

09:05 Make that three rules now in my court.

09:07 The first is, follow my orders.

09:10 The second is, don't bullshit me.

09:12 And the third, no dick pics.

09:15 - He showed us that he can speak legalese.

09:17 He can come up with very funny things off the cuff,

09:20 but they seem really natural to him coming out of his mouth.

09:23 And I love his Chicago accent.

09:26 It's just, it feels like that's like a character

09:29 in and of itself.

09:29 I love his age and his life experience.

09:32 It was just, it was magical.

09:34 It was perfect.

09:35 I was so excited to send it to the producers.

09:37 And the second I did, I said, this is our guy.

09:40 And everybody agreed with me.

09:41 He was living in Chicago at the time,

09:43 and he wanted to come here and play with us

09:46 for this whole length of time.

09:48 And he's actually since moved here

09:50 and he's pursuing acting,

09:51 which is a whole second career for him

09:54 that he wanted to do years ago, I'm told.

09:56 And he's fantastic.

09:57 There were a lot of actors who we saw

09:59 for the jury pool in the beginning.

10:02 And then some of whom we ended up loving

10:06 in terms of who they were and what they brought to it,

10:08 but they didn't necessarily end up on the jury.

10:11 Specifically Whitney Rice,

10:12 she came to the callback to the focus group

10:15 and she was hilarious.

10:17 She committed to being a very fancy lady

10:19 who didn't really have time for this.

10:21 And she was headed to the airport

10:22 and everybody there got really flustered

10:24 trying to figure out the quickest routes

10:26 for her to get to the airport.

10:27 Everybody was so in it with her

10:29 that she was gonna maybe miss her plane.

10:31 She didn't end up on the jury,

10:33 but she ended up being the plaintiff in our show.

10:35 And we were really looking for them

10:37 to bring interesting things to the table,

10:39 to sort of be quick on their feet

10:41 and be funny in a very grounded way.

10:44 And I think it would have been really different

10:46 had we had actors coming in the room for us at first.

10:49 There wasn't anything for me to read or interact with them.

10:52 So we got to have a good sense of what kind of thing

10:54 are they gonna bring to the table?

10:56 Because with improv,

10:58 they didn't have any dialogue in the show.

11:00 They had beats that they were supposed to hit,

11:02 but they were gonna have to come up with

11:04 all of this dialogue on their feet.

11:06 I don't know if you remember what I was wearing yesterday.

11:08 I had attachments for a chair.

11:10 I saw what you was wearing yesterday.

11:11 But I was just, if you wanted to use them.

11:12 No.

11:14 You know what though?

11:14 I do want to say, I feel like you a low-key genius.

11:19 'Cause the stuff you be saying.

11:20 Confidential.

11:23 That means top secret.

11:28 For my eyes only.

11:32 Casting James Marsden, we approached it in the same way

11:35 that we would approach normal scripted casting roles

11:39 on anything else that I've done.

11:40 We started with a really big laundry list of celebrity names.

11:44 Started to whittle it down, just thinking,

11:46 you know, who the public might like,

11:50 who we thought might be game to do something like this.

11:53 And also someone that, you know,

11:54 we thought would be really fun to work with

11:56 and be fun to watch, Dave Burnett,

11:59 and Jake Zemanski, our director.

12:02 And I had worked with James Marsden before

12:04 on something called Tour de Pharmacy.

12:06 We all kind of started talking about James Marsden.

12:09 And the more you talk about him,

12:11 there's no reason not to hire him.

12:12 You just cross your fingers and hope that he says yes.

12:15 Have you ever served on a jury before?

12:17 Yes, ma'am.

12:18 Was that here in Los Angeles?

12:20 No.

12:21 Where was it?

12:22 Cannes.

12:23 In France?

12:26 Yeah, it's the film festival.

12:27 I mean a civil or a criminal jury.

12:30 Oh, no, no, sorry.

12:32 Okay.

12:33 We got really lucky.

12:34 Dave Burnett is friendly with him

12:36 and reached out to him first

12:38 before we made an official offer to his team.

12:40 And Dave sort of explained the nature of the show,

12:43 how we were looking for, you know,

12:45 this guy to be the hero and for this celebrity

12:49 to play a very heightened version of himself.

12:52 And James thought that it would be fun.

12:54 And, you know, we got lucky.

12:59 Yesterday, the judge chose a four person.

13:02 He appointed me as it.

13:03 No surprise there.

13:04 Ronald wasn't cast yet at the point of the focus group.

13:08 That casting was happening

13:09 with the producers simultaneously.

13:11 We had to be somewhat secretive about what it was

13:15 because we didn't want to give up what the whole show was.

13:19 We really wanted to make sure that any of the candidates

13:22 in the Ronald pool wouldn't hear about this thing.

13:26 We were pretty secretive

13:27 and they were sort of sending in tapes blind.

13:29 When they got a call back for the focus group,

13:31 that's when I really laid out as much as possible

13:34 to the agent's representative saying,

13:36 "Okay, so this is the type of show it is.

13:38 "It's gonna be mostly improv

13:40 "and there's gonna be one real guy

13:41 "who's gonna be the hero.

13:43 "He's not gonna be the butt of any joke,

13:44 "but he's going to be the hero."

13:46 And tried to let them in on as much as possible.

13:49 - There's always something crazy that comes up.

13:50 - Damn it!

13:52 God damn it!

13:53 [gunshot]

13:54 - Mr. Morris.

13:55 - I was blown away by how the show turned out

13:57 and I was just amazed that these actors

14:00 were able to pull it off.

14:01 I mean, it's such a huge feat staying in character 24/7

14:05 to really have to just be on for such a long period of time.

14:10 Your guard has to be up and that can't be easy.

14:13 - I feel like I don't really want it.

14:14 - Oh my God!

14:15 - Of all of the human organs that have suboptimal design,

14:19 the heart is the most flawed of all.

14:22 I love that we were able to find people undiscovered to most

14:26 and give them this really big opportunity.

14:28 I love that they're having their moment.

14:31 Thank you, Vanity Fair, so much for having me

14:33 and I hope that you enjoyed seeing behind the curtain

14:37 of the casting process on "Jury Duty."

14:39 [upbeat music]

14:42 (upbeat music)

Transcript

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