Jury Duty's BTS Margaritaville Footage Proves The Show Was Chaotic - And Special
With its blend of elaborate hidden camera pranks and workplace sitcom moments, "Jury Duty" is a unique series experiment. Every glimpse and insight into how the show managed to pull off its weeks-long deception of "Jury Duty" star Ronald Gladden is valuable. Recently, a pretty good one just dropped in a YouTube video (via Variety).
The video goes deep into one of the show's most mind-bending sequences: the dinner for the jury at Margaritaville. Watching the show, it's impossible not to wonder about certain aspects of this sequence. Was it filmed at a real Margaritaville? Was anyone drinking for real? What exactly was the genesis of that arm-wrestling contest? Some of these questions are answered in the show itself — like the hilarious detail that no one in the show could drink until Gladden ordered a drink. But the Variety featurette goes in-depth on this particular part of the show and pulls back the curtain on how the producers made the scene work.
Within the video, we see just how much preparation went into filming "Jury Duty." A real Margaritaville location had to be equipped with countless cameras, all hidden from view, and background actors were hired to fill the restaurant. (The usual practice of posting disclaimers that filming was happening at the location would have tipped Ronald Gladden off to the truth.)
The Margaritaville sequence seems to have been one of the more challenging parts of the show to film
The mechanics of the "Jury Duty" Margaritaville scene get even more impressive from there. One amusing tidbit: Executive producer Andrew Weinberg took an undercover job as a Margaritaville waiter to deliver notes to the cast — all under Ronald Gladden's oblivious nose.
Fans should watch the video above because it shows just how much work it took to get things right and how close the illusion could have come to collapsing. Also, it shows how some things you might assume were scripted weren't. Remember when nervous Noah (Mekki Leeper) hangs his head outside the bus home from Margaritaville and vomits? It turns out that is one of the few things that happened for real. Even funnier is that Leeper threw up — not because of alcohol — but because the virgin margaritas he was drinking had too much sugar for his stomach.
All episodes of the beloved "Jury Duty" are now streaming on Freevee.