Path to the Emmy Awards: James Marsden
It may come as a surprise that an A-lister like James Marsden has yet to receive an Emmy nomination. But with Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty — the mockumentary series about a fake trial with actors playing jurors and one civilian who thinks he’s performing jury duty on a real case — Marsden may just land his first-ever nod from the Television Academy. If you’re wondering what led up to this moment in the actor’s career, you’ve come to the right place.
Marsden grew up in Stillwater, Oklahoma and started working in front of the camera as a teen reporter when he was just 16 years old. During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the actor recalled how he was amongst a group of drama students cast as local anchors on Good Morning Oklahoma to deliver two-minute educational news segments on live TV. A young Marsden later went on to use his pull at the station to get his teenage band, The Trailblazers, on Good Morning Oklahoma to perform a harmonized rendition of “Home on the Range.”
The actor went on to study broadcast journalism at Oklahoma State University before leaving school for Hollywood. During a career retrospective with Vanity Fair, the actor shared how he had just moved to Los Angeles — at 19 — when he landed one of his first auditions, a small role in the pilot of The Nanny. He kept building TV credits from there, including one-episode appearances on series like Blossom, Party of Five, and Touched by an Angel. Marsden then landed a series regular role as Ricky Beckett on ABC’s family drama Second Noah, which ran from 1996 to 1998. The same year it wrapped, the budding actor led David Nutter’s sci-fi horror Disturbing Behavior. “This [feature] was my first foray into doing a film that was going to end up in theaters, which was pretty d-mn exciting at the time,” Marsden expressed during the same Vanity Fair interview.
With momentum building, the actor starred in Davis Guggenheim’s 2000 thriller Gossip, and then came his big break. After Jim Caviezel had to back out of playing the role of Cyclops in Bryan Singer’s X-Men, the part went to Marsden. From there, his career took off. It’s hard to summarize the breadth and depth of all the credits the 49-year-old actor accumulated over his 30-year career so far, but we’ll give you some highlights.
Besides reprising his role in the next two installments of the superhero film series, Marsden played Lon Hammond in Nick Cassavetes’ 2004 romance drama The Notebook. He showed off his singing chops in 2007 with both the film adaptation of Hairspray and Disney’s live-action musical Enchanted.
Marsden went on to showcase his comedic prowess, playing a man who accidentally drops acid before meeting his fiancée’s family in 2010’s Death at a Funeral. And let’s not forget his portrayal of Criss Chros in the last two seasons of Tina Fey’s comedy series 30 Rock, as well as Jack Lime in the 2013 Anchorman sequel The Legend Continues. Then Marsden gave a notable dramatic turn as Teddy Flood during the 2016-to-2022 run of HBO’s hit sci-fi series Westworld.
The A-lister continued accumulating big-name credits, ranging from 2020’s film adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog to Netflix’s Dead to Me to this year’s revival of Starz’s Party Down. And then came Jury Duty. Variety asserts that the actor’s turn in the mockumentary-style series is “quite possibly his finest acting performance of his career yet.” In it, Marsden plays an exaggerated version of himself as a movie star who’s selected to be an alternate juror for the show’s central trial. While the series’ cast had outlines of each episode, working around the one non-actor (Ronald Gladden) who thought he was just being filmed for a behind-the-scenes documentary on jury duty made for eight episodes of long-form improvisation.
“I’ve never done anything like this before, so that was the appeal, but also the source of terror,” Marsden told The Wrap. “I love the world of improv comedy.” Audiences seemed to love the show’s improv, as well, and it became a surprise hit series this spring. Jury Duty might just be a dark horse contender for this year’s Emmy Awards, including an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series nom for Marsden. You can find out if the actor lands his first-ever nod from the Television Academy when Emmy nominations are announced on July 12.
Looking to get your big break? Sign up or login to Casting Networks and land your next acting role today!
You may also like:
- Success Story: Salem Rocabado on Booking Blue Shield
- What Are You Doing to Get Through the WGA Writers Strike?
- Strike Times: Our Guide to a Casting Director-Inspired Watchlist
