Jury Duty Makes Huge Emmys Splash, Snags 4 Nominations (Including Best Comedy Series)

The verdict is in: Jury Duty is a pop culture phenomenon.

The groundbreaking, genre-bending Amazon Freevee satire cemented its status as one of the year's biggest, most unexpected breakout hits on Wednesday by snagging multiple Emmy nominations, including one for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for James Marsden. The series also received nods for best writing and casting.

Premiering back in April, Jury Duty chronicled the inner workings of an American jury trial system through the eyes of one particular juror, Ronald Gladden, a solar contractor from San Diego. What Gladden didn't know is that the entire case being tried was fake. And with the exception of himself, everyone — including onetime X-Man Marsden — was an actor. And everything that happened, inside the courtroom and out, was carefully planned.

Besides Marsden, who played an alternate (read: super obnoxious) version of himself, the cast of jurors, court employees and judge included Alan Barinholtz (History of the World, Part II), Susan Berger (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Cassandra Blair (Hacks), David Brown, Kirk Fox (Reservation Dogs), Ross Kimball, Pramode Kumar, Trisha LaFache, Mekki Leeper (The Sex Lives of College Girls), Brandon Loeser, Edy Modica (Made for Love), Rashida "Sheedz" Olayiwola (South Side), Kerry O'Neill (Murderville), Whitney Rice, Maria Russell, Ishmel Sahid, Ben Seaward, Ron Song and Evan Williams.

"Jury Duty originated with a question: Was it possible to make a sitcom like The Office about a trial, populate it with brilliant comedic performers, and put a real person at the center of the show who doesn't realize he's surrounded by actors?" executive producer Todd Schulman said prior to the show's launch. "We honestly had no idea, but when we pitched it to Freevee we pretended like it was a sure thing. Thank God we pulled it off."

In including the docu-comedy among our Dream Emmy Nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series, we called Jury Duty "gleefully chaotic" and "a delight."