The first season of Jury Duty was a surprise success and made the whole watching world fall in love with Ronald Gladden, the unwitting star of the hidden camera show.
The comedy series, which dropped in 2023, centered around Gladden as he served on a jury alongside James Marsden, who he knew was an actor, and a dozen other people he didn’t know were faking their roles.
In the end, the joke was on everyone, as no matter how screwball the situations around him got, Gladden remained a tenderhearted, good-natured participant in all of it and left everyone beaming — even as Gladden walked away stunned from the experience.
Now, almost three years later, a new iteration of the show, Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, is coming out on Friday, March 20, to put another unsuspecting subject through the ridiculous wringer. So where is Ronald Gladden amid all of this? Here’s what the Jury Duty favorite has been up to.
He started out as a solar contractor.
Before he signed up for what he thought was a low-budget documentary about jury duty service, Gladden, a native of Wallowa, Oregon, worked as a solar contractor.
He was embarrassed after watching the show.
Appearing on iHeartRadio, Gladden admitted, “The first time I watched it, there was almost a little bit of embarrassment because I’d never been on camera before…. It was just weird seeing myself on TV…. It took me a while to process it. Months and months down the road, things would just randomly hit me. I’d be doing laundry or washing the dishes or something, and I’d be just like, ‘Oh, wow, was that fake?’”
He went on to embrace the fame.
Though he didn’t expect to become a household name, Gladden did warm to the experience and immersed himself more into the Hollywood scene. For one thing, he appeared in an advertisement for Mint Mobile alongside Ryan Reynolds, and signed an overall deal with Prime Video to produce content for the streamer. Plus, he appeared as a guest on Season 1 of Dish It Out, hosted by Tilly Ramsay, was featured on Pop Culture Jeopardy!, and joined several of his Jury Duty costars on Celebrity Family Feud.
He also has a series of brand partners for products sold on his website and does Cameo videos for fans.
He is involved with several charities.
In addition to fundraising for the foster care charity One Simple Wish on his website, Gladden has also partnered with the Alive Together organization for suicide prevention’s 5k walk and raised awareness for the Humane Society.
He has a beloved pooch.
Gladden often shares photos of his adorable corgi named Meatball.
He keeps in touch with the cast.
Gladden told iHeartRadio that while he was initially repelled by Marsden’s Jury Duty persona, the two became close friends once he realized it was a performance. “He was playing this really heightened version, Hollywood version of himself, which I really didn’t like at all. There were actually times when I would walk away from him because he was just too much for me to handle, and towards the end, when I truly believed that was who he was, it broke my heart. It was like, ‘Oh, this guy sucks.’ So to find out that that’s not who he truly was was such a relief to me. Now, we’re obviously friends, and I love hanging out with guy,” he said. He added that he keeps up with others from the show as well. “I stay in contact with everybody, and it’s not just the cast. We’re talking executive producers, camera people, all of them,” he said.
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
