James Marsden’s 50th birthday bash took the cake — literally — with a candlelit dessert featuring a throwback photo of the star in his modeling days.

The Emmy-nominated actor and a bunch of other celebs piled into the Sheats-Goldstein Residence in L.A. Monday to celebrate Marsden’s milestone.

Bold-faced names included Tessa Thompson, Woody Harrelson, Natasha Lyonne, Ben Barnes and Aaron Paul. Ronald Gladden, who costarred with Marsden on the popular Amazon Freevee show “Jury Duty,” also made a cameo.

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The official start of fall is days away, and Zegna and The Elder Statesman made sure a select set of Los Angeles VIPs are armed and ready with a new collection of cozy cashmere thanks to a pair of parties on Wednesday evening.

Following a launch in Paris earlier this year, the two brands teamed to unveil the wares locally, first during an outdoor bash at West Hollywood luxury hideaway Maxfield in the late afternoon. The festivities continued in the evening at a private residence in the Hollywood Hills designed by modernist architect Richard Neutra. Zegna artistic director Alessandro Sartori and The Elder Statesman founder and CEO Greg Chait made the rounds at both to chat up the Oasi Cashmere collab which merges the sensibilities of their respective companies by combining Zegna’s eye for the finest in materials with Elder Statesman’s bold and eye-catching prints.

The latter bash proved to be a starry gathering that hosted James Marsden, Evan Peters, Kyle MacLachlan, John Cho, Marco Pigossi, Henry Zaga, Laz Alonso, Joseph Lee, Jessica Hart and Lewis Tan along with basketball stars Shareef O’Neal and Jalen Green. Lee, who caught the runway presentation in Europe, was outfitted in the new line and said it was so cozy he wanted “to snuggle everything.”

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The party’s just getting started for Jury Duty stars James Marsden and Ronald Gladden.

On Wednesday, nominations were announced for the 2023 Emmy Awards, and Amazon Freevee’s surprise hit comedy picked up four nods: Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Marsden, Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series, and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. Once Marsden found out that he earned his first-ever Emmy nomination for playing a fictionalized version of himself, he immediately called up his onscreen-turned-IRL BFF Gladden to celebrate the news.

“Once I heard him pick up the phone, I just kind of yelled as loud as I could,” Marsden tells EW with a laugh just a few hours after nominations were announced. “It was just gibberish, I don’t think I was even speaking English. And he started yelling too. It was just like two drunk college buddies.”

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James Marsden and the Jury Duty cast are overjoyed by their four Emmy nominations.

Marsden, 49, and the cast have “many, many big plans for celebration” after the announcement Wednesday morning, he tells PEOPLE. The first celebration began with Marsden’s initial phone call to none other than his unwitting costar Ronald Gladden.

“I just wanted that to be my first call and make sure he’s still enjoying all of this, and feeling like we’re all going through it together,” Marsden said. Of Gladden — who was the only cast member who didn’t know the show was a mockumentary — he adds, “He’s over the moon.”

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James Marsden went to bed as late as he could Tuesday night, hoping he would sleep through the Emmy nominations announcement this morning. “But of course, when you do that, you wake up three hours before the nominations, and you just ruminate for three hours,” he tells Vanity Fair with a laugh.

The actor, who stars in Freevee’s unconventional comedy series Jury Duty, was just as unsure as the rest of us if his show would be acknowledged by the TV Academy. “It’s not your traditional comedy. You could argue that yes, there were scripts, but it wasn’t really scripted. It was a hybrid of reality and scripted architecture,” he says. “There’s these incredible shows like Ted Lasso and Barry that are proven. I didn’t think I was ever in the conversation, and I really didn’t know if the show was either. So it was a real genuine surprise when the show got its love…. I know everyone always says, ‘Well, I didn’t expect it.’ But I really, really didn’t this time around.”

Jury Duty followed an unsuspecting man (Ronald Gladden) who thinks he’s been chosen for a regular jury when in reality, he’s on a hidden-camera show, surrounded by actors. Marsden played a character called James Marsden who exhibited all of the stereotypical traits you’d expect from a celebrity trying to get out of jury duty. But in the end, Gladden’s enigmatic and kind personality made him an unexpected hero on the show.

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We don’t have to feel sorry for “the other guy” from “The Notebook” any longer. James Marsden can now boast that he’s scored an Emmy nomination for playing himself!

The actor, known for his roles in “The Notebook,” the “X-Men” franchise, “Westworld” and “Dead to Me,” received some of the best reviews of his career earlier this year for playing a satirical version of himself in Amazon Freevee’s genre-bending sitcom “Jury Duty.”

The series revolves around an unsuspecting man, played by Ronald Gladden, who thinks he signed up to be in a documentary about jury duty. The gag? It’s all fake. Everyone except him is an actor, including meta-Marsden.

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Of all the films and TV shows James Marsden has worked on in his career, he admits that Freevee’s Jury Duty was the most terrifying.

The comedy series centers on Ronald Gladden, an unsuspecting everyman who believes he’s a subject in a documentary examining the ins and outs of the court system in the United States. What he doesn’t know, however, is that the case for which he was selected as a juror is completely fake — and all of the people involved, from his fellow jurors to the judge, lawyers, plaintiff and defendant, are actually actors.

One of those actors is Marsden, the sole performer who is open to Gladden about his job. But even Marsden is in on the ruse, playing a heightened version of himself — an entitled, egocentric Hollywood A-lister trying (and failing) to get out of his civic duty.

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‘Tis the season again for FYC events, stunts and promos but it’s all new for James Marsden.

The veteran actor turned up in Studio City on June 14 to stand on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in front of a taco truck to greet fans and speak to press about his Freevee series Jury Duty.

A traveling taco truck is just one of the many FYC offerings that have rolled across Los Angeles in recent weeks, among them Peacock’s “BLSHT Day” (allowing consumers to score Poker Face-themed items at various shops), Max’s Barry stunt at Canter’s Deli (Henry Winkler handing out pastrami and reuben sandwiches), Hulu’s Yeastie Boys collaboration for Only Murders in the Building (bagels rebranded in honor of characters played by Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez). Up next: Netflix will mount its first-ever restaurant, a Los Angeles pop-up that will feature chefs Curtis Stone, Dominique Crenn, Ming Tsai, Nadiya Hussain, Ann Kim, Rodney Scott, Jacques Torres and Andrew Zimmern.

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James Marsden likes playing the jackass.

Especially when that jackass is the entitled version of himself he’s playing in Amazon Freevee’s breakout comedy “Jury Duty.”

The improvised docu-style series follows Ronald Gladden, a real person unaware the increasingly chaotic jury he’s found himself on is completely fake. Everyone around him — including Marsden’s portrayal of himself as the out-of-touch celebrity — is an actor playing their part in the ruse.

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The sleeper hit “Jury Duty” documents a trial, focusing particularly on one juror, Ronald Gladden. Except it’s not a real documentary; the cameras are real, the trial is fake, and a cast of actors surrounds Gladden, who is unaware of the ruse. But Gladden is not being set up as a mark; the Freevee limited series makes him a hero. And it turns juror-actor James Marsden into a petulant, spoiled Hollywood star.

In reality, executive producer Todd Schulman says, “James Marsden the person was basically the antithesis of James Marsden the character on the show.”

Co-creators Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (“The Office”) worked with their writers to create outlines and scripts that would provide the springboard for improvisation, designing the show as a comedic “12 Angry Men.” Filling a shuttered courthouse in Huntington Park with hidden cameras in addition to the “documentary” crew, they enacted a fake civil trial from jury selection to deliberations. Early on, Eisenberg thought of including a celebrity, since in L.A., actors serve along with everybody else.

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