James Marsden had quite the unique experience serving on jury duty.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE about his new Amazon Freevee series Jury Duty, the 49-year-old actor discussed his own real life experience serving on the jury of a Los Angeles court.

“I just served once before and it was a bizarre experience because it was here in L.A., and I walked into the courtroom and there was a wall of headshots of actors who have served jury duty before — in a government building!” said Marsden, who plays a heightened version of himself and a member of the jury in the new docu-style comedy.

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Tired of being Hollywood’s No 1 guy who doesn’t get the girl, the star of everything from The Notebook to Westworld has finally found his dream role – taking a solar panel salesman for a $100,000 ride in Jury Duty

In Jury Duty, an inspired new docu-style comedy series that blurs fact and fiction, James Marsden plays an obnoxiously awful caricature of himself who boasts about auditioning for a soon-to-be-disgraced director, throws a hilarious tantrum at a birthday party and gets involved in a bizarre sex act known as “soaking”. Marsden stars alongside Ronald Gladden, very much the Truman in this blend of The Truman Show and The Office, and the two first encounter each other as they’re about to enter a jury room, with Gladden eventually twigging that he recognises Marsden from his X-Men role as Cyclops. Marsden then mentions his recent part in Sonic the Hedgehog. “Oh, I didn’t see that,” says Gladden. “I heard it’s a really bad movie.”

Marsden, the real Marsden, gives a hoot as he finishes telling me this story. “That’s comedy gold,” says the actor, who also played android gun-slinger Teddy in Westworld, and the poor guy Rachel McAdams dumps at the end of The Notebook. Marsden, it soon transpires, likes nothing better than getting a laugh at his own expense. We’re meeting at a fashionable hotel on the Sunset Strip, the actor’s LA base since moving to Austin, Texas, during the pandemic. He is still boyishly handsome at 49, all piercing blue eyes and cheekbones that could cut glass, but he insists that beneath the leading man looks, he’s a clown at heart. “I love playing the buffoon and the ass,” he says. “Someone who thinks they’re great at something but are clearly not. I’d much rather do that than play James Bond.”

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James Marsden opened up about what it was like to play a self-absorbed version of himself in his upcoming project Jury Duty.

If you were unaware, The 49-year-old actor stars in a docu-style comedy about being on jury duty that is coming to Amazon Freevee next month.

Instead of portraying a character, James plays a version of himself who attempts to use his star power to get out of serving on a jury. During a new interview, he explained what it was like to dramatize himself and how he used the casting as a chance to make fun of a certain breed of celebrities.

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There’s no denying that James Marsden’s energy is infectious; his passion for timepieces and appreciation for the value of fine craftsmanship instantly fill a room, inspiring those around him. Haute Living went on the clock with Marsden at the new IWC Boutique in Palm Beach — as the brand hosted an intimate evening celebrating watches and bespoke cocktails from The Glen Grant — to better understand his affinity to timepieces, find out his all-time favorite watch, and get his take on the rapidly-evolving watch industry.

HAUTE TIME: You have been an avid watch collector for years; how did your passion start?

JAMES MARSDEN: When I was younger, I did not know much about watches — they weren’t something I could afford. Then, I was given an IWC as a gift from David E. Kelley, the executive producer on Ally McBeal. It was one of the nicest gifts anyone had ever given to me, so I wanted to learn more about the [watch] and why it was so special. This became the first in my collection in 2003.

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We may all love James Marsden’s dreamy, prince-like hair, but there’s one person who doesn’t love it. And that’s James Marsden.

The actor tells PEOPLE that if it weren’t for his job as an actor, he’d get rid of his hair completely.

“The hair bothers me,” he says of his tousled coif. “To me, if I wasn’t an actor I would just have one of those military cuts. I’d just shave it off all the time. It just gets in the way.”

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James Marsden doesn’t do things halfway.

The Disenchanted star, who has partnered with IWC Schaffhausen for years, admits that he’s a “nerd” when it comes to watches — and all of his hobbies — because he wants to know everything there is to know.

“I just have to immerse myself in all of it,” he says of his hobbies, one of which is collecting watches. “I have to master it, not to prove anything; I just can’t get enough information about it.”

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James Marsden knows he’s inescapable. “Someone yesterday said, ‘My son has Sonic on TV all day long, every day,’” he tells Rolling Stone. “I never know whether to apologize or not. Parents must be like, ‘I’m so sick of seeing that man’s face.’”

The self-effacing 49-year-old is in a state of disbelief over his volume of work this past year. He’s taken on the endearing Ben Wood and his Machiavellian twin Steve (in Netflix’s Dead to Me), the tender-hearted bounty hunter Teddy Flood (HBO’s Westworld), the fatherly sheriff Tom Wachowski (Sonic the Hedgehog 2) and the charmingly dimwitted King Edward (Disenchanted). “I had to be really careful about not spreading myself too thin and really give the characters their due,” he says. 

It’s also been a year of goodbyes for the veteran actor, who closed the book on Dead to Me, the recently canceled Westworld and Disenchanted, the long-awaited sequel to 2007’s Enchanted. “There were a lot of goodbyes this year,” Marsden says. “It was bittersweet.”

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After Dead to Me’s season three premiere on Nov. 17, James Marsden and Liz Feldman exclusively shared how he convinced the creator to let him come back after Steve’s season one death.

James Marsden was dead to Dead to Me—until he wasn’t.

Fans of the Netflix black comedy thought they saw the last of Marsden when his character Steve, Judy (Linda Cardellini)’s emotionally manipulative ex-fiancé, when Jen (Christina Applegate) bludgeoned him to death with the bird figurine at the end of season one. And apparently, so did creator Liz Feldman.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same for Westworld star James Marsden.

His return to Westworld was confirmed for viewers in episode four, “Generation Loss,” for those who might not have guessed he was the hero from season four’s premiere who flitted from the shadows to save Christina from a panicked, unstable and now dead stalker Peter Myers (Aaron Stanford).

Shepherded to the “sublime” at the end of season two, it looked as if Teddy’s time in the HBO series’ universe had come to an end. But with his return, it seems like Marsden’s fan-favorite character got some kind of sentient upgrade while he was away for season three.

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Given that this is a show about immortal, sentient robots, death means relatively little in Westworld. But one character has died more than any other at this point, James Marsden’s Teddy, clocking in reportedly at 4,000+ deaths, more than any other hosts during his ill-fated time in Westworld. But the last one seemed to stick at the end of season 2, given that he was gone for all of season 3.

Here in the unexpectedly great season 4, however, Teddy is back, and for once, seems to know a whole lot more about what’s going on than Dolores herself. While fans previously theorized that Dolores saved Teddy’s pearl from Westworld, we still know little about truly who this version of Teddy is, the full extent of what he knows, and what he’s planning next. So I tried to get James Marsden to tell me. Here’s our conversation:

PAUL: One thing I’ll say to start here is that I know this is Westworld, which has like the most mysteries of any show on TV, so I know there’s a bunch of stuff you can’t talk about yet, but I’ll do my best here.

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