James Marsden is having quite the run on both the 2026 TV schedule and the 2026 movie calendar. From the returns of Jury Duty and Paradise to the premieres of Avengers: Doomsday and more, he’s staying very (and I mean very) busy. So, with that in mind, Jon Hamm told me why Your Friends & Neighbors was so lucky to add the Cyclops actor to its cast in Season 2.
Now, to understand why Your Friends & Neighbors needed James Marsden, you need to know about his character, Owen Ashe. He’s a mysterious and very charismatic new addition to the neighborhood, and he’s going to be a problem for Jon Hamm’s character, Coop. I asked the Mad Men actor why his character won’t run away from Ashe, despite his seemingly nefarious vibes, and in response, he said:
Well, I think there's, you know, Ashe, from the very beginning has something on Coop, and Coop is very aware of that, and aware that that could be devastating to his life, honestly. So he needs that to be managed, and he needs to manage the person that controls that, and that is the one thing that prevents him from just excusing himself from this madness. And he drastically underestimates Ashe at the very beginning, and pays for that over the course of the season, definitely.
This led me to ask Hamm why it was important to have someone like Marsden in the role. It comes down to the fact that while Ashe is a bad guy, he’s also irresistible and very charming. Well, the Paradise actor is undeniably irresistible and charming, as the Your Friends & Neighbors lead told me:
You have to have somebody with that seemingly limitless wellspring of charm and good looks and everything else to play somebody this charismatic and also deeply problematic. You need somebody like that, or else it just becomes a twisting mustache kind of bad guy. But James is very, very good at what he does.
He’s right, James Marsden is very good at what he does. That’s on display in Your Friends & Neighbors (you can now stream Season 2's premiere with an Apple TV subscription).
It’s also on display if you take a look at his IMDb and realize just how much he’s releasing this year.
In the last week alone, Marsden's movie Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice became available to stream with a Hulu subscription, while Paradise Season 2 dropped its finale in the same place, and Your Friends & Neighbors premiered on Apple TV. Plus, he executive-produced Jury Duty: Company Retreat, which premiered for those with an Amazon Prime subscription last month. All this is to say, Marsden is a busy bee, and Jon Hamm knows it, as he told me:
He's having a tremendous moment right now between Paradise and Jury Duty and X-Men and everything else he's doing. [It] couldn't happen to a nicer guy. We were so pleased that he was able to fit us into his schedule and come do this, because he really does knock it out of the park, and he provides a perfect foil for Coop for this season.
Oh yeah, I didn’t even mention the fact that James Marsden will return as Cyclops in the upcoming Marvel movie, Avengers: Doomsday. However, that won’t be in theaters until December 18. The hype is real for it, though, especially since Marsden is coming back as his iconic X-Men character. So, it does continue to prove Jon Hamm’s point.
Your Friends & Neighbors is lucky to have James Marsden this season, and we’re lucky that he’s gracing our screens so much. Now, to see even more of him, new episodes of the Apple TV series drop every Friday.
