Doug (Jerry Hauck), Anthony, Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat
Prime Video
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat. Read at your own risk!]
Anthony Norman did not know what he signed up for. Yes, the 26-year-old from Nashville, Tennessee had applied to participate in a documentary-style project following small businesses. But Anthony did know the company he’d be working for — Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce — would be a fake company made for the series Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat. And he certainly did not know that from the moment he was hired as a temp assistant, the writers behind Company Retreat had been hoping for him to deliver one particular action before the end of Rockin’ Grandma’s company retreat.Â
“The truth is, we have actually hoped that you would bust through that room and stop that deal since the very first minute you showed up at Rockin’ Grandma’s,” Jerry Hauck, who plays the retiring CEO Doug Womack, tells Anthony at the beginning of the finale. In Episode 7, titled “Mergers & Acquisitions,” Anthony had just sprinted across the retreat grounds along with Doug’s son and future CEO, Dougie Womack Jr. (Alex Bonifer), to stop Doug from signing away his company to a firm named Triukas. Anthony had learned that Triukas planned to lay off most of Rockin’ Grandma’s workforce after acquiring the company, and the temp was bent on stopping that from happening.Â
Everything you need for spring TV:
“Father to father, I need to talk to you,” Anthony tells Doug as his hand moves to cover the document the CEO was about to sign. Dougie had tripped on the way to the signing (planned by the writers, of course), so it was up to Anthony to reveal Triukas’ ominous plans. “Once you sign it, you have no control over the things they’re gonna do,” Anthony emphasizes. When Doug asks whether he’s telling the truth about Triukas, Anthony responds saying, “I go home in two days. I genuinely have no dog in this fight besides I care about y’all.” In the end, the CEO agrees to not sign away the family business. Anthony celebrates with the Rockin’ Grandma employees, before Doug reveals what’s really going on behind the company.
TV Guide spoke to executive producer and director Jake Szymanski and executive producer Todd Schulman about how they cast their main character, or “hero,” for Company Retreat, why Anthony’s constant laughing became a worry, and the backup plan — or plans — for if the moments leading up to the signing had gone differently.Â
TV Guide: More than 10,000 people applied for the temp role. What traits were most important to you for the hero?Â
Todd Schulman: The simplest word would be likability. But also the hero is the eyes of the audience. So you want it to be someone that you feel like, your best possible self, this is how I would react in this situation. And Anthony certainly delivered on every front in that regard. Ronald [Gladden] was really special, and it was a wonderful experience, the first season with him. We were trying to thread the needle of, we want to take what everyone loved about Ronald, but we also want someone who feels very different. And I think Anthony — hopefully people agree — delivers that.
Jake Szymanski: With our show and with Anthony, just like it was [with] Ronald in Jury Duty, we’re trying to never punch down. We’re trying to find someone who’s never the butt of the joke, but we’re trying to put him in a world where the choices the other characters make might be a little questionable. So you’re also looking for someone who’s generous in a way of sharing their thoughts and trying to help people, but without ever overstepping and being too judgmental. It’s a fine line.
Schulman: The other thing we talked about all the time is, you want to find someone who’s confident in who they are, who has a real sense of self. Because to Jake’s point, that really helps in terms of, you’re comfortable watching this person, because you’re never worried about them. It feels like, they’re going to be OK because they’ve got their feet on the ground. And I think both Anthony and Ronald have that trait.
How did you search for and identify those traits in interviews?
Szymanski: We kind of leaned in heavy to our version of a job interview.
Schulman: One of the things we were most excited about by the time we landed on a company retreat as the format was — the first season as well, we had to ask a lot of questions. And we were always trying to justify [for Season 1], why are we interviewing this person, talking to them about so much stuff if they’re just going to be on a jury? That’s not normally how these things work. But for a job, you can have four rounds of interviews and be asked about anything. So this season maybe was the best case scenario in terms of searching for the right hero.
Did the producers do the interviews themselves?
Schulman: One of our producers, Alexis Sampietro, led the hunt of finding our hero. She had some direct conversations with Anthony. But the final interview was with Kevin — Ryan Perez, who plays Kevin on the show, the head of HR. And that was fun, because that was really his first time being in character, and he’s interviewing the hero of the show.
Szymanski:Â For Ryan Perez, the show doesn’t start when we start filming. The show started weeks earlier for him, because he had to be talking to the temp. He was going to hire him and make arrangements for him to start work. So he started his role quite early, before we even started shooting Episode 1.
Something I also loved about this season was Anthony not having much of a poker face and constantly laughing. Did you guys already know that about him by the time he was cast?
Szymanski:Â It was a good sign he felt comfortable, and he felt connected with the actors and the characters they were playing right away. I think it was a bit of a surprise how much [he laughed].
Schulman:Â You’re always trying to thread the needle of you want someone who is fun and playful because you want the show to feel light and joyful, but you also don’t want someone who has such a great sense of humor, they’re giggling every time someone says anything. Anthony kind of, much like Ronald, landed in that in-between spot. I agree with Jake, he probably was laughing more than we had anticipated. Our goal is not to make him laugh all the time. So sometimes we were like, “Oh boy.” But at the same time, that’s the joy of the show, is that you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get.
Szymanski:Â Him laughing actually made us worried that, like, “Oh, he’s onto us. He’s enjoying this too much, he’s seeing the comedy too much.” And you always have that worry too.
Front: PJ (Marc-Sully Saint-Fleur), Helen (Stephanie Hodge), Steve (Warren Burke), Claire (Rachel Kaly), Kate (Erica Hernandez); Second Row: Amy (Emily Pendergast), Kevin (Ryan Perez), Anthony, Dougie Jr. (Alex Bonifer), Jackie (LaNisa Frederick); Back: Jimmy (Jim Woods), Other Anthony (Rob Lathan), Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat
Prime Video
The most similar visual element between the two seasons was the set-up of the group interviews. How did the team make sure that Anthony hadn’t seen Jury Duty? Did you ask his friends?
Schulman:Â We don’t talk to anyone’s friends before. I guess we could have called his references, but then, if we called his references, and were like, “Do you know if he watched Jury Duty?” It would have been a little bit odd. I don’t want to spoil our process, but we made sure he was not familiar with Jury Duty.
Szymanski: There was talk of, should we avoid that same group interview look because of that. But I think we ultimately decided that’s one of the main things that connects the feeling of Jury Duty to the feeling of Company Retreat. As soon as we set that up the chairs — before we started with Anthony, we rehearsed with our cast — and as soon as we sat him in there, we went, “Oh, this feels like the show again.”
I also wanted to ask, did the writers have a certain gender or race in mind for the hero or did casting consider people of all backgrounds?Â
Schulman:Â It was, may the best person win. We were open to anyone. It’s such a hard thing to do that you don’t want to limit yourself in any direction. You’re just trying to find someone who really works for the show you’ve made.
And now, diving into the end of the show. Doug tells Anthony they were hoping he would stop the deal from the beginning. How did this storyline come about?Â
Szymanski:Â That was from one of the early meetings we had about Season 2. And we were trying to figure out what world we wanted to be in. We were kind of talking about, as Dave Burnett has put it really well, like, Snobs Versus Slobs. What are some of those iconic ’80s, ’90s movies of “fight for the underdog, do the right thing”? As that was kind of leading us into ideas for some of the broad storylines. We were talking about: What are the climaxes of some of those movies? And thinking about something like Tommy Boy, where the contract doesn’t get signed, or [The] Goonies is where the contract gets ripped up at the end. That did become the challenge. We had a creative retreat, and it was like, can we get this guy to run across campus, and run in and slap the pen out of the owner’s hand like that? If we could do that, that would be amazing. And so that became the goal.
Schulman: You asking that question makes me realize, both seasons of the show, the way it started was — we knew our beginning, we knew we wanted a juror, and then we wanted to end with 12 Angry Men with him convincing them to find a certain way. This season, we knew we wanted to start with a guy who’s just hired as a temp, and by the end of the season, we wanted him knocking the pen out of the CEO’s hand. And then the job becomes like, how do we get from A — it’s to ZZZ. We traffic pretty heavily, for lack of better word, tropes in this show intentionally, because you have this one insane thing, which is, you have a real person in the equivalent of what we’re used to seeing as a TV show or a movie. So the more it can really feel like storylines from a TV show or movie, the more I think, to me at least, it’s exciting. There are few things that feel like things would only happen in a movie or a TV show, than someone running in a room and knocking a pen out of someone’s hand to save the company. The fact that we got there, I think you see in the show, it was genuine celebration in the control room by the time that was happening.
I’ve rewatched that moment so many times. What was the atmosphere like in the control room when you watched Anthony ask Doug to not sign the deal and said, “father to father”?Â
Szymanski: We were just floored. It was the excitement of, oh my gosh, I think it’s going to happen. I think all the work is going to pay off. We’re putting a real person into a scripted show, where the characters have arcs, the characters have lines to say. We’re flexible with how it happens, but it is a scripted show, and things are supposed to happen every episode. And we plan to hopefully set this up so Anthony comes in and stops that deal. But then being a real person, he just adds a layer to it. That speech, we could not have written for him better.
Claire (Rachel Kaly), Anthony, Kate (Erica Hernandez), and Steve (Warren Burke), Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat
Prime Video
Schulman: For my personal experience, I had a very small cameo at the end of the season as The Big Bad Guy from Triukas. I was in a trailer a quarter mile away. And that scene happens 10 minutes before Anthony runs into the room. And I desperately wanted to get back to the control room in time to watch the end, because there’s no other way of watching it. So I did my part, and then I’m just sprinting into a van and I’m like, “Has he done it yet?! What’s going on with it?!” And I ran in the room just right before, as he walked in the room, and then got to enjoy it with everybody. I’ve worked on, as has Jake, a lot of traditional scripted television. It’s great, and you feel very lucky to do it. But there is no better, more exciting feeling than when you get to do something like that, and it actually works. Because, when you’re doing a movie or TV show and something’s not working, you’re just like, okay, we’ll do nine more takes of it, it’ll be fine. But you know you have one take of this thing, and this is the climax of your show. And when it actually comes together, it’s euphoric.
Wow, that’s quite the behind-the-scenes story. Finally, I have to ask, were there alternate endings to the story the team discussed? For example, if Anthony had helped Dougie back up when he tripped and prompted Dougie to stop the deal instead?Â
Szymanski:Â His ankle was about to get a lot worse. He was prepped for that. He was supposed to, in no way be able to make it, and I think worst case scenario, he was going to hobble in, unable to talk too much because of his injury. Like we do have to plan out a flowchart. If this happens, if this happens, if this happens, we’re still trying to get it to the same ending. So that’s part of the writing process within the writing room, but also the rehearsal process with the actors is we try to kind of guess, what do we think are the five, 10 most likely things that are going to happen, and how do we deal with them.
Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat is available to stream on Prime Video.