When Anthony Norman learned that he was at the center of an elaborate prank show in “Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat,” his head swirled with questions. Who all was in on the prank? How much was he on camera? How did you guys pull off the car accident?
Even the show’s creators couldn’t answer that last one.
“One of my jobs, I had to go and do store runs every morning,” Norman told TheWrap. “It was like the third day there, and we were in Albertsons, I believe, and a gentleman drove his car through the door of Albertsons. I was like, ‘This is crazy.’”
“The same day, I asked them, ‘The car. Y’all know about that?’ and they were like, ‘Yeah, that wasn’t us.’”
Soon after Norman’s time on “Company Retreat” wrapped, another equally strange event occurred, making him momentarily wonder if the cameras were still rolling.
“Two or three days after I’d gotten back, I was doing valet, and a gentleman’s car battery died. I was told, ‘I need you to come help me.’ So we’re walking to his car and he’s like, ‘Yo, man, I’m sorry. It’s been a crazy night. I was supposed to get married yesterday, but we took some shrooms and then we called off the wedding,’ and in the middle of him talking, I literally stepped back and looked around. We were in a parking garage so there were no mirrors or anything like that, but there was one moment where I was like, ‘OK, what’s going on here?’”
The “Company Retreat” crew may not have devised a car crashing into a building or a shrooms trip that canceled a wedding, but they did come up with plenty of pranks to keep him on his toes. What Norman didn’t know when he signed up to be a temp for Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce was that Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce didn’t actually exist — and that everyone he met during its “company retreat” was an actor taking part in an elaborate practical joke series.
“At the very moment where Doug — or Jerry — sat me down and explained, I didn’t completely understand,” Norman said, mixing up the names of Rockin’ Grandma’s founder Doug Womack Sr. and Jerry Hauck, the actor who played him. “I understood it was, you know, a TV show, but I didn’t know what kind of TV show. I didn’t know what all had been filmed. But I was happy to be a part of it, because I realized in that moment it is something very positive.”
The grand finale
Created by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, showrun by Cody Heller and directed by Jake Szymanski, “Company Retreat” is the second season of the critically acclaimed and Emmy-nominated show “Jury Duty.”
In an interview with TheWrap, executive producers Todd Schulman and Nicholas Hatton said that they wanted the first season, based on a courtroom, to build up to their non-actor (Ronald Gladden) living through a “12 Angry Men” moment, fighting for what’s right in a divided room. For “Company Retreat,” they built Norman’s journey around a single question: “Can an assistant go into a room in which they do not belong to do the right thing?”
As Norman ran down a mountain and burst into a boardroom to keep a CEO from signing his family company over to ill-meaning businesspeople, the answer was a clear “Yes.”
“At the top of the hill, I told Alex, or Dougie (Jr.) that he has to go in and do it. It can’t be me,” Norman said. “I’m just thinking I’m going to just be there to back him up, whatever he needs. If they’re not believing him, I’ll validate anything that he says. Then he fell down, and in that moment I was like, ‘I guess it’s up to me. I can’t stop.’ So I just ran in there and just spoke from my heart, you know? I needed him to hear me clearly before he did something he might have regretted.”
“I had a little nerves, but I think the seriousness — how serious it was and how much I cared about them — overrode any nerves that I may have had.”
It’s a moment that feels right out of a movie, which Norman making an impassioned plea to Doug Sr. to keep him from signing a document that’s not in his best interests. In one particularly powerful moment, Norman implores Doug “father to father” to not sign the documents.
“My son is my world, so I talked about him a lot. They all knew how much I cared about my son,” Norman told TheWrap. “In that moment, I just needed him to see me, to hear me. I just figured that would be something that hit home for him and he would understand I’m being serious.”
Norman has since shown his son his big TV debut, though he’s still too young to understand the prank (“He knows that he sees Daddy on TV, but he doesn’t understand what really went down,” Norman said). Norman’s mom, on the other hand, was thrilled to see her son on the screen.
“It was probably like a year before I could really even tell anybody. When I showed my family, they were happy. They were excited,” he said. “My mom actually came with me to the premiere, and the first episode she was already crying from laughter and joy.”
“They’re still the same people”
Since learning the big secret at the center of “Company Retreat,” Norman has kept in touch with all of the friends he made on the show. He noted that, while audiences saw these actors in zany, out-there situations, they didn’t get to see all the downtime they spent together while at this fictitious retreat.
“The best way to form a bond is just by spending time with each other and talking to each other. Unfortunately, y’all didn’t get the opportunity to see too many of those moments, but just laughing, making jokes with each other, it was amazing,” Norman said. “When we did it, y’all got to see the extreme versions of them, right? They weren’t always that extreme. I just had to relearn their names. They’re still the same people.”
These aren’t the only connections Norman has made through the show. On the day the “Company Retreat” finale aired, Prime Video announced they would release two special episodes the following Friday (both hosted by “Jury Duty” Emmy nominee James Marsden): one where Norman reunites with the “Company Retreat” actors, another where he meets Season 1 star Gladden for the first time.
“I wanted to talk to him for so long after the fact, but obviously I couldn’t tell anybody,” Norman said. “I look at Ronald as like my big brother, you know? Any question I have about anything, whether it’s life or business, he’s there for me. I tried to ask him, ‘Are you good? Is there anything I can do for you?’ and he was like, ‘Man, don’t worry about me. I’m here for you.’”
Norman didn’t only walk away from the experience with friends. For being such a good sport in the prank, “Company Retreat” sent the Rockin’ Grandma’s temp home with a $150,000 paycheck. But Norman just saw this as an added bonus.
“The money was nice, but just to be a part of something so positive was what really touched me,” he said. “Thank you guys for tuning in, all those who enjoyed. We do it for y’all. Or they do it for y’all. I was just part of it.”
