A “Jury Duty” season is only as good as its big reveal. Thankfully, the second season, “Company Retreat,” delivered.
“The amount of adrenaline pumping through every single person who worked on the show, was in the show, had anything to do with the show, in those last five minutes was off the charts,” EP Todd Schulman told TheWrap. “You’ve spent, in our case two years at that point, working on something, and you’re just praying that you get that final climactic moment.”
The final three episodes of “Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat” premiered Friday on Prime Video. “Company Retreat” brings back the elaborate prank concept seen in “Jury Duty,” where one central character who believes they’re filming a documentary doesn’t realize they’re actually taking part in a scripted series surrounded by actors. In the first season, Ronald Gladden found himself at the center of a zany jury trial; this year, an unsuspecting Anthony Norman became the temp for a hot sauce company on a final group retreat before an important CEO changeover.
“The first season, we know that we end with Henry Fonda in ’12 Angry Men’: Someone fighting for what’s right,” EP Nicholas Hatton told TheWrap. “The second season, it was similarly built from the end backwards, which was ‘Can an assistant go into a room in which they do not belong to do the right thing?’ That sort of felt insane, even in the room, how we pulled this thing off.”
If the first season was “12 Angry Men,” Schulman compared Season 2 to the “Slobs vs. Snobs” comedies of the ’80s and ’90s. As Anthony gets closer to his eclectic group of co-workers at Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce throughout the season, he begins to fear that the CEO, Doug Womack (Jerry Hauck), is about to make a big mistake by selling the company to a group of wealthy buyers with ill intent for the family business.
In the season’s penultimate episode, Schulman, Hatton and the rest of the “Company Retreat” crew laid out a series of clues for Anthony to find, letting him know that these buyers were actually planning to sell the land and fire the employees of Rockin’ Grandma’s after the deal closed (Schulman cameos in this scene as a Zoom talking head who discusses what they’ll do with the Rockin’ Grandma’s property). This leads to a thrilling sequence in which Anthony runs down a mountain and bursts into a room, stopping Doug from signing his family business away.
Hatton called this grand ending “the most extreme, nerve-racking and satisfying professional experience of my life.”
“We’re in this control room. There’s like 30 of us in this shed which he walks past every day. We have to be very, very quiet so he doesn’t know that we’re in there. That day, when he started to run across the green, the shed started bouncing,” Hatton said. “It’s like your horse is about to win the Grand National.”
“Kentucky Derby,” his American co-EP interjected.
“Apologies, apologies,” Hatton laughed. “It was astonishing. It’s an amazing thing, and I’m so glad we managed to land the plane because it was very ambitious and even better than we imagined.”
Once Anthony saved the day, all that was left was the big reveal. Like last season, the final episode of “Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat” saw Anthony learn that he had been at the center of an elaborate prank show (and that he was getting $150,000 for his troubles). Thankfully, he proved to be a good sport.
“When we’re picking our hero, a big part of the conversation is about that. We want to make sure we get someone who is going to be comfortable with that reveal. We would never pick someone who’s like, ‘I just want to do a temp job. If you’ve got to have cameras there, I’ll do it,’ you know? We want to find people who have a great experience, and that includes the reveal,” Schulman said. “That being said, there is still the anxiety in that moment of, ‘How is Anthony going to react?’ That’s part of the excitement of the show.”
“I always just imagine what it’s like for him, this idea of going from five minutes earlier you thought you were winding down your final minutes as a temp at this company, and now you’ve just found out this was all a TV show, everyone’s an actor, there’s 100 crew,” he continued. “It’s one of the wilder things that can happen to a human being that you can imagine. We all try to give Anthony a little space and a little grace as we’re revealing this to him because it just feels like the kind of thing that can overload your brain. Luckily now we’ve done this twice and both times the reaction has been both shocked but also excited.”
This moment also comes with a bit of anxiety for the people behind the camera. After spending an entire season watching and living with Anthony, people like Schulman and Hatton must step out from behind the curtain. It’s a moment evocative of Ed Harris’ final moments to Jim Carrey in “The Truman Show” (albeit, much sweeter and unmalicious): You may not know me, but I’ve watched you for a long time.
“Sorry, I actually got emotional. It’s unbelievable,” Hatton said, thinking about the moment he introduced himself to Anthony. “We’re in a blacked out room with this huge monitors, NASA Space Station thing in front of us, and we’re tracking every single moment with him. It is this intense, very parasocial relationship where we know him so well, and he has no idea that we’re there. And you’re rooting for him. You’re rooting for him the whole time. You want this to be the most incredible surprise of his life. You want him to get through this journey, not just unscathed, but look back on it and be this incredible, potentially life-changing moment, so to be able to then come out at the very end after the reveal and talk to him, it’s so strange. It’s also an honor and a privilege. It’s also frightening.”
“It’s very very intense, but it’s also unique and it’s so special,” Hatton continued. “It’s unlike anything else.”
“Jury Duty” Seasons 1-2 are now streaming on Prime Video. A “Company Retreat” reunion special hosted by James Marsden will premiere April 10.
