How ‘Jury Duty’ Raised the Stakes for a Bigger, Bolder Prank in ‘Company Retreat’

When “Jury Duty” became a sudden sensation in 2023, a lot of fans had a single question: How do they do this again?

The answer? Take it out of the courtroom and put it somewhere else. In this season’s case, a company retreat.

“Once we landed on a jury trial for Season 1, there was an inherent structure built into that. You kind of know it’s going to end with the verdict. You know there’s going to be witnesses,” executive producer Todd Schulman said. “A company retreat is very open-ended, and there isn’t an inherent narrative built into that. It required more story.”

Prime Video released the first three episodes of “Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat” on Friday, bringing audiences into a new prank with all-new faces. Like the first season of “Jury Duty,” “Company Retreat” follows a non-actor who doesn’t realize that he is at the center of a comic television series, surrounded entirely by performers.

This season follows Anthony Norman, a temp who’s been hired to assist Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce on their annual company retreat. Executive producer Nicholas Hatton said a lot of important factors drew them to the company retreat setting: it’s a recognizable situation, it’s secluded and it keeps Anthony away from the internet and cell service.

“We have a dedicated writers’ room full of incredibly talented writers who spend many, many, many, many weeks in advance writing this with the same diligence and scrutiny that you would a traditional scripted show, but with the added, incredibly challenging dimension of ‘What happens if number one on the call sheet has complete agency to do whatever they want at any single moment?’” Hatton said.

Creating Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce

The company retreat setting gave the series free rein to go bigger with its second season, telling a more sprawling narrative than a courtroom could house. Anthony learns that he has joined Rockin’ Grandma’s right as a massive changeover is set to take place, with company CEO Doug Womack (Jerry Hauck) set to pass the torch to his son, Dougie Jr (Alex Bonifer).

Of course, things don’t go exactly to plan. In the season’s first three episodes, an unsuspecting Anthony witnesses a failed marriage proposal, a tense altercation between CEO and son, and a number of strange antics from his fellow employees. At all times, the “Company Retreat” creators had to find a balance between making an entertaining comedy series without going so far that Anthony caught onto the bit.

“Every single minute of every single day, you’re terrified at all times,” Hatton said. “Even if it’s a particular shoot day where you don’t have anything too ridiculous coming up, it doesn’t matter, because maybe there’s something very mundane we overlooked in our preparations and that’s the thing that destroys it all. The latent level of anxiety is incredibly high, and then whenever you do have these bigger swings, like there are obviously some very big set pieces in this season, you do wonder, ‘Have we pushed this too far?’”

It’s a terrifying tightrope to walk — though Schulman said they wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I would even go as far as to say that if we didn’t have those moments where we felt like we were pushing him to the edge, we would probably question ourselves — if we had run soft, you know? I think you want to ride as close as you can, as masochistic as it sounds,” he said. “The reason I think Nick and I love making these kind of shows is the exact reason why they are nightmare-inducing in the process of making them.”

From the jump, a massive amount of work had to go into making Rockin’ Grandma’s seem like a real company: fake employees needed social media accounts, Rockin’ Grandma’s needed a LinkedIn page. An Instagram video even shows Hauck at a minor league baseball game in-character as Doug Sr. all the way back in September 2024. Every step of the way, the “Company Retreat” team was encouraged to poke holes in their own narrative, making sure the Rockin’ Grandma’s story was watertight before Anthony started his “job.”

“The show is an iceberg, and the final edit of what people see is really just what’s above the waterline,” Hatton said. “Below the waterline is a huge amount of work. We build out these companies, and it’s delightful that you found some of our digital footprint on there, because we treat it as if we see these fake things in our shared reality, and they have to hold up under scrutiny.”

“There’s a reason you’re talking to us three years after the first season, and it’s not because we were like, ‘Hey, let’s take a couple years off!’ This show is a massive undertaking, and it’s a really hard to show to make,” Schulman said. “When we’re making this show, we have to make the show, but we also have to make the reality beyond the show.”

Finding a hero

With the prank set in place, the “Company Retreat” team needed to find their “hero” — a person who would go along with the situation, hit the right narrative beats and hopefully not figure out the gimmick along the way. Enter: Anthony.

“Anthony was the result of a very wide, meticulous search led by our incredible producer Alexis Sampietro,” Schulman said. “We scoured the nation and used Craigslist and other sources to try to find someone who we felt would be a hero, that lived up to that billing and shared some of the traits with Ronald but was very much their own person. We felt very luck as the season unfolded and we saw what we were getting from Anthony.”

“Obviously, our hero is the show. If we’ve made the wrong choice, we don’t have anything to show for the end,” Hatton added. “So we try and get as much information as we can. But then at the end of the day, like Todd said, there is always an element of luck to it.”

Anthony had some big shoes to fill after the kind, lovable Ronald Gladden captured hearts during the first season of “Jury Duty.” The executive producers certainly feel like they lucked out with Anthony, whom fans will grow to know throughout the rest of the season.

Though, Schulman was optimistic that most of us have a bit of a “Hero” inside.

“I’m not trying to diminish the work any of us have done in finding these two gems of human beings. But I think we’re also likely cynical because we live online that most people are kind of just nasty,” he said. “It sometimes feels like we’re overwhelmed by a pretty dark worldview being online and maybe just being in the world, but I do think there’s a surprising amount of decent, quality individuals out there — in fact, that’s the majority of the world — and when you give any of them a chance to showcase who they are, they will display the kind of traits that both Ronald and Anthony possess.”

“Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat” releases new episodes Fridays on Prime Video.

The post How ‘Jury Duty’ Raised the Stakes for a Bigger, Bolder Prank in ‘Company Retreat’ appeared first on TheWrap.