"Confident in knowing who he is" - Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat EPs reveal why Anthony made the right hero character 

Aashna
Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat (Image via Instagram/@anthony_norman)
Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat (Image via Instagram/@anthony_norman)

The jig is finally up as Amazon Prime Video has released the final three episodes of Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky-created Emmy-nominated reality hoax sitcom, which went bigger in the second season.

After their breakout hit, Jury Duty, co-creator Jake Szymanski and Eisenberg returned with a new format. The latest season saw the crew hire an unsuspecting temp worker at family-owned business "Rockin' Grandma's Hot Sauce" to help manage the annual company retreat. Anthony Norman, the 26-year-old father from Nashville and hero of Company Retreat, was completely unaware that his co-workers (and the retreat in itself) were fictional.

In a recent interview with Variety, Jake Szymanski revealed how they landed on Anthony Norman to be the hero in Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat:

''Anthony’s so great, and he’s a multi-faceted person. He’s very kind and thoughtful. He’s also confident in knowing who he is, which is important because we’re looking for someone who’s never the butt of the joke.''

More on this in our story.


Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat EPs on why Anthony is the perfect hero

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Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat co-creator Jake Szymanski and director Lee Eisenberg managed to pull off yet another hilarious prank with the help of 48 cameras and 3600 hours of footage on this season's unsuspecting hero, Anthony Norman. Following in his predecessor and solar contractor Ronald Gladden's footsteps, temp worker Anthony Norman was unaware that the Rockin’ Grandmas Hot Sauce company retreat, which he was asked to be a part of, was fictional and his co-workers (even Jerry Hauck's Doug Womack, Anthony's boss and the retiring CEO of the company) are actually actors.

While Szymanski and Eisenberg had a mammoth task in Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, even bigger and riskier than the breakout Emmy-nominated Jury Duty Season 1, the most difficult task was finding an unsuspecting hero with no knowledge of pop culture or the show in general. Thankfully, the duo got lucky with Anthony Norman, who remained in the dark and (unknowingly) created a beautiful bond with his fictional co-workers, even standing up for them in the nail-biting finale.

Talking to Variety, Szymanski and Eisenberg revealed they filtered more than 10,000 applications before finding their perfect hero in Anthony Norman, the unsuspecting protagonist of Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat. Jake Szymanski revealed the kind of person they were searching for their hoax sitcom's second season:

''You need someone who is confident enough to say, “No, I can step up and help, or I can offer you my opinion” and also be judgment-free enough to not make anyone feel bad that they’re acting a little strange or crazy.''

Anthony Norman fits this description perfectly as the audience loved seeing him form a genuine connection with his co-workers in Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, unaware that they are in on an elaborate setup. Lee Eisenberg added that Norman made the perfect hero for this experimental setup:

''I think he’s just inherently decent....There’s something slightly refreshing to see someone like Anthony who makes the right decision, who wants to support these people that he just met. There’s something uplifting, aspirational and hopeful about that...He really gets invested in these characters and their storylines in a really significant way.''

Eisenberg's words came true in the recently released finale titled 'Employee Review', which saw a still unsuspecting Anthony rise to help his co-workers. In a twisted script, retiring CEO Doug changed his decision at the last moment. Instead of handing his company to his slacker son, Dougie, he plans on signing it off to Triukas Group, the equivalent of an evil conglomerate. However, Anthony, determined to keep his co-workers independent from the Triukas, marches into the meeting room and convinces Doug ('father to father') not to sign the deal.

This selfless act concludes another successful run of Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, as Anthony Norman is finally revealed the sitcom's concept and rewarded with $150,000.

You can stream Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat on Prime Video.


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Edited by Aashna