The elaborate hoax that plays out on ‘Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat’

[0:00] After the success of the show Jury Duty in 2023, Prime Video is back with another incarnation of [0:06] their series, Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat. Out of 10,000 applicants, the show's producers [0:12] chose Anthony Norman to be the newly hired temp of a fake, family-owned hot sauce company [0:18] Rockin' Grandmas. The episodes take place during a company retreat, all totally scripted, where [0:24] control of the company is in flux. Will the owner Stoner's son, played by actor Alex Bonnifer, have [0:29] a role to play if the company is bought out? Let's take a look at Company Retreat, where [0:34] everyone is an actor except Anthony. Hello, my name's Anthony Norman. I'm here at, sorry. [0:43] You can do it again. Okay, okay. Rockin' Grandmas, sorry. Dougie's office soon. My son is gonna be the [0:50] new CEO, and he is gonna be great. I realize I feel like I'm on a TV show, but this is not something [0:57] that you can just make up. And joining us now is Anthony Norman, Alex Bonnifer, who plays [1:06] Dougie Jr., great to have you both. Thank you so much. This is a much-needed humorous show. I mean, [1:14] genuinely funny. I just have to ask, as you're in it, and you're the only person who doesn't realize [1:20] that this is actually a scripted show at the time, was there any disappointment? Because you seem to [1:25] really genuinely like your colleagues and get along so well with the group. Was there any point in time [1:33] where you thought, oh, none of this was real? I would say there was maybe a small amount, [1:39] but, you know, very quickly I realized that those relationships that I built were still there, so [1:43] it went away pretty quick. And Alex, give us a sense of your time with Anthony. Were you thinking [1:51] from the beginning, this guy's gonna support me? Because obviously, you know, we describe you as [1:55] you're the stoner son who's set to take over the company. Yeah. You've just been off in Jamaica [2:00] unsuccessfully working on this band. Yes. When you meet Anthony, are you thinking he's gonna totally [2:06] go along with this? No, far from it. My first thought was like, I hope Anthony doesn't hate me [2:12] because I knew the character I was playing, and I also knew what was in store for the character. But [2:18] that almost instantly went away in our first conversation in the conference room. What you [2:22] don't see is that we were in there for about an hour together. Really just like, that's like when [2:26] the bond started. And Anthony, was there any time during the course of the season where you're [2:32] thinking, hmm, was that just a camera in that trash can? Or was that, is this, is this like being [2:38] recorded beyond, I mean, you knew that it was being recorded, but for the purposes of this. So I never [2:44] saw a camera, but I will say they did have trash cans set up. And several times, like I would go to put [2:49] something in the trash can, and the trash can wouldn't open because there was like a black mirror, [2:52] and it had a camera in it. And I would remember being like, what, what is the point of these, [2:56] these trash cans if we can't use them? Yeah. I remember him saying too, of like, [2:59] why do these trash cans all have glass on them? And we're all like, I don't know, [3:02] must be a fancy retreat center. And as I'm watching too, because this is so extensive, [3:08] and we only see a portion of like, you know, what gets edited together. But there are so many [3:13] hours that you all are keeping up this persona. I understand that you didn't even know your [3:18] castmates real names, because you all were just going along with this. How do you learn lines? [3:23] Or is it just, okay, this is my persona, and this is what my character would likely say? Because you [3:30] have Anthony, who you never know what he's going to say. Of course. And so how do you script something [3:34] like that? We would rehearse. We had an extensive rehearsal process. It was approximately six [3:40] weeks. And we knew the story, we knew the beats that we wanted to tell, and had a general sense [3:48] of how we would get there. But obviously, the biggest and most important variable had yet to [3:52] arrive. So in that rehearsal process was a planning for, well, what if Anthony does this? Or what if he [3:58] says this? Or what if he tries to leave? So we had to rehearse and plan for all of those different [4:02] scenarios. And then in terms of like the dialogue, you know, we were hired as actors because we have [4:07] a background in improvisational comedy. So, you know, bringing the funny, that was a huge part [4:12] of our audition process was, can we sustain? My audition was an hour long, fully improvised to prove [4:18] that I could at length stay in this character and continually find ways to, you know, hopefully be [4:23] funny. So Anthony, you go for this temp job application process, 10,000 applicants, and you get [4:31] chosen. What do you think it was about you? Honestly, I don't know for sure. I would like to think that [4:37] it was probably my ability to work as a team. You know, every interview that I go into, I always [4:41] start with, I'm a huge team guy. Can I say something about him? I think what they saw, [4:46] and this is not, this is just from where I sit and not on the producer side, I wasn't involved [4:49] at all in choosing him. But I think they saw what we all saw in the cast was just like a genuinely [4:54] good human being who saw the good in people and who saw the good in situations and who saw the good [5:00] in things. And we all felt that instantly. And that's why we're still great friends to this day. [5:05] Thank you both. Anthony, Alex, thank you so much, both so much for joining us. All eight episodes of [5:11] Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat are available right now on Prime Video.