Jake Szymanski Interview: “Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat” Season 2

Jury Duty Presents is Amazon’s Emmy-recognized hidden-camera reality-hoax comedy franchise built around one “hero” who believes the docu-style world is real while everyone else is acting. The mockumentary series was created by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky.

Season 1 was set in a courtroom and featured James Marsden alongside the unsuspecting juror Ronald Gladden. In Season 2, titled Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, the setting moves from a courtroom to a full-on corporate retreat for a family-owned hot sauce business called Rockin’ Grandma’s. It follows an unsuspecting temp worker (Anthony Norman) as the workplace drama escalates around him.

The show’s format remains the same: keep one person in the dark while the rest of the show feels real. Season 2 goes bigger and prankier, mining more backstories for an ensemble of coworkers who must feel like they’ve known each other for years.

Jury Duty Presents differs from many other doc/ mockumentaries. Characters in traditional mockumentaries know they’re performing for the “documentary,” and scenes are written to fit that format. Jury Duty Presents is driven with one person who doesn’t know it’s scripted, using a docu-style frame, immersive staging, pranks, and improv/unscripted reactions to produce comedy that feel like it’s  happening in real time rather than on cue.

Season 1 was made in 2023 and it was unclear whether a second season would happen. The creators believed that the concept was worthy and challenged them creatively.

Executive producer/ director/ cameo Jake Szymanski discusses his approach to producing such a unique style of mockumentary.

Anthony Norman. Photo courtesy of Prime Video

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Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat – Ideating Season 2

I guess this season is like The Truman Show. I also started thinking about The Game with Michael Douglas, which is a much darker, more mean-spirited version of Truman.

Some of our producers David Burnad, Nick Hatton, Todd Shulman came from the Sacha Baron Cohen world. So they had some experience with some hidden camera shows.

David Burnad produced my mockumentaries I did with Andy Samberg back in the day for HBO called Seven Days in Hell and Tour de Pharmacy. He knew I come out of two worlds working in both comedy and the documentary space.

He knew I use improv a lot even in my scripted stuff. So that that’s how I got involved in the show. He called me to make sure I understood the concept for Jury Duty, “What if it’s a really long con?”

I didn’t want to torture someone for three weeks and I said no initially. The idea that it’s a hero’s journey and celebrates someone who never got punched down got me very interested. And the stakes can’t be much higher from a production point of view because you could get to the last thing that you’re hoping to shoot and the whole thing can still fall apart.

Lee Eisenberg on ‘Lessons in Chemistry,’ ‘The Office,’ and ‘Jury Duty’

Documentary format

For both seasons, the hero thinks that there is a documentary taking place. As we shaped it, it’s a pretty low rent boring documentary with a very small crew. They only thought there was about a five-person crew working on this documentary and we hide the other 80 people that are working on the show.

They think it’s probably going to be boring “never going to be seen” documentary.  They also don’t think the documentary is about them.

Tell us about Anthony Norman – the retreat’s temp

We hired a temp called Anthony. He’s our non-actor who doesn’t know he’s in a mockumentary. He’s a real person who doesn’t know we’re making a TV show. He gets hired as a temp to help out in the office and then he gets taken on the company retreat to make it believable.

You’re not just creating a narrative or a story for him. You have to create a reality for that person. That’s the only way we can play out our story. The other thing for him to believe is that this is all real and that the other people at the retreat supposedly have worked together for years and know each other well.

The good thing about Season 2 being a temp job, is there’s room for a lot more interviews. Anthony probably had the most thorough job interviews in the history of temp jobs of all time.

I think there were almost 10000 people that applied for the role. One of our amazing producers Alexis Sampietro who heads up the casting department reduced that group to 50 or 60 people.

We’re looking for good people. We’re looking for people who have confidence in themselves, confidence that they know how to act. We have some crazy characters that are going to be doing a lot of crazy things around you. We’ve written this show with the hope and expectation that you will be the compass to go, “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t do that. Maybe you should do this?”

That’s what a lot of the show is based around and how we get through our stories. I’m sure some of us have friends who don’t like surprises. We’re trying to pick the people that like surprises.

Dougie Jr. (Alex Bonifer) & Anthony. Photo courtesy of Prime Video

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How did the cast pretend they worked at a fake company without breaking cover?

Casting is one of my favorite favorite aspects of this show.

We have an incredible cast both in Season 1 and Season 2. Our cast features a lot of unsung heroes who maybe haven’t been in a lot of stuff yet because they can’t be recognized. So, it’s a great showcase for them. The big difference for Season 2 is we had to do a lot more rehearsal with the cast because they had been supposedly been working at this company together for a while.

There were a lot of things that could break the premise and reality of the show. In one episode, two people who had supposedly worked together for over 20 years discussed moving house with a lawn versus still living in an apartment.

That would be weird for two people who didn’t know each other that well to lie about where they lived. We had to be really careful. We put them in a small business setting and we had them give PowerPoint presentations about who their characters were as they continued to develop them. They had to explain where they went to college, where they got their degrees, and when they had met each other. We repeated it often to ingrain it in their minds.

They had all watched Season 1. We did have a slip-up where one of our actors called another one of our actors by their real name. We worked past it and it didn’t end up being a problem, but everyone was very nervous

The actors don’t necessarily become best friends in real life so they used their character names during shooting to become their on-screen characters.

This was a digital detox retreat and there was an entire hour-long seminar about the power of giving up your phone. Everyone put their phone in a locked chest for the two weeks.

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Directing by Flow Chart 

From a directing standpoint, you’re going to obviously have multiple takes and be able to tinker with performances, especially after Anthony arrives.

I think with any production, prep and rehearsal time is hugely important and necessary. We have to rehearse it many times over because we’re never sure how it will turn out. While we do have the the these really funny scripts and all the story beats we have to hit, we plan for the five most likely reactions we think we’re going to get from Anthony, so we rehearse it a lot of different ways

I call it like directing by flow chart. We rehearse every bubble in that flow chart.

Production Challenges – Dougcathalon

There was a Dougcathalon episode at the retreat. That’s all pretty easy to write.

Anthony (Captain Fun) accidentally hits Elizabeth Precott (the CEO of Triukas the company wanting to buy Rockin’ Grandma’s) and gets a blood nose.

This became one of the trickiest things. How are we going to give our actress a fake bloody nose in front of someone and have them not know that it’s fake?

This is one of those big moments that we spend a lot of time on because the whole show could fall apart. We had our stunt coordinator, who not only rehearsed the movement of it, but also, the special effects.

You can see when Elizabeth gets hit. She goes over to her assistants who offer her a kleenex and they had to work with our effects team. In the kleenex is a hidden squirt of blood. But it has to be the right amount of blood to look like it came from her nose.

The other big thing we were worried about is that Anthony’s going to rush over and try to help her because he’s the temp he’s been helping everyone all week. He’s in the middle and there’s a crowd around him to ensure that doesn’t happen.

That’s planned out really specifically to create barriers and a backup plan in case he does come over there. While one of her assistants is applying the blood the other assistant was going to go block him and tell him to leave them alone.

Elizabeth Prescott (Wendy Braun) Photo courtesy of Amazon Content Services

Unused footage

We credit our writers room for the reality that’s created. But we’re taking only the best 4 hours to make the show out of. In order to get those 4 hours we have to create the other 80 hours.

There’s a ton of work and writing that goes into it. We had a ton of seminars and guest speakers, including guest speakers on small business.This is a big retreat for Rockin’ Grandma’s. You have to build that reality. You can’t just build the scenes for the show. You have to build the other scenes for Anthony’s real life round that show.

You have to get all the shots you want to get with seven hidden cameras. It all affects Anthony’s perception.

There moments when Anthony makes a comment like, ‘You couldn’t make this stuff up” or “This would have to be a TV show or something.” It actually becomes a sign that he’s buying in and accepting that strange things are happening. But that could blow up at any moment.

We built in a release valve early in the show. One of our characters gives Anthony the option to bow out.

by Staff Writer

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