Back in 2023, Jury Duty brought to our screens one of modern TV's most cavalier concepts. In a day and age filled with social media, and cameras in our pockets at all times, could an entire show be created around one guy who doesn't know he's in a TV show?Of course, old-school reality TV fans are familiar with the concept, given the four seasons of The Joe Schmo Show that have aired to this point. But Jury Duty aimed to take a step beyond. Rather than putting someone on an entirely fabricated reality show, one if they created a real-life situation, something as mundane as getting called for jury duty, and truly make it out of the ordinary?
?SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox ? Jury Duty was a runaway hit for Amazon, who aired it on their Freevee service at the time. After raking in commendations, and Emmy nominations, the question became: Could they do it again? And, three years later, they provide the answer in Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat. The "hero" of our story now is Anthony Norman, who thinks he's hired as a temp to assist the annual company retreat for a hot sauce company called "Rockin' Grandma's." He has no idea that he's in for the wildest week of his life, and it's all built around seeing how he would react to every outlandish situation thrown his way.The tightrope act that is Jury Duty only exists with the tireless talents of the actors who are tasked with playing believable, yet ridiculous characters. One of those actors in Company Retreat is Alex Bonifer, whose character Dougie is a black sheep of the family, looking to prove he deserves inheriting his father's company. Bonifer sat down with Parade to talk through the process of filming Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat, and reveal some of the biggest things you may not know about how this high-stakes social experiment comes together.
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The entire conceit to bring Anthony into the Company Retreat fold began with a fake job listing, leading to thousands of applications. Of course, those who sought out the temp position at Rockin' Grandma's wouldn't be able to know what their on-camera work would actually involve. But, according to Bonifer, the actors were left a fair amount in the dark as well when it came to auditioning for the gig."When I got the breakdown, it was 'Untitled Anthony King Project,'" Bonifer reveals, referring to showrunner Anthony King. "But given the nature of the breakdown, meaning the role and the sort of vague description of the project, and the fact that we had to improvise for a full minute in the initial self-tape request, I kind of read between the lines.Interestingly, throughout the entire process, Bonifer was not given any scenes that would wind up playing out in Jury Duty. Instead, he was given a couple of different scenarios and characters and told to improvise, clearly a test to see if the actors could sink or swim in the world of improv. But the ultimate trial came at the final callback. According to Bonifer, the production office was filled with cameras, much like the show proper would. It's then the actors were informed about the corporate setting — albeit at a coffee company rather than hot sauce. And they were told to simply walk in and interact with as many people as they wanted to while in character."My goal was just to do 'hard funny,' but believable," he explains. "Extract the comedy out of every single moment. And it was really an improviser's dream, because I got to put my 'stink' all over this character and all over this project."
Most plot points were scripted — but quite a few weren't
Bonifer confirms that, while the Jury Duty was speaking weeks getting into character, they were also being given the scripts of the season. The writers' room had already crafted the overall arc of the company retreat, from Kevin's (Ryan Perez) botched proposal and sudden departure to Doug (Jerry Hauck) refusing to sign over his company at the eleventh hour. That meant that the skeleton of the season would remain the same, no matter what Anthony said or did.That's not to say, however, that every beat in the show came from the written page. In fact, as Bonifer reveals, the "PJ's Snack Attack" running segment was something that was not in the initial scripts, instead crafted on the fly during filming. Some plot points even unintentionally came from Anthony himself."The spicy applesauce that wasn't anywhere to be found [in the script]," Bonifer says. "That was something that Anthony said. And my first time meeting him in the conference room, which we don't see, he had mentioned, 'Oh, I think I wonder if my son would like spicy applesauce.' And so that took us down a whole path."
Of course, in finding out that there was a writing team and scripts behind Jury Duty, the next question becomes: How scripted was it? And Bonifer clarifies that the script served much more as a recommendation rather than a mandate."I would say, for every five pages of the script outline, there might have been a small chunk of scripted dialogue," he says. "But even that was like, 'Here's the broad stroke.' But it was mostly like, 'Here's the journey, and you guys fill in the rest.'" Bonifer says the moment he's the most proud of improvising came from a group interview that actually became the last line of the trailer. A straight-faced Dougie describes becoming the impending CEO, saying, "People think this job was handed to me. And I'm just excited to prove that it's not a hand job, it's an earned job.""That's something that I fully improvised," he says. "It's a feeling I often get in improv, where I'm like, 'Don't say that. I don't know if that's gonna be funny. I don't know. Bail on it.' And I had that same feeling come up in that moment during that group interview. But I was just like, 'Screw it. Trust your instinct. Say it.'" While Bonifer was worried that the crew would say the line was too over the top, he pulled it off, which he credits to the surprising humanity he brings to a man who dropped out of business school to join a reggae band — which he was subsequently kicked out of."I prided myself on my portrayal of Dougie," he admits. "He has his crazy moments, but ultimately, he was a grounded, real, believable character with a lot of heart. And so I trusted that, even in a line like that, it's funny because he missed the innuendo completely. But it would still be believable and grounded and real."
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Bonifer went undercover in character before getting the part
Bonifer credits his ability to create zany, yet believable characters due to his extensive improvisational background and work in the Groundlings. But there's a certain suspension of disbelief when it comes to seeing an improv show. In order for Jury Duty to be pulled off correctly, these characters had to pass the smell test in the real world. And that's exactly what Bonifer set out to do while he was auditioning for the part that would ultimately become Dougie."When I had my that in-person callback I was referring to, my hair was a little longer," he recounts. "And I had teased it out, so it was nice and big and floofy and unprofessional. I didn't have a full beard, but I had kind of like a five o'clock shadow. I was wearing my big suit that I wore in the client cookout. And I was so nervous, like, 'Are people gonna think this is phony?' "So one of the things I did, and I'm so glad that I did, was that there was a Vons down the street on Ventura Boulevard, and I was early to my audition by about an hour. So I pulled into this Vons, and I just full-blown, in-character was walking around this Vons for 20 to 30 minutes. Interacting with people, asking them if I could use the bathroom, if they thought this cereal was any good. And it really, really helped my confidence to go like, "Oh, wow. Everyone thinks I'm real."
Alex Bonifer says the secret to the success of 'Jury Duty: Company Retreat' comes from the amount of downtime the cast would spend in character.Courtesy of Amazon
Of course, much of the plot this season hinged on Anthony's support of Dougie, through his various attempts to prove to his dad that he's the perfect person hand-picked to take over the company. And it's something Bonifer credits to the 24/7 immersive experience this wound up being. Every time the cameras and/or Anthony were around, they had to be in character. And that profuse amount of downtime allowed for connections to easily manifest."We lived there around the clock, so you're only actually getting to see a fraction of what our experience was," he says. "That's how we were able to forge such a real friendship. Our interactions were largely casual. And I was just saying truths about my life."Even so, it's safe to say that Anthony went all-in for people he met a week ago at an alarming pace. Bonifer recalls watching back Episode 3, where Doug pulls Dougie aside after the latter leads a disastrous attempt at a new product launch. Anthony's face expresses palpable hurt and concern, which moves the actor."It's because he's just a good guy," he says. "He's just a guy that cares about people. And that was really the first moment where I was like, 'Oh, wow.' He's upset for Dougie. He's feeling for Dougie in this moment, because he genuinely cares""Was I surprised that we had that strong of a connection? Probably," he admits. "We have a lot of similarities. He's an athlete. I'm an athlete; I played football in college. Our sons are just a few months apart in age. That was the hardest secret to keep, honestly, the whole time. He would talk about his son, and I had to play dumb. But I was like, 'Dude, I know exactly what you're you know talking about, what you're going through.' "I think we were all initially surprised, at first, at just how engaging Anthony was. But once we all got to know him, after a day, everything he did became very unsurprising, because he just proved to be who he was. And then when he would start pulling us aside and checking in with us, and being there for Claire and being there for PJ with his 'snack attacks,' at that point, we weren't surprised. We're like, 'Of course Anthony would do this. That's just who he is.'"
Bonifer was never worried Anthony would figure everything out
To pull off something like this is a high-wire act, to say the least. As highlighted in the finale, the scale of production massively multiplied compared to Season 1, meaning more possibilities for things to go wrong. Regardless, when it came to the characters, even during some of their most ridiculous moments, Bonifer never doubted that Anthony would hear what someone was saying and clock that something was up."In terms of Anthony believing in the reality, I never really questioned that," he says. "I don't think any of us did. I think that he was fully invested in us as people. Even for me, as an actor who knew what was going on, what being at this very real, very peaceful, very tranquil, recruit retreat facility with limited access to phones, you almost forget about the world outside of this little retreat. That's what businesses go on retreats for. Like, 'Let's strip away the world for a period of time. Let's bond, let's get close.' And you really become fully invested in the thing that you're doing on the retreat. So in terms of that world, we were literally living in that bubble the entire time around the clock. So I was never worried about him questioning the reality.
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...but there were a few times they almost got caught
All that said, even if Anthony was all-in on the reality of Rockin' Grandma's, it didn't mean there wasn't a chance of things going wrong. We saw in the finale the moment when things came the closest to crashing down, with the notary pretending to lock his keys in his car, but with the window rolled down. We get taken inside the Jury Duty control room at that point, as the producers hurriedly radio Marjorie (Blair Beeken), telling her to roll the window up and lock the car while Anthony is preoccupied.But Bonifer says there was another revealing moment caught off-camera earlier in the season. After the documentary crew (and the show proper) "wrapped" for the day, they would schedule a variety of nighttime events for the "company." One of the first nights, they did a "sound bath," which was an immediate hit, so much so that they brought it back towards the end of the retreat. It's a decision they would later regret."We went to turn off all the lights, and there was one light bulb that was not going off," he explains. "S it was me, Anthony and Warren Burke, who plays Steve. And we were getting it set up. And Warren gets up on the ladder, and he's like, 'Well, just let's just unscrew it. We'll just take out the light.' So he goes to unscrew it, takes it off, and the light is still on. And we're like, 'What?' And we look, and it's got the production tape with writing on it. "It really felt like in The Truman Show, when the light falls down on this guy. I was like, 'What?! Then he was like, 'What the hell?!' And I was like, 'Oh no, dude, let's just get out of here and get our sound bath.' And I literally hid it under a pillow. And we were like, 'Let's just not talk about this.' But that was the one moment where on the production side where I was like, 'Oh my god. This is a production light that they didn't tell us about, that they of course, didn't want us to take down. But here we are, so...crisis averted."
When Anthony found out he was on a TV show, Alex Bonifer says his response was 'in grace and in understanding and in joy.'Courtesy of Amazon
Everything that the actors and crew had spent weeks, nay months, prepping for finally reached its peak (or second mountain) in Episode 7. The climax of the story had arrived, as Anthony and Dougie discover Truikas's true intentions in acquiring Rockin' Grandma's mere minutes before the contract would be signed. What follows is a madcap sprint to the finish, complete with multiple trips up the hill, and Bonifer crashing through a banner.As he describes it, "I had to be snuck down the mountain, hide in my room for Anthony to come back with the coffee, intercept him, go to Triukas, go around the building in a certain specific way so that we could hear them talking in the vents, run up the hill, not find Doug, run back down the hill. So when I got that script, I remember my first thought being like, 'I mean...okay, good luck! I don't know who's going to make this all happen.' And, sure enough, we pulled it off."Considering how much Bonifer had to compartmentalize as he literally ran through the endgame like a chicken with its head cut off, he didn't pay much mind to what would happen next. After all, while the story of Rockin' Grandma's had come to an end, the story of Jury Duty would not without its final act: The reveal.
When asked about his anticipated reaction from Anthony, Bonifer says, "There were no expectations. I had so much adrenaline rushing through my body, and I was still so present in the halting of the signing of this deal that it kind of caught up to me pretty quickly. But I think I had a lot of confidence that Anthony wouldn't feel hurt or betrayed. I knew that there would be a large degree of shock. But I think I was confident in the relationship that we had built over the course of this experience, and the relationship he built with every other person." "I thought it was beautiful," he continues. "I thought that he received it in a very unsurprising, very Anthony way, in grace and in understanding and in joy. He was constantly making the joyous choice. And so when it was revealed that he was going to get money right at the end of this, we all just started bawling. And that's what I held on to. I knew that we were going to change Anthony Norman's life for the better. That's what I held on to throughout the whole time of this little layer of deceit that there was to this project. Like, 'No, the world is going to see what a good human he is, and his life is going to change.' And any preconceptions that I had about that reveal, everything else he did, he surpassed it for the better."
Is Anthony close with the Jury Duty cast today?
Jury Duty Season 2 filmed nearly a year and a half ago, timestamped by the fact that the XYZ wildfire nearly derailed the plot of an outdoor search for Dougie halfway through the season. But, even though months have passed since the fourth wall broke and the entire ruse was revealed, Anthony is still in good company with the Company Retreat cast."Anthony is going to be a friend of mine for the rest of my life," Bonfier says. "And I'm going to be friends and connected with everyone else at Rockin' Grandma's for the rest of my life. We've all stayed in touch. Rachel Callie, who plays Claire, has a stand-up show next week that a couple of us are going to. Anthony's come out to see me perform at the Groundlings. "The nature of what we did really bred a closeness unlike any other set or any other project that I've ever worked on. And, honestly, I think the time that has passed since we've wrapped, now that we are able to talk about it, we were all living with this secret that we could only talk to each other about it. And so anything that came up, or any feelings, we were all there for each other to navigate the long wait. And now we're all getting to enjoy it together."It seems that, even if Rockin' Grandma's is not an actual company, the family feeling behind it remains the biggest reality coming out of Jury Duty.
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