When Anthony Norman, the unwitting star of Prime Video’s Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, took a temp job with a hot sauce company, he had no idea what he was getting into. He thought he would be assisting family-owned Rockin’ Grandma’s put on a weeklong company retreat in Southern California.
“I thought… I just needed to show up and help them in any way that they needed me to,” the young father from Nashville, TN explained. “Just with my schedule with my son, I’ve always looked for jobs that I could just make work, and it seemed like a good opportunity for me to jump on.”
Unbeknownst to him, Norman had been cast in the second season of the breakout hit Jury Duty, a show premised on the concept of inserting an unsuspecting person into a concocted situation and then watching them respond to increasingly absurd and hilarious developments. In Season 1, the ordinary guy was Ronald Gladden, summoned for purported jury duty while not realizing his fellow jurors in fact were actors. In Season 2, producers came up with a more complicated scenario where actors had to pretend to be longtime Rockin’ Grandma’s co-workers.
Norman was speaking at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience, where he was joined by the creatives behind the series for a panel discussion. Watch the conversation and scroll down for photos from the event.
“The bar for us from Season 1 of Jury Duty to Company Retreat, we wanted to raise it for ourselves,” show co-creator and executive producer Lee Eisenberg said. “I don’t know why we decided to do that, but we decided. And in Jury Duty, it’s a group of strangers that come together. In Company Retreat, we need to create backstories. And so then at any point if Anthony said, ‘Oh, so how long have you been here? Oh, did you get promoted over this person?’ or whatever it is, all of that needs to be in the bank for the actors.”
The show hinges on finding an ordinary person who, plunged into a group of people he’s never met before, doesn’t reject them as weird or objectionable but embraces them at some basic human level. Executive producers found their “hero” (as they call their protagonist) in Anthony.
Nicholas Hatton, Jake Szymanski, Lee Eisenberg, Todd Schulman and Anthony Norman at Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026, in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Anthony Norman at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Jerry Hauck and Alex Bonifer at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Lanisa Renee Frederick at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Christopher Kula, Wendy Braun and Rachel Hein at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Rob Lathan at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026, in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Emily Pendergast at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Marc-Sully Saint-Fleur at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Erica Hernandez at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Stephanie Hodge at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Rachel Kaly at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Jim Woods at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Blair Beeken at Deadline Studio at Prime Experience held at The Aster on May 03, 2026 in Los Angeles
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
“I don’t think we knew, but we hoped” Norman would fit the bill, executive producer Todd Schulman said. “We do a pretty thorough kind of background process in terms of getting to know Anthony and interviewing him multiple times. And there was just something about Anthony that I think we all collectively felt. We wanted to get someone who captured America the way Ronald did [in Season 1] but was their own person. And as we got to know Anthony through these interviews, we were all just drawn to him, I think, and felt like this guy is someone that hopefully is going to represent what we all would hope we do in a situation like the one he’s presented with in Company Retreat.”
The supposed head of HR, “Kevin” (played by Ryan Perez) quits the company retreat in the first episode after committing an embarrassing faux pas, leaving Anthony in charge as “Captain Fun,” leading the retreat’s social activities. Remarkably, that sudden promotion didn’t phase Norman.
“I think a lot of it had to do with how welcoming they [the supposed employees] were with me and then taking on the role of Captain Fun was very, very small,” Norman said. “If that was my job every day, I would love my job.”
Anthony was told ahead of time there would be a few cameras around, although he had no idea what was truly going on behind the scenes.
“Anthony only saw a crew of about five people that he thought was working this very low-budget documentary that would probably not end up anywhere,” director/executive producer Jake Szymanski noted. “And we have about 85 people hidden from him.”
“There’s something dangerous about the show,” Eisenberg observed, “because at any moment it could get broken because your main character doesn’t know that they’re in that show.”
Seeing a person react with kindness and not ridicule – that’s radical at a time when American society seems racked with division and social media encourages public criticism and vitriol.
“It’s a celebration of common decency, not unique decency,” executive producer Nicholas Hatton says of the show. “Social media, it’s built on division, it’s built on the polarization, that’s how they make their money. And ultimately, if you interact with people in your day-to-day life across communities across America, most people are decent to each other. We just don’t see that, and it’s not pushed on us as much. And this was kind of our artistic sort of contribution to that conversation.”
Eisenberg added, “I think both with Anthony and Ronald, they’re great guys and they bring people together, they’re welcoming, they’re accepting. And I think that’s a positive thing to have out there right now.”
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