Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched Jury Duty Presents Corporate Retreat in all its inspirational glory via Amazon Prime subscription, so be warned!
Throughout the first seven episodes of Jury Duty’s second season, the unwitting lead Anthony Norman experienced a Corporate Retreat truly like no other, and was tossed into a vast array of increasingly oddball situations, all in the name of keeping the Rockin’ Grandma’s family together. Not that the family even existed, per se, but Anthony proved himself star-worthy at every step with endless positivity and compassion. Those character traits definitely inform how he lasted the duration without realizing the artifice of his surroundings.
With cameras capturing everything from the oddest places from the start, the Jury Duty crew pulled the rug out in the season finale, making for quite an emotional, name-learning release for he cast. Speaking with CinemaBlend, the newfound star revealed the earliest “red flag” he detected during the interview process, not that he suspected he was applying for a semi-fake documentary surrounding a completely fake documentary. Here’s what he told us:
Article continues belowI think the only part that was a red flag to me was they wanted me to do a mental health evaluation. And I was like, 'What? For a job?' That was a bit strange. But other than that, there was nothing really too crazy.
From the big-picture standpoint, it's certainly clear why the producers wanted to put the Season 2 "hero" (the term used by the creative team for the unsuspecting lead) through a mental health exam. Given the improvisational nature of the show, things could go disastrous if someone prone to irrational and violent behavior was put in the kinds of stressful and baffling positions that Anthony Norman conquered frequently during his reign as Captain Fun.
With that in mind, it's very easy to see why the casting director honed in on Norman for the final pick. If everybody on the planet was on the same mental wavelength as Anthony Prime (as opposed to Other Anthony), I daresay it'd be a world where doomscrolling never had a reason to exist. But we might not have shows like Jury Duty, either, so there's a give and take.
How An Eminem Song Led To Anthony Getting Suspicious
For all intents and purposes, Corporate Retreat obviously didn't need to follow up on the celebrity presence of James Marsden in Jury Duty Season 1, but Episode 6, "Culture Fit," welcomed a doozy of a cameo that was so-o-o much easier on the ol' eardrums than Ryan Perez's Kevin Gomez. (Sorry Ryan/Kevin.) The timing of that appearance, however, was another moment that made Anthony Norman question what was happening around him. As he put it.
I think I would say the sagebrush, that whole environment. There was a moment where one of the producers, Alexis, came out. I was working with Jimmy on the talent show, and he was remixing an Eminem song. Then she came out and she was like, 'We're a low-budget documentary. We can't do that.' And I was like, okay, whatever. And then like two days later, Sia comes out and has this big performance. And I'm just like...[hands rubbing temples].
That would be maddening for anyone actively trying to make sense of the sequence of events that built up to the talent show's culmination, with Sia being brought in on behalf of the brand-consuming private equity group Triukas attempting to buyout Rockin' Grandma's. Just that lineup of events is reality-stretching enough, but to have that go down right after music-related budget concerns were addressed in one's face would go above and beyond.
I suppose the argument could be made that Triukas could conceivably have paid the licensing rights to have Sia's music appear in the faux doc, but they didn't seem like they'd be that charitable. Seafood and bibs? Sure. It's all a moot point anyway, even if it is still fun to think about that kind of minutiae.
Speaking of the little things, Norman shared another example of something that seems so silly now that didn't in the moment. As he put it:
Another thing that I look back on is the jobs that they were asking me to do. They didn't need somebody from Nashville to do that.
They didn't just need somebody. They needed Anthony!! To his point, though, there wouldn't have really been a need for Rockin' Grandma's to hire anyone outside of the local area to help assist with things. But that's not the kind of detail anyone in their mid-20s is thinking about when landing what seems like a cushy job.
Hopefully Anthony Norman never has to apply to another temp company in his life, and that his influence goes on to inspire the masses. Anyone who hasn't yet streamed Corporate Retreat's episodes with the cast and crew commentary tracks should do so ASAP. Just the best.
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