Work can feel a little surreal. Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat makes that feeling literal.
In this episode of Hello Monday, Jessi Hempel sits down with Lee Eisenberg, writer and co-creator of the Jury Duty franchise, and Nick Hatton, executive producer, to talk about the hit series. The show’s premise is simple but radical: one real person dropped into a completely staged world, surrounded by actors. In Company Retreat, that world is the workplace. Specifically, a hot sauce company navigating a looming acquisition in the midst of their annual retreat.
Beneath the comedy, the show lands because it feels real.
Lee has built his career capturing the nuances of human behavior at work, spending 5 years in the writer’s room for The Office before co-creating Jury Duty. Nick, too, has built a career in comedy, with past producing credits such as Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and This Is America.
In this conversation, they unpack how they recreate workplace dynamics so convincingly, why audiences connect so deeply with these stories, and what the show reveals about modern work culture.
Jessi, Lee, and Nick discuss:
- The "David vs. Goliath" design behind Company Retreat and why Anthony was cast as the lowest rung on the corporate ladder
- How the show argues that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary decency when given the right environment
- The unexpected discovery that many of their casting candidates were gig workers, and what that says about the modern economy
- The ethics and mechanics of "laying breadcrumbs" for their hero without compromising his free will
- Their fears and cautious hopes about AI's impact on the entertainment industry and the future of meaningful work
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