What To Know
- Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat star Wendy Braun reveals how Anthony Norman handled learning she wasn’t really the villainous corporate type.
- Plus, here’s how she went all-in on the big showdown.
Every member of the cast of Jury Duty‘s second season,Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, had some ‘splainin’ to do after revealing the truth that Anthony Norman was the only non-actor on the entire campus. But nobody had more to prove than Wendy Braun, who had to play someone completely unlike herself in the villainous Elizabeth.Warning: This post contains spoilers for all episodes ofJury Duty Season 2.
After the big showdown that ensued, as Anthony fought to save the jobs of the staff at Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce from dissolution by the Triukas group, Elizabeth stormed off with a flurry of swear words that the actress admits were completely unscripted but felt very good to say to prove the character’s fury over the deal falling through.
“Working on this whole series is like one giant team-building exercise, one giant trust fall with like 100 people,” she told TV Insider. “The moment of that last scene, where he comes in, your heart’s pounding because this is the moment, and you want him to have it go as it went. We all have to play a role in that, and to have the permission to play the role the way I did, it was thrilling. I know they’re all gonna hate me, but that’s my job… I feel like you’re not acting. You’re embodying [the role]. You’re responding, or you’re thinking as her. It was just a full permission slip to let go.”
“We rehearsed all the beats in the moment. We rehearsed Anthony coming in, but we never really rehearsed the exit. It was just, ‘Now, you’ll exit,’” she added. “You’re improving. You have scripted dialogue. The whole show is scripted. I don’t know if people realize that. But in the moment, I’m just, ‘Get out of my way.’ It was awesome. The cast came up to me later, and they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, that was amazing.’”
She revealed that while she took off in her car in a state of rage, she was secretly rejoicing a job well done on the inside and immediately celebrated once she was out of sight. “You have to stay in it all the way to walking to the car. You can’t be like, ‘We did it,’ until you’re in that car. And what people don’t see, there’s so many moments where Triukas and me, me and my team, we get whisked away, and once we are out of earshot, we are screaming with joy. On every scene that we get whisked away, we’re high-fiving. We’re like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ So it really was so much fun, but it was also the most high-pressure, high-stakes job I’ve ever done in my entire career.”
Braun revealed that while she got to drop the act and introduce her true self to Anthony, he still has his doubts about her.
“We definitely have a moment where I just hug him, and we are able to connect,” she said. “Even months later, we would DM each other, and he’s like, ‘I’m still not sure about you. I cannot believe!’ So I knew I did my job, that he still was unsure, but now we’re good friends.”
“He’s amazing,” Braun added. “What a roller coaster ride he went through, and to show such, I think, empathy and authenticity, I mean, we just, we got our hero.”
Check out the video above for more details from Wendy Braun aboutJury Duty Presents: Company Retreat!
Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, Prime Video