The Jury Duty team recruited Sia, a minor-league baseball team, and a real hot-sauce company to pull off the ruse of Company Retreat for hero Anthony Norman (right). Photo: Prime |
David Bernad doesn’t take kindly to the suggestion that Jury Duty, the documentary-style comedy he produces for Prime Video, is based on a fake premise. Since the series returned in March, he’s seen it again and again: viewers on social media insisting the elaborate experiment, in which an unsuspecting participant is surrounded by actors performing scripted antics, must be staged — that the “unsuspecting participant” is in on the game. “These actors rehearse for weeks upon weeks, and they’re fully committed,” he says. “They’re doing a live theater performance.” Every interaction and plot twist in Jury Duty is carefully orchestrated to steer its unwitting star through a series of low-stakes moral dilemmas while hidden cameras capture his reactions. By the finale, the ruse is revealed, and the star walks away with prize money and a behind-the-scenes tour of The Truman Show–esque operation. Bernad calls fan speculation that the show’s lead role might be fake “deeply offensive.”
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