Danny Jarabek
In Jury Duty: Company Retreat, Alex Bonifer plays Dougie Jr., the bleach-blond, big-hearted son of a CEO who is set to take over Rockin’ Grandmas hot sauce with his dad’s retirement. The show places its cast in a real-time environment alongside an unsuspecting non-actor, Anthony Norman, who serves as the season’s hero, and the whole thing only works if every actor is in it together. Bonifer is a keystone to the series, threading the needle between comic relief and emotional anchor. Awards Radar spoke with him about building out the character of Dougie Jr., the real-life bond he formed with Anthony, and the complexity of landing the show’s scripted marks while also allowing unexpected emotional connections to flourish.
Read our full conversation with Alex Bonifer below.
Dougie Jr. feels like such a keystone to the whole story in Season Two. How did you feel when you found out you’d be taking on that character, and what did you want to do with him?
Alex Bonifer: It was so cool to be given the autonomy and really encouraged to make this character my own from the onset. Even in the audition process, we had loose jumping-off points, and the rest was there for us to fill in the blank. What we were given was that he was the son of the CEO, said to be taking over the company, and that he had been in Jamaica for four years. Being able to fill in all of the rest of those blanks was such a fun task.
Then, realizing Dougie’s importance in the story we were hoping to tell once I got the scripts, the most important variable in our show determines how the whole thing ends up. Thank God we had Anthony Norman be that variable for us. But I thought it was so incredible to be given that much trust from the team to say, not only would I like to play the character this way and bleach my hair and grow the beard and have these really hard funny moments, but to also be trusted with carrying the emotional weight when things don’t go Dougie’s way, and to try to keep Anthony on Dougie’s side through that. I was really just excited and felt honored that the team trusted me with that responsibility.
On the surface, Dougie looks like a guy you are not going to believe is real. I was really proud and excited to task myself with that challenge. Could I play a character like that and pass him off as a real, breathing human? On a scripted show, the camera aids a lot. You can call cut, you can reset, you can get the take you want. Here, I had to be a real living, breathing human in the truest sense. That was very exciting.
What stood out to me this season was the trust you built with Anthony, and how quickly that bond formed on screen. What can you tell us about that relationship and how it found its way into the show?
Alex Bonifer: It started with brilliant casting in getting Anthony, in getting a guy who sees the good in people and in situations, and who is willing to look past the surface to really understand someone and what they are going through. The first time I met Anthony was the first time you see it on the show, when I walk into the conference room and he is there sorting mailers. We were then in that room for over an hour just talking, and what you see on screen is the very beginning of our friendship. It was in that conference room where I really saw that Dougie would be a very easy guy to judge by his cover. But I got the sense that Anthony was instantly able to see through that and see a person, a guy with a lot of pressure who really wanted to succeed for his dad, to make his dad proud. That is something I can relate to instantly, as Alex, not just as Dougie.
We all brought ourselves to these roles and connected on a very real, very human level. I gravitate towards people who are glass-half-full, who can see the good and choose joy and positivity. That is how I try to be, and that is what drew me to Anthony initially. Then on a personal level we bonded over sports, and Anthony has a son who was almost four at the time. I have a four-year-old son, but Dougie did not, so I could not reveal that. There was this unspoken father connection he did not know about, but I did. We just ended up having a lot in common.
Dougie feels like one of the characters who undergoes the most change from beginning to end, really taking his mistakes in stride with the empathy Anthony gives him and trying to become a better person by the end of the retreat. What was that transformation like to play?
Alex Bonifer: That was honestly one of my favorite parts of being on this show. When you book the job, you think, Jury Duty was the funniest show on television when it came out. I am a comedian, what a dream. But then you get there and you realize Dougie is going to go through some things. Being able to earnestly act those emotions in real life was a real challenge. I am not a method actor, but when Dougie loses his throne, right after the jerk-off sauce situation, I had to live in that around the clock. I could not just be happy and hunky-dory because we were wrapped for the day. I really welcomed and embraced that challenge.
The way I was able to sustain it was a decision I made early on that Dougie was a guy with a massive heart who really, really cared. I knew that if his heart was well-intentioned but the outcomes were missed, like the misprint on the jerk-off sauce label and him not knowing about the Taco Bell situation, we could hopefully keep Anthony on his side because Anthony would see how genuinely and earnestly Dougie cared. The same was true when things started to crumble. He really cared that he had messed up, and that weighed on him. It was also really important that Dougie, as sad as he was, was going to fall in line with what his dad said about Truikas, really try his best to move forward in a path that was not CEO but still involved in some capacity, and not become an ultra-negative presence about the whole thing. He was going to trust his dad. I kept planting that in Anthony’s mind over and over: my dad knows what he is doing, we just have to trust my dad. I knew that dad was going to come close to making a bad mistake in selling the company to Truikas. But it all came down to playing the emotional reality of what was happening with a really big heart and a lot of care.
I asked Wendy [Braun] a similar question to get her perspective on this, but I’m also very curious to hear it from your angle. Inside that fateful moment when Anthony stops the merger, can you take me through what that looked like and felt like from your perspective?
Alex Bonifer: What a beautiful conclusion to the story we were telling, and something no writer in the world could have scripted. You could have had the best writers try to concoct some speech that your hero would hopefully say, and they could not have come up with what Anthony did. That was incredible. The moments leading up to it, there is a lot you do not see on the show. There is a lot of downtime, boring seminars, meals, reflection periods. But when we get into that final sequence with the locksmith and the notary and Truikas arriving, that is all happening almost in real time.
When I got the script and it outlined that Rube Goldberg machine of events that had to transpire, I thought, I will get as close to this as I can. My earwig was not working because it was such a massive property, and I was down in my room while everyone else was up on the hill. I had no communication. So I just started the sequence running on instinct. I knew I had to intercept Anthony, who was delivering coffee to Truikas in the business center, and make it seem like a casual happenstance. I had to be in there to basically get told off by Truikas, get Anthony to go around the back side of the building and back into the business center, have him overhear Truikas through the vents, hopefully get him to stand up and look through the vents to see the monitor, and then run up the hill to get Doug, only to find out Doug is not there, and run back down the hill to get him into the conference center. My only job was to do all of that and get Anthony in the room.
When we are running down the hill and I take the fall through the sign, I am sweating. It is the most adrenaline my body has ever felt at any point in my life. I fall down and I hear Anthony say, “Get up, get up,” just like a brother would to another brother. I am on the ground looking up and I see him keep running and go into the room. I thought, I did it! Then one of the PAs is like, “Go, go, get in, get in,” and I come in mid-confrontation between Anthony and Doug. The actor part of my brain was fully locked into the scene as Dougie, and then the Alex part of my brain was going, “Holy shit, I cannot believe he is saying this. What a beautiful thing that is happening.” I feel really fortunate to have been one of the five people in that room witnessing it. I think it is one of the most beautiful moments in television this year. Put it on the Pantheon of really, really beautiful moments.
I agree. Put it on the Pantheon. Well, Alex, thank you so much. It is such a blast to watch this show and you have such a great role in it. I really appreciate getting to hear more behind the scenes and hope to chat soon once again.
Alex Bonifer: Perfect. Thanks, Danny. I really appreciate it, man.
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