‘Jury Duty’ Star Wendy Braun Reveals How She Pulled Off That Bloody Nose Stunt

Things got very, very messy in the latest batch of episodes for Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat. After Doug Sr. (Jerry Hauck) revealed that he was considering selling Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce to the Triukas Group, the all-redheaded agency’s reps joined the retreat to introduce themselves to the staff, with Elizabeth (Wendy Braun) taking point on the presentation as the leader of the private equity firm — with bloody consequences. Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Jury Duty Season 2 Episode 5.

Though she presented herself as a friendly face, Elizabeth’s true colors shone through by the end of the day after she was accidentally exposed as a two-faced corporate stooge type. And since everyone on the show is acting except for the “hero,” Anthony Norman, the role took a lot of preparation and commitment to pull off not laughing out loud at the bizarre scenarios playing out.

“I do think it was one of the hardest jobs of playing the villain and coming out and just sort of being the outcast, the fish out of water,” Wendy Braun told TV Insider. “A lot of them saw me as the menace. Elizabeth sees herself as the mentor, but they see her as the menace.”

However, Braun relished the opportunity to be the baddie of oddball story and was more than willing to put in the legwork to step into Elizabeth’s fancy shoes. “It is fabulous playing the villain, I have to say, especially when you arrive in a Cybertruck and, even in wardrobe, we worked together. I just thought, ‘The bigger the bag, the more out of place she is in this sort of dusty retreat.’ The New York-y vibe of private equity was there, and it was challenging at times, obviously, to stay in character, completely committed, knowing the vernacular, the language, the logic of private equity, and having to dialogue in that way for hours, if needed. That definitely took a lot of research and collaboration with the writers and the team.”

To truly bring Elizabeth to life, she also had to pull off the biggest stunt of the show so far: During the Doug-cathlon, a series of team-building exercises, she and Kate (Erica Hernandez) engaged in a spirited jousting competition, and things turned ugly, with Kate accidentally giving Elizabeth a bloody nose.

Pulling off that stunt was key to ramping up the tension between the Rockin’ Grandma’s crew and the Triukas team, and though many people worked to coordinate and design it, the execution was solely up to Braun.

“We did have rehearsal for that. There are so many moments that you’re thinking, ‘What if this doesn’t work?’ … Normally, on a show, you would have a stunt double. You would do multiple takes. You’d be in the jousting, then you’d fly through the air, the stunt double could fly through the air, they put blood on you. That scene could take all day to shoot. Well, in this show, we have one take, and it’s all you,” she remembered. “Now, I have to say we have an amazing stunt coordinator who choreographed it and walked us through and taught us everything. We have an amazing special effects team that shows us how to use the blood and put it on and all the things. But now this has to happen in real time and in one take.”

Luckily, Braun has a background in dancing that helped her work through the choreography. “They taught me that if I fly through the air and when I bounce, if I bop my head, it’ll sell it more,” she remembered. “We have it all choreographed so Anthony is 180 degrees from where I’m going to fall. It’s all set up, but it has to look like we’re just doing it on the fly.”

Still, she had second thoughts right before going into the scene. “I remember telling Kate all week long, since she was like, ‘I’m so worried I’m gonna hurt you,’ I said, ‘You have to do it 100%. You have to just whack me in the face, go for it.’ And as we’re walking over there, and my heart’s pounding, and Anthony’s a little bit ahead of us, I just lean over and whisper to her, ‘OK, you know how I told you to do it 100%? Maybe just do it like 75%, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

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When the time finally arrived, and she did pull it off, she had to appear upset but was secretly flying inside. “It’s a moment when it works, and it did, you can tell everyone’s screaming back in the base camp in the videos,” she said. “We definitely were upset in the moment, but once again, when we get whisked away in the car, we’re all high-fiving. We actually stopped on the side of the road on Kanan, in the Malibu area, and we were just taking pictures and high-fiving with blood all over my face.”

“So it feels like, when it works, it’s like pulling off one giant magic trick,” Braun concluded.

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, Fridays, Prime Video