There are few genres that remain as evergreen and accessible as workplace comedies, especially since the average adult living in the U.S. will reportedly spend one-third of their lives at work.
“You are thrust into this very intimate setting where you have to work with people to accomplish something, but they’re not people you get to choose,” says Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat showrunner Anthony King. “When you’re actually having to work with clients or on some kind of project with someone, but then also eat lunch with them, that switch leads to so many interesting dynamics that we can all relate to.”
The Comeback co-creator Michael Patrick King notes that workplace comedies were initially conceived as a cost-effective way to make TV. “It’s very economically sound to have six funny characters in the same set week after week [with] no CGI dragons, no cars in New York saying it’s 1950,” he says, adding that he has always been drawn to the idea of examining “family that isn’t family” in a tense environment. “The best version of a workplace comedy is an evolution where you fall in love with people that maybe you don’t even like, but they’re good at their job and you have to deal with them.”
When Quinta Brunson first wrote the pilot for Abbott Elementary — which has become the genre’s defining hit of the decade — she was particularly interested in probing that thin line between the personal and professional to reveal the hearts of her eccentric ensemble. “Part of the fun is remembering that they’re people first,” Brunson says, noting that pulling her characters out of school or showing them outside of work hours allows viewers to uncover new layers that would have remained masked on the clock. “We keep that in mind to not pigeonhole them [and] instead show the full humanity of these people and how it connects to their job.”
The added complication for half of this year’s Emmy comedy writing nominees — Abbott, The Comeback and Company Retreat — was that the mockumentary format relies on characters who are acutely aware that they are being watched at all times, forcing writers to script a complex performance within a performance.
On Abbott, for instance, Brunson says that guest actors often struggle with “looking at the camera and talking and treating the camera as if it’s in the room.” Initially, Janelle James’ delightfully self-absorbed principal, Ava, was far more comfortable with the crew than the teachers. But over five seasons, Brunson points out, the staff has grown to treat the camera like any other well-acquainted co-worker.
By contrast, during the first season of The Comeback, Michael Patrick King says that “there was never a moment when Valerie,” played by co-creator Lisa Kudrow, “wasn’t aware of the camera.” Ultimately, “the tension of being aware of something, but not acknowledging it, made Lisa’s performance riveting but also made it so uncomfortable to watch, because you were aware there was a trapped character who knew what was happening,” he says. That tension remained until the end of season two, when Valerie “left the cameras behind” because the hospitalization of her close friend Mickey was “bigger to her than being on television.”
The third season, by design, mixes that familiar feeling of “Valerie trapped in front of a camera” with security footage of characters moving “like rats in a maze” being shown alongside private conversations where the handheld documentary-style aesthetic entirely drops away for classic single-camera coverage.
“In season three, the environment became so challenging to Valerie that she actually let go of trying to control the camera because there were too many other things to control,” Michael Patrick King says of his protagonist agonizing over starring in the first sitcom written by AI. “As Lisa said many, many times, there are cameras everywhere, so no one cares. There’s FaceTime walking down the street. Everyone’s curating their lives. You’re so comfortable seeing a camera that we actually even stopped acknowledging that it was there.”
The Company Retreat team similarly relied on a mix of visible and hidden cameras to heighten the believability of the world they built around their unsuspecting hero, Anthony Norman. But while the actors themselves are masterful improvisers, “the stories are very tightly scripted; there’s a lot of dialogue that’s provided,” Anthony King says. The difference, however, lies in the actors “having to just exist” within their roles to keep every moment feeling “real and natural.”
That illusion of spontaneity required rigorous preparation. During rehearsals, the team mapped out crucial story beats and potential contingencies. Once filming began, writers worked late into the night tweaking scenes for the next day, followed by secret morning meetings to keep the cast in sync. “It’s the most stressful set I’ve ever been on because you’re just constantly on edge,” Anthony King adds with a laugh. “But it’s also so thrilling because of the high-wire of it all. You’re getting to feel someone respond to what’s been written in real time.”
In comparison, Michael Patrick King reveals that The Comeback features “no ad- libbing.” Instead, Kudrow and the rest of the cast strictly adhered to the scripts to sustain the show’s fast-paced, carefully constructed satire. That high-wire precision paid off especially well in the final season, where he notes audiences began truly connecting with Valerie because “she became someone who showed herself as good at her job.
“The last monologue in the series is Valerie saying, ‘You might not always get the right job or whatever. Isn’t that what being a human is? You just keep going.’ We immediately went to ‘job or whatever’ because [being] an actress is a job; a television studio is a workplace,” Michael Patrick King adds. “So even in the last moment, we called it a job, not a part, because we wanted people to be able to relate to a person who goes to work and gets disappointed by what they don’t get and how they’re not seen. It may be a bigger part on The Comeback, but in the dynasty of workplace comedies, it’s really not getting the promotion.”
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
