‘Juror #2’ Screenwriter Jonathan A. Abrams On How His First Produced Screenplay Became A Clint Eastwood Movie

This story contains minor spoilers for Juror #2.

Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 opens with Justin, played by Nicholas Hoult, recalling hitting something with his car on a rainy night. He figures it was a deer. A year later, he’s selected for jury duty on the case of a man accused of murdering his girlfriend, who was found dead under a bridge. Suddenly the puzzle pieces start to fit. He was at the same bar as the defendant and his girlfriend the night of the alleged murder. He drove that road. The deer he hit was on that bridge. Then it clicks: “Maybe,” Justin tells his lawyer, “I didn’t hit a deer.”

A guy on the jury for a crime he, in fact, perpetrated: It’s the kind of premise that used to make a movie a huge hit back when legal thrillers were still a dominant genre. What’s even more impressive is that the movie completely delivers on this premise. Justin, faced with seriously bad consequences should he come forward—he was at a bar, and while he wasn’t drinking, he’s got a couple DUIs under his belt, so who would believe him?—decides instead to sway the jury toward acquittal. As that very 12 Angry Men-like plot proceeds inside the jury room, Scythe’s attorney (Chris Messina) puts pressure on the assistant D.A. (Toni Collette) to consider that her prosecution might be faulty; she’s running for D.A. and facing pressure to get a conviction no matter what. Then there’s J.K. Simmons as a former homicide detective who’s also picked for the jury, and begins his own illicit investigation of the case when he starts to notice the facts don’t quite add up.

Juror #2 is true Hollywood entertainment in the best sense, using a smart setup to present its characters with serious dilemmas, leading them towards difficult moral compromises, all handled with great fun and suspense. It’s the kind of movie that leaves the audience satisfied, and debating the outcome on the way out of the theater. The only problem is that it’s not actually playing in many theaters; Warner Bros.’ choice to open the movie in roughly 30 cinemas and not report box office totals led to accusations on social media that the studio had essentially buried what could be 94-year-old Eastwood’s final film. Despite all that, the film has won raves from critics, and has evidently done solid enough business that the studio is now expanding the release modestly and giving it an awards campaign. It’s a testament to Eastwood’s fine filmmaking—and the great script underlying it, by Jonathan A. Abrams.

I spoke Abrams about how he came up with the idea for Juror #2, the influence of 12 Angry Men, crafting satisfying moral dilemmas, working with Eastwood to bring the story to the screen, and how he feels about the film’s reception.

GQ: How did this idea occur to you?

Jonathan A. Abrams: My dear friend is the youngest superior court judge in California. Before that, he was a prosecutor, and about a decade ago, he called me one day in a panic. He was trying a case as a prosecutor. It had gone sideways. He was giving his closing argument and he needed help writing it, because the only chance he had to win was with some just monster, persuasive argument. And he said, “I need a little Hollywood magic or I'm going to lose the case, and the guy I'm trying is guilty.” And I said, “Okay,” and I took a pass at his closing, added the flair, came up with some kind of wild ideas that would probably only work in a movie, but at this point, he had nothing to lose, so we went for it—and he won. And from then on, he would have me sit in on his trials. I was there one day for voir dire for one of his cases, and it's a scene that's in the movie. The judge was not letting any of the prospective jurors talk their way out of serving. And I said to myself silently, What could you say to this judge right now that would get you kicked off? “Your Honor, I can't serve on the jury because I perpetrated the crime.” And I laughed, and I’m like, That’s a monster. That's the hook. That's amazing. And so I didn't know what the movie was, but that was the scene, right then and there in the gallery of the courthouse that day.

So how did you then go about developing it into a screenplay and finding the plot of the movie?

I tried 20 different ways that didn't work and then I finally settled on where I think my heart always went and where I go as a person, which is optimism. You know, you could easily make this a cynical story about a bad dude trying to convict the dude so that he doesn't have to do the time himself, but I didn't want to do that. I wanted to try to find the humanity and the good in the lead character and approach the story from that point of view, which was a challenge to pull off and also to convince people that that was the best path.

Everyone agreed that this was a great hook for a movie, but part of having a great hook, for better and worse, is that then executives and agents and producers and whoever, they have their own idea of what the movie should be and it doesn't always align with yours. But I felt really good about [saying] No, no, no. This is going to be the story of an ordinary guy caught in this extraordinary circumstance, having to figure out who he is as a person and putting the audience in the literal and figurative driver's seat of the story to go along for that journey. That was what I wanted to do and when it got to Clint Eastwood, he recognized that and wanted to do the same thing. So it was an unbelievable stroke of luck—not only that he was able to get the script and read it and like it, but that he saw the same movie that I saw. Because oftentimes, you know, you'll send somebody a script and they like something about it, but then they say, Okay, we're going to buy this, but we're going to change it. [With Eastwood] it was like, “I see what you see. In fact, I can tell where you've tried to do things to the script to make it seem more pulpy or big or commercial, and we're going to strip all that out.” And I was like, “Oh thank you, Clint Eastwood. You know, I didn't want to do any of it, but I felt like I had to.”

Once Eastwood got involved, how much did the script change?

It was a lot of sharpening and tightening and there were certainly things that changed. I mean we did a lot of work. Clint read it and took it to Warners. He read it first. And that was maybe a little over two years ago, September 2022, and we spent from that point until the strike, which began, I believe, on May 1 of 2023, working pretty consistently on the script. So it was maybe six, seven months of, I would say, three major drafts, and then endless finessing of the final draft that went into production.

What was the hardest stuff to get right?

I think the stuff that was the hardest to crack globally was how do we sell what's essentially a coincidence as irony, rather than a coincidence. And that was a nuanced thing that I think required just the right amount of planting some stuff, but it was just a very fine line. A lot of the credit goes to Clint and the way he directed it, which makes it feel grounded and real even though, again, it is the type of thing that is a coincidence. Now another thing that he suggested that was great, I had written a script that read initially as, like, Anywhereville. It wasn't taking place in a major city. There was not a lot of specificity about where we were and that was intentional. And Clint said, “Let's set this in Savannah,” because he loves Savannah and I think he wanted to shoot there. Once we kind of locked into that, it's like, “Oh, okay. So this isn't a metropolis, but it's also not Mayberry.” It's like a small enough place that you could kind of believe it could happen.

And the fact that [Hoult’s character] is willing to go and do his civic duty—I think that was another really smart choice. I don't remember when that came into the mix, but he’s a good dude. He's just showing up, he's going about his life and because of that he has to sort of ultimately pay this price for sins he didn't even realize he committed, and some that he knows that he did. That was a really interesting thing that Clint pushed. And then just balancing the jurors, that was a real challenge. How do you give twelve characters all a personality and a purpose in the story in the most economical way possible? Clint’s a master of economy. And so that was one of the things he was instilling in me and pushing me to find in the script: How can we say more with less, or show more with less, ideally?

You've got basically a whole little 12 Angry Men situation going on in the middle of a wider legal drama. The allusions to that film are pretty direct. Were you consciously reworking that classic?

That was absolutely what I did. [After] I had the initial spark of the idea and I settled on wanting to make this an everyman, [I asked] What are the comps? Who's done this effectively before? And [12 Angry Men] is the gold standard. It's one of the greatest films ever made. I had of course seen it before I came up with the idea, but I watched it again and read the script. And again, the economy of that story, the power of simplicity in that story—those were all things that I really strove for, because it was it was very freeing. People love that movie. So if you can deliver something that's even in any way reminiscent of that movie, you're probably doing something very right.

So that was actually very helpful to me in the earlier days. Actually, kind of a funny aside. I wanted to send it to Clint. The producer, Matt Skiena, optioned the script, and he said, “Okay, that's a crazy idea, but it's a good idea.” And so Clint was like, “Why'd you think of me?” And I go, “Well, I was thinking about who would look to 12 Angry Men as sort of a seminal movie for why they wanted to be a director. And I just figured that that was probably a movie that you really appreciate.” And he looked at me and he goes, “Meh.” It was hysterical. He’s very funny.

One of the major critiques of 12 Angry Men is that the jury actually oversteps its role and starts investigating the crime on their own. You do a similar thing in Juror #2, but you kind of build the critique into the plot, where they get in trouble for it. Were you deliberately trying to subvert expectations there?

I don't think it was directly inspired by 12 Angry Men, honestly. I think it was more a function of okay, we're going to have this, like, irony-pendulum swinging in the movie, right? That's what's going to keep it interesting and fun and so it's like, Alright, well, what's he going to do? Is he going to bury this dude or is he going to try to save him? Okay, he's going to try to save him, that's interesting. Now he's trying to save him and you think the movie's just going to be the dude having to pull a Henry Fonda and just convince these other people through solid arguments and maybe a little bit of manipulation that he's right. Of course, the irony of that, as we swing back the other way, is that he's got to then put himself in harm's way through his persuasion. That's the irony of the whole thing—that the more he is able to speak the truth, the more he's putting himself in the line of fire.

So I came up with the idea of like, what if there was someone on the jury that was a retired cop who would have a real insight into detective work? And [what if] they—out of some sense of loyalty, not only to the truth, but the oath that they took as a detective—felt like, Yes, maybe this is not above board per se, but I'm going to do it anyway for those two reasons. And so that's how that [J.K. Simmons] character really arrives. And I think it's also nice. It gets the story out of the jury room for a little bit and also gives the breadcrumbs to start creating doubt in the mind of the Toni Collette character, because things are happening outside the jury room that are unconventional and weird. How do we activate her in a real way to think, Wait a minute, maybe [Messina’s lawyer character] is right. Maybe this isn't all that it appears. [Simmons’] character is really the lynchpin in activating her, especially in the scene on the stairwell where he essentially says that very thing. “You got it wrong.” And she knows it's not just some random juror saying that—it's a cop with 22 years of experience saying that. She can't deny it.

Right.

She tries.

You said that it was your idea to send it to Clint. Why was that? Was there a specific movie that he had made that had in your mind?

No, it was the 12 Angry Men thing! I mean, Mystic River is, of course, kind of the North Star, but that really was more of a function of, once he agreed to do it, I was thinking of his oeuvre, and which of these movies that he's made is the most similar to what I want this to be. So how can I, as I rewrite it with him, look at what's successful and what I love about said movie and try to import it into this one? Because it would have been weird for me to be like, “So, Clint, I really see this is a companion to Mystic River”—I can’t say that. It’d sound ridiculous. But that was secretly what I was hoping, and then he kind of confirmed it in our first meeting.

He didn't refer to any of his other movies, but he said, “I want to strip away all the things that are kind of pulpy and feel a little bit extra in the bells and the whistles, and I want to ground this and make this just a story about people caught in these difficult moral circumstances.” That was like a breath of fresh air to hear him say, and I'm like, “Oh, okay, we can try to make this like a Mystic River type of movie.” Just to be mentioned in the same breath when you talk about his films would be the high water mark for me with this.

I had this feeling, and I certainly heard it from others who saw the film as well, that it had a bit of a throwback appeal. Legal dramas were huge in the ‘90s, but this is the kind of movie that doesn't get made too much anymore.

It wasn't a calculated thing. It was just a story that I wanted to tell and I was hoping in my heart that I had a big enough concept that when you say it to somebody in a sentence, they almost to a person go, “Oh!” As a screenwriter, when you can come up with an idea where they go, “Oh!”, you're onto something. Now, I fully recognize that this is a movie that they don't make anymore. But you know, guess what? They weren't making vampire movies and then they made Twilight. These are movies people love. I think that's part of why it's getting the response it’s getting, because we're starved for them. An original story that makes you think a little bit, but it's still entertaining, that's relatable. Those movies that I loved as a kid, going to see The Fugitive, and In the Line of Fire with Clint, and A Few Good Men, you know, they're just good stories. Aside from the train explosion, The Fugitive is essentially just, like, a dude running around the city with another dude chasing. It's a character movie, really, and it's so good.

Another thing Juror #2 has in common with a lot of those films is that however dark it gets, it’s always fun. How did you balance the tone on this one?

I think as long as you have a relatable character in a high-stakes situation, no matter what the genre, you're cooking with gas. That's the goal of any screenplay. Give me a character you can relate to and keep the pressure on them, right? And it becomes life and death for Nick Hoult. I think that that's why the movie's entertaining. And it’s set in a world that everybody feels like they kind of understand, the legal system. We've all seen legal dramas on TV and movies. Everybody's at least been sent a jury summons in the mail, whether they've shown up for it or not or served. So there's just a very relatable quality to the story and that was part of what I wanted to do. It's like, let's give them something that makes them feel safe and then let's slowly pick it apart in ways that they may recognize. That's what's going to keep an audience engaged. That's what I'm always trying to do in a story that I'm approaching—give it big moments, make it relatable and exciting. That's what I think is great cinema. 12 Angry Men is, in a sense, the least cinematic movie ever. It just all takes place in a room, but it's so compelling because it's good characters and it's high stakes. You don't want to see this poor kid get the electric chair, you know?

You said before that you wanted to approach the movie with a kind of optimism. I'm not about to call the movie pessimistic, but it does get darker over the course of the movie, especially around some of the decisions Hoult’s character makes. Was it always in your mind to push to those darker places?

What I mean by approaching it optimistically is that I want the entry point of the movie to be hopeful and thus relatable, so that people like Justin, and they say. “Okay, I like this guy. He's good to his pregnant wife. He's funny, he's charming. He's me.” And then from there, you’ve hopefully got the audience and then you can take him on a ride. That was something that I thought was very important, to make him feel like a likable everyman. And it's a risk, honestly, in a screenplay, because you're trying to get actors at the caliber of Nicholas Hoult to want a star in your movie. You could lead with something that's a little more juicy, perhaps, that might be “actor bait” as they say, but I think that here it was like, no. Luke Skywalker is just a guy, but he's the nexus of the entire thing. Jack Dawson in Titanic, same thing. I mean, he's charming, but he's just a guy. And I think that people really like having an everyman hero in a compelling story around them, and that's what I was going for here. Which becomes, I think, harder and harder to do in Hollywood in 2024.

I guess my question is more about where the character goes, though. Because he starts in that place, and you come to learn some of the complexity in his background, but at some point Hoult’s character and others are faced with these dilemmas, and they have to take certain actions, and those actions speak volumes. Earlier in the movie, Justin is trying to get the guy off, but later, maybe not so much. Is that a risk as well, having the character go to that place?

It’s certainly a risk, but also very much the point of what we were trying to achieve. Yes, setting him up in the way that we did leads to a place where it really brings into focus the theme of the movie, which is, in my humble opinion, we all want to be good people, at least for the most part, right? And when that costs us little, it's easy enough to do. What about when it costs you a lot? What about when it costs you everything? What do you do then? And that's the choice that Justin and Faith and a lot of the characters in the movie are forced to make. I think that's a really interesting moral dilemma that we're sort of all faced with. That's really what I wanted to get across and that's why it has to escalate. It just gets harder and harder and harder for him until there's no way out. It’s him or Scythe. That’s the choice. He has to choose self-preservation.

Did you think about it at all as a commentary on the legal system?

A hundred percent. It's absolutely a commentary on the legal system. They say in the movie, there's a running thing, about how the system may not be perfect, but it's the best we got. And I think that's how I view the legal system. Like would you rather, you know, be tried for a crime in Russia, or China, or Iran? Our legal system is not perfect by any stretch, but it's still the foundation of justice and democracy and we have to do our best. That's sort of all we can really do.

Doing the best you can is a bit of a running theme in Eastwood’s films. I think of Sully, which is basically all about a guy who did his job really well and saved people’s lives. But sometimes, as in this case, the best you can do isn’t enough.

It's in the eye of the viewer, right? Do we condemn Nick Hoult for what he ultimately chooses to do, or do we understand it? I think you'd probably have a very split vote on that. Which is the point. It's messy. I think we'd understand if Faith left it alone, and I think we’d understand if Faith shows up at the door. That's why to me it’s cool.

I’ve got to ask you about the release of the film, which has obviously engendered some controversy. My understanding is that it was originally intended to go to streaming?

I don't want to get into any of that, about the intentions. What I'll say is I am very, very pleased with the reception that the movie is getting. People like it. It’s opening in 15 more markets this weekend, so now people in a bunch more major markets will have the opportunity to see it theatrically if they want to. I just want people to see it. We made a movie that I'm proud of, and most importantly that Clint is very proud of. That was sort of the assignment. I don't have any real communication with the studio or the shot callers on this. They're going to do whatever they think is best for the movie and that's what they're doing. I’m pleased that they're giving us an awards campaign. That's exciting.

It feels a little bit like critics and audiences alike are kind of realizing, Hey, there's a good one out here. Which feels rare.

Yeah, for sure! Totally.

So this was your first produced screenplay. Have you got anything else lined up?

The funny thing about this business is I've been working professionally as a screenwriter for, geez, 14 years. So I've made a living at it, writing movies and television pilots that didn't get made, and that's okay, and then this one finally does. It's a very weird existence to get paid to make things that no one really ever sees outside of, you know, the people that were developing it with you. But this project has given me a fair amount of credibility, which is really cool. The next thing that we have is an idea that I sold to the Russo brothers, who did all the Avengers movies and stuff. They have a company called AGBO and I sold it to them last year. I've completed the script and we're putting it together. It's a biopic about the making of It’s a Wonderful Life, but really about Jimmy Stewart working through his PTSD upon returning home from World War II where he was a bomber pilot, and how he worked through it by playing George Bailey.

Oh, that’s a very cool story. It’s touched on a bit in Mark Harris’s book Five Came Back, about Frank Capra and some of the other filmmakers who helped in the war effort. Did you read that one?

Oh, of course, yeah. Capra’s a key figure in the script, so yeah I read that. You know, it's a love letter to Hollywood and to the greatest holiday movie ever made and to definitely one of the greatest actors that ever was. It's a story that I love, and again, I'm just so thrilled to be able to do this and get paid to do it and hopefully we'll be able to get that film made too.