In the Celeste Ng's source novel , Ng kept Mia Warren's race deliberately vague and undefined. With the casting of Kerry Washington in the Mia Warren role in this adaptation, Warren became a black character. During an April 2020 interview with Terry Gross on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," Washington said, "when I met Celeste Ng, the writer, for the first time, she actually admitted to me that she had always thought of Mia as a woman of color, and that she had been drawn to the idea of writing Mia as a black woman. But she didn't feel like she had the authoritative voice to do that in the right way. And so she was kind of vague about her race in the novel. So it was exciting that we were in step with Celeste in diving into the places where she wanted to to grow out the book in ways that already lived in her."
Executive producer and director Lynn Shelton died in 2020, just three weeks after the final episode date of season 1
In the first episode, Elena tells Mia that public schools in Shaker Heights are "private schools at Public school prices". This is virtually the same line Madeline (also played by Reese Witherspoon) says to Jane about the Monterey schools in Episode 1 of Big Little Lies.
Reunites Reese Witherspoon and Joshua Jackson, who both appeared in Cruel Intentions (1999).
While at the hair salon, Elena (Reese Witherspoon) suggests that Izzy gets her hair cut similar to Rachel's from Friends (1994). Reese Witherspoon played Rachel's sister on friends and also starred opposite Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show (2019).