The cast spent a month training at a barber college to prepare for their roles. Only Troy Garity had had previous hair-cutting experience.
Shortly after the film's theatrical release in late September 2002, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton protested over some of the statements made by Cedric The Entertainer's character Eddie about African-American historical figures Rosa Parks ("Rosa Parks ain't do nuthin' but sit her Black ass down; there was a whole lotta other people that sat down on the bus, and they did it way before Rosa did!"), Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ("Martin Luther King was a ho [whore]!"), and Jackson himself ("Fuck Jesse Jackson"). Jackson and Sharpton pressured MGM to edit these scenes out of the film before its DVD release in January 2003; the film was released with the "controversial" scenes intact.
Although he played an elder statesman, Cedric The Entertainer was only 37 when the movie was released. Being born in 1964, he was not alive during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and was three years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Dinka gives credit to a real poet (Pablo Neruda). Pablo Neruda was a Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet who was once called "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language." Dinka's poem to Eve that made her "feel all gentle" was one of Pablo Neruda's love poems.
When J.D. is wheeling the ATM towards A&S Grocery, Calvin appears in the background after his visit with Lester Wallace.