Glenn Close, who played the first live-action Cruella DeVil in 101 Dalmatians (1996) and 102 Dalmatians (2000), serves as executive producer for this movie.
The film seen on TV while Cruella is in the hotel room is Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). The scene shows actress Tallulah Bankhead, on whom the animated appearance of Cruella DeVil was based.
Costume designer Jenny Beavan, whom Gillespie hired after seeing her work on Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), created 277 costumes for the principal cast, including 47 for Cruella.
A popular myth is that filming was delayed due to Emma Stone dislocating her shoulder at a Spice Girls concert in London, where she fell off her friend's shoulders in June 2019. Stone later explained that the night before the Spice Girls concert she was running in boots on a wood floor, slipped, and broke her shoulder in two places. She went to the concert with her arm in a sling, and didn't go in for an X-ray until the next day. Filming was delayed while Stone went to physical therapy.
Horace compares dog owners looking like their dogs in the same way that Pongo does in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).