In a June 2021 LA Times interview with Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky, Meredith Blake asked them if they "talked to women like Deborah about what it was like to come up in that era and what they had to endure," given the sexual harassment theme of this episode. Aniello responded, "Somebody who was a consultant on our show was Janis Hirsch, who famously had an experience in a writers' room on It's Garry Shandling's Show. (1986). She was essentially sexually assaulted. And then she was fired the next day, even though she wasn't the assaulter. Janis is somebody who is incredibly funny and so quick to the punch. This is somebody who had to be brutally funny because she existed in this boys' club of comedy for so long. Getting the opportunity to spend time with somebody like Janis, I think, really did give us a bit of a peek into what it's been like for women who had to endure horrible s- and came out the other end." The online version of this interview included a link to Hirsch's 2017 first-person account of her assault by one of the actors on "It's Garry Shandling's Show" and her subsequent firing by producer Brad Grey, published in The Hollywood Reporter.
Like Jean Smart, Anna Maria Horsford, who plays Francine in this episode, is veteran of a long-running, much beloved 1980s sitcom: she played Thelma Frye on all five seasons of Amen (1986), also starring Sherman Hemsley as her character's father, Deacon Ernest Frye.
This was Jean Smart's winning submission for the 2021 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
Framed photographs on the interior walls of the Ha Ha Club include a shot of Olivia Boreham-Wing, as Young Deborah, and a shot of Tom Zawacki, as Little Sammie, the comedian who says goodnight and exits the stage immediately prior to Deborah Vance's performance.