According to Tamara Gorski (Rebecca) this was the first episode Joss Whedon showed J. August Richards (Gunn) to convince him to be on the show.
Rebecca Lowell lives in the the same mansion where Lady Gaga: Poker Face (2008) would later be shot.
Originally, the series was envisioned as being an anthology, with the client of the week providing the emotional center for each episode. However, as the first season progressed, the writers began to concentrate on the emotional interplay between the main characters instead. As Tim Minear explains, "You can have an interesting plot and an interesting client, but it's difficult to create sympathy for someone you're introducing for one episode." This episode at first presents events from the guest character's point of view, but "if you look at how the episode ended up," Minear says, "it's really about our core people, and by the end of the episode the client's gone. There's not even a wrap up scene at the end with the actress. It's all about Angel being chained to the bed and Cordelia not untying him." In the first versions of the script, the emotional focus remained on Rebecca for the entire episode, until Joss Whedon decided to add the element of Angel going bad. "If that episode had gone before the cameras earlier in the rotation, I think you would have probably seen a different ending, with more emphasis placed on the actress and her problem than on Angel," Minear says.
Oliver Simon, Rebecca's manager, was seen in a brief and uncredited appearance in City of... (1999). At Margo's party, he plays the manager who gives Angel his card and disclaims any effort at a come-on.
This marks one of the first times in the series that Cordelia is shown to have decent acting skills in times of need, shown when she convinces Angelus she is holding holy water.