Producer Steven Soderbergh, who also directed the movie of which the show is inspired, wanted to approach the making of the show as a creative experiment, so he proposed a male/female filmmaker duo which hadn't worked together before, in this case Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz, to write and direct season 1. Both Kerrigan and Seimetz talked later about the difficulty of the experience, so it wasn't a surprise when season 2 presented a two-story structure where said stories were completely independent, each one written and directed by the directors on their own. For season 3, however, which was greenlit a year and a half after the finale of season 2, Soderbergh seemed to have forgone the experiment approach, because he just hired Anja Marquardt to do 10 episodes.
The first season is actually based in Chicago, not New York. The movie this series is based on, The Girlfriend Experience (2009), was set in New York.
Season 2 is set in Washington DC and New Mexico - across 2 parallel story-lines.
Season 3 is set in London.
Although the characters are different, Season 1 protagonist Christine Reade has the same first name and alias "Chelsea", as Christine in The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
Riley Keough strips naked and has a lot of sex on the show, but she says she's fine with that and knew it would be required when she accepted the role. During an interview at the Sundance Film Festival before the show premiered, she said, "I know that there's going to be sex in it, it just kind of comes with it. I was expecting all of that. What's cool about it is when you're watching it, it really weirds you out. It gets weird reactions because there was no lighting [and] it's super naturalistic so it's very uncomfortable. It's like spying on this girl doing the weird stuff." When asked if her husband, stuntman Ben Smith-Petersen, minded her rolling around in bed naked with other men, she said it didn't bother him at all. "He's fine. You know, he works in film as well so he understands how it works and its part of the job. He watched the whole season, he's very cool. We're like very progressive. He doesn't care about that kind of stuff."
Julia Goldani Telles' first career nude scene.