Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain both graduated from the same Julliard class and have been friends for over 20 years.
Jessica Chastain said her one condition for going fully nude in the series was that Oscar Isaac had to strip totally naked too. Isaac agreed but didn't realize how much of his body the camera exposed until he saw the episode.
Michelle Williams was originally cast in the lead role opposite Oscar Isaac but dropped out. Isaac's good friend, Jessica Chastain replaced her. This is the second collaboration between them after playing a married couple in A Most Violent Year (2014). (Incidentally, the reverse situation happened on A Most Violent Year, where Chastain recommended Isaac to replace Javier Bardem, who was originally cast in the less of that film).
This five-episode miniseries is a remake of a six-episode miniseries. The second episode of the original is skipped, and the remaining five episodes are broadly preserved, with some changes.
During a October 2021 interview with Terry Gross on the NPR program "Fresh Air," Gross asked Oscar Isaac how he felt about having a very brief full-frontal nude scene in this miniseries. His joking response was, "I was surprised that Hagai [Levi] left that in there because it gives it away that I'm not...that I wasn't raised modern Orthodox [Jewish]." When Gross laughed and said that the shot was probably too quick for anyone to notice that Isaac is actually uncircumcised, he said, "I hope so, but some people [internet commenters] clearly caught on. So I was like... I don't know. I was--I wouldn't have done that [leave the shot in the final edit]. But, you know, all right. Maybe that was a little more.... A little more fourth-wall breaking, I guess, that's going on there."