Partially inspired by the 2017 special election for Georgia's 6th congressional district, where the Democratic and Republican parties and groups supporting them spent more than $55 million combined - the most expensive House Congressional election in U.S. history.
During breaks from filming, Jon Stewart and Steve Carell would go to the crowds of locals who gathered to watch, and sign autographs, take selfies and tell jokes.
Parts of this movie were filmed in Rockmart, GA during the summer of 2019.
As the camera pans through Gary's apartment, the Ben & Jerry's ice cream "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream" can be seen on the floor by the bed. Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell worked with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.
As Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell) first drives into Deerlaken, Wisconsin, he turns the radio to the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross." The segment we hear a snippet of is real; it is the interview that Gross conducted with Todd S. Purdum about his book "Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution," and it first aired on April 9, 2018. The prostitute character that Gross mentions is Suzy from the Rogers and Hammerstein flop musical "Pipe Dream" (based on John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row"), and the singer whom Gross praises is Laura Osnes, who played Suzy in the 2012 New York City Center Encores! concert production of "Pipe Dream." Interestingly, given this movie's condemnation of partisan political conflict, at the time this radio clip appeared in this movie it was seemingly apolitical; but in mid-2021 Laura Osnes was central to a politically divisive news story when she resigned from a concert production of Crazy For You in East Hampton, New York, after the producers mandated COVID-19 vaccinations for performers and she refused to get vaccinated. Her stated reasons for refusal alluded to vaccine misinformation and pseudoscience that (according to a September 2021 Gallup poll) were exponentially more likely to be believed by Conservatives rather than by Liberals. A December 2021 NPR piece reported that Kaiser research indicates that a person who has not been vaccinated against COVID is three times as likely to lean Republican as Democratic.