When the movie was edited for TV, Alicia Silverstone's character's name changed from Darian Forrester to Adrian. Screenwriter and director Alan Shapiro had based the film on actual events that happened to him and ended up being sued by the girl he wrote about, who had the same name as his "fictional" character.
Alicia Silverstone became an "emancipated minor" at age 15 during the shooting of the film meaning she was legally on her own and not a dependent of her parents. This way she could avoid child labor laws, which would have restricted how many hours she could work on the film.
Writer and director Alan Shapiro's inspiration behind the film was based on an real life experience. In Los Angeles, Shapiro became a lodger at a guest house following his departure from college; the house in question was owned by a married couple. Shapiro was trying to work on scripts for Hollywood but was constantly distracted by their teenage daughter, Darian, who had developed a crush on him. Shapiro wanted nothing to do with Darian and rejected a sexual relationship with her, since she was underage. One day, he came home from an errand, only to find the words "Alan sucks cock!" carved into his new car. When he spoke to Darian's parents about it, Darian denied vandalizing his car, and, worse still, Darian's parents sided with her, refusing to believe Shapiro. However, a school friend of Darian's came forward to Shapiro and privately told him that Darian did indeed do it, but Darian's parents still refused to believe their daughter had done anything wrong. Because of this, Shapiro moved out and he never saw Darian again. Years later, Shapiro's wife reminded him of Darian, and told him it would make a good story for a suspense thriller, which became...Das biest (1993).
The name Adrian was dubbed. The dubbing was done by unknown actors because the studio could not afford to bring back the original actors, which explains the slight voice differentiation. Some words preceding the name Adrian were also dubbed for a more unnoticeable voice transition.