In real life, eleven of the men from Richard Phillips' crew sued him after the incident. He claimed that Phillips was well aware of the danger in the Somali waters but went in anyway endangering all of them because he wanted to get the shipment to the harbor faster, even though the shipping company itself sent him a note advising him to avoid the Somali seas. The matter was settled out of court.
During an interview on NPR's "Fresh Air", Tom Hanks said the first time he met the actors playing the Somali pirates was when they started filming the pirates taking over the bridge. Paul Greengrass mentioned he did this intentionally to build up tension between the actors on board the ship and the actors playing the Somali pirates.
Prior to the bridge takeover scene, Paul Greengrass told Barkhad Abdi to "own it." Abdi lost sleep the previous night in anticipation of his first acting experience. The next day, his improvisation of the line "look at me, look at me, I'm the captain now" was the clip used in his awards considerations. After Abdi and his fellow actors dropped character, Tom Hanks' first words to Barkhad were "so, you're from Minnesota."
Barkhad Abdi only earned 65,000 dollars for his role and after it was complete he went to work at his brother's mobile phone store in Minneapolis.