The film's writer, Stephen Tolkin, worked with Lori Loughlin (who was involved in the real-life college admissions bribery scandal on which the movie is based) in the short-lived WB drama Summerland (2004). Loughlin, who co-created the series with Tolkin and starred as its co-lead (opposite singer Jesse McCartney), and her husband Mossimo Giannulli were both charged by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office in March 2019 for using a $500,000 donation to the Key Worldwide Foundation to persuade the University of Southern California into accepting their two daughters on women's rowing scholarships, despite neither of them having had any experience in the sport.
Jessica Heafey, who played Kris, played a cop in the sixth episode of Garage Sale Mystery (2013), starred by Lori Loughlin. Loughlin was one of those later charged in the real-life scandal.
Main characters Caroline DeVere and Bethany Slade, played by Penelope Ann Miller and Mia Kirshner, are loosely inspired in Desperate Housewives (2004)'s star Felicity Huffman and in Full House (1987)'s star Lori Loughlin. Both Huffman and Loughlin were two of the most famous names involved in the scandal happened in 2019, when were used donations to universities to grant scholarships in a fraud way.