After the release of the trailer Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of Discworld author Terry Pratchett, commented on Twitter: "Look, I think it's fairly obvious that The Watch shares no DNA with my father's Watch. This is neither criticism nor support. It is what it is." Fantasy author Neil Gaiman, who was a personal friend of Pratchett, added that fans like the source material "so if you do something else, you risk alienating the fans on a monumental scale. It's not Batman if he's now a news reporter in a yellow trenchcoat with a pet bat."
The characters of Vetinari and Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, both originally male in the Discworld novels, have been gender-swapped and are female in the series.
Filming for this show starts 30 September 2019 in South Africa.
After the show's release on BBC America, Lara Rossi, who plays Sybil Ramkin, said it was important to play a black woman who was messy, privileged and doesn't give a damn and to engage with those characteristics because there are not enough black characters on screen who behave in that way.
In a blog for Trans Actual UK, Joni Ayton-Kent described their character Cheery as a rare, nuanced depiction of a trans character.