During an interview with Danielle Turchiano in Variety, Turchiano asked show co-creator Amanda Peet what made David Duchovny perfect person for the subplot in which he appears. Peet's response was "I was inspired by William Hurt's character from the movie 'Broadcast News.' I like that Holly Hunter can't quite bring herself to dismiss him even though he's beneath her. No other actors have David's academic credentials. I needed a middle aged white man - and I wanted a real Ivy Leaguer - who has no idea that it's time to sit down and be quiet. One of the hardest moments of my career was when I called David Duchovny to ask him to wear the red speedo. I practiced a few times beforehand - I think I was trembling. I felt like a creepy director asking a starlet to take her top off. But he said yes right away. I guess if my body were that gorgeous I'd be sitting around waiting for someone to ask me to put on a bikini. At first, we were going to have Ji-Yoon and David riff about how he got the red speedo out of The Smithsonian but we were on a tight schedule so we had to lose some dialogue. David puts the comedy above everything else - that's probably why Garry Shandling loved him so much, among many reasons. When I re-watched them on 'Larry Sanders' I fell on the floor. For me, they're one of the great American comic duos. The fact that he came to Pittsburgh in the snow in the middle of the pandemic - I would take a bullet for him. As a token of my gratitude I tried to read his real dissertation from Yale. I didn't understand one word of it."
