The real Ryan White appeared in this movie as another AIDS patient (with the feeding tube) named Chad. He died a year after this movie aired on TV, in April 1990.
The real Andrea White appeared in the movie as a girl on the school bus (sitting behind the brunette girl who gets into a fight with her movie counterpart).
Judith Light commented once that for Ryan White this was the most exciting thing he had ever gotten to do, being in a movie about his court battle with the Kokomo, Indiana School District about his attending school with AIDS. At the time of this movie which starts in December of 1984, not much was known about the disease and it caused a lot of people to worry about how it could be spread and contracted.
The final scene was filmed at South Iredell High School in Statesville, North Carolina.