Filmed in 2000, Miramax films planned on releasing the film in late 2001, but shelved it indefinitely in the US even with the massive anticipation by Christina Ricci's male fans to see her first nude scene. A number of reasons were given for the delay, from the unlikeable nature of the central heroine to writer Elizabeth Wurtzel's offensive comments about 9/11, to the fact that Wurtzel noted that the movie was "horrible." The movie finally debuted on the Starz! network in 2005 when, following the exit of Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein from Miramax, all pending films were released, in one form or another.
In an interview just before the film was finally released, Christina Ricci, who was 20 at the time, admitted that doing her first nude scene ever in Prozac Nation was frightening. She said during production that director Erik Skjoldbjaerg decided that a nude scene would show the character's complete emotional "nakedness," even though nudity wasn't in the script or even discussed before production began. Ricci agreed but requested a closed set and then she called her co-star Michelle Williams to come watch the monitor and let her know that everything looked okay. Ricci went on to perform nude scenes in several of her later films.
During interviews before the film was released, Christina Ricci got tired of people asking if she was really going to be nude in it for the first time, like they couldn't believe it. "People ask that like I was tied to a chair while all my clothes were stripped off me. The director and I had decided that a nude scene was important for the movie. The movie itself is so exploitive of me. 'Exploitive' has such a negative connotation, but there are some situations in which you exploit everything that you have, and I did for that movie. So for me, it was like, why not exploit me physically as well?