As written by Ken Levine in his blog on March 12, 2009, the return of Shelley Long in the role of Diane Chambers was kept a secret from everyone, including the executives at NBC.
"So she was brought in during a rehearsal day and that scene was shot in secrecy. On filming night the joke was that Niles was Frasier's companion instead of a woman...
[The producers] delivered the episode without the Diane snippet. And then on the day it was scheduled to air they said, "Oh, we needed to fix something, here's the version we want you to air instead." No one thought anything of it and so the first time NBC learned of this was when they saw it on the air."
"So she was brought in during a rehearsal day and that scene was shot in secrecy. On filming night the joke was that Niles was Frasier's companion instead of a woman...
[The producers] delivered the episode without the Diane snippet. And then on the day it was scheduled to air they said, "Oh, we needed to fix something, here's the version we want you to air instead." No one thought anything of it and so the first time NBC learned of this was when they saw it on the air."
This is the first appearance of Shelley Long as Diane Chambers in the series, albeit in a brief dream sequence, she would later return in several episodes throughout the series run.
This episode is an homage to Noël Coward's play 'Private Lives', in which two exes are honeymooning in side by side hotel rooms with their new spouses.
JoBeth Williams plays Madeline Marshall in this episode. Previously she provided the voice of Danielle in episode 1.8, Beloved Infidel (1993).