Due to Sheila Mudd Baker's ALS, her speech was rapidly declining during preproduction, making it exceedingly difficult for her to deliver her lines. Three days before shooting, Joe Zappa rewrote the script to have her character, Marbeth, re-tooled as a stroke victim, and for Georgie to have most of the lines. This meant that Cate White, making her debut for the camera, had to learn roughly 15 pages of dialogue in three days.
Before Sheila Mudd Baker recommended Cate White for the role of Georgie, Joe Zappa had yet to become aware of White's resuming of her career as an actress after a 20-year hiatus. He was close friends with her son Samuel since the age of 7, and had only known of her past as an actress. During shooting of the webcam grandma fetish scene, Zappa joked that he and White were on a mission to "specifically scar Sam."
Since her return to acting, Cate White had not performed for the camera, The Ladies Next Door being her first speaking role in a film.
Cate White is Director of the Basic French Language Program and Associate Professor of French Film, Modern literature and Conversation at the University of Cincinnati.
Sheila Mudd Baker was managed for some years by talent agent Carrie-Ellen Zappa, Joe Zappa's former sister-in-law.