Sarah Walker was impressed with Caroline Shaw: "Caroline is an amazing composer who, at just 30 years old, won the Pulitzer Prize for her Partita for 8 Voices, which she wrote for the debut recording for her vocal group, Roomful of Teeth. She is the youngest composer to have won the award since its inception in 1943, AND she turned out to be an amazing actress and very nice person!"
Originally, there was some dialogue in the bathroom between Cynthia (played by Saffron Burrows) and Caroline Shaw (playing herself), in which Shaw explicitly stated that she didn't want to give a composition to Hailey (Lola Kirke), whom she saw as obviously riding Rodrigo's coattails. According to Kat Coiro, "This opened up an interesting conversation about the liability of playing one's actual self in a fictional work - Shaw didn't want to come across as petty. Shaw (in real life) doesn't see anything wrong with an up-and-coming conductor dating an established maestro and still being well regarded. However, she would be wary of giving her work to anybody she didn't know and whose work she hadn't seen. She also joked that composers don't usually have compositions just lying around." Shaw, Kirke, and Sarah Walker decided to leave Shaw's reasons for rejecting Hailey obscure and more about inference (especially on the part of Cynthia, a woman long judged for who she sleeps with), elevating Hailey's feelings of insecurity rather than making Shaw a villain.
Kat Coiro's favorite scene in the episode is this dance sequence, which was initially scripted as just half a page of dialogue between Rodrigo (Gael García Bernal) and Egon (John Cameron Mitchell). However, when the actors met with the choreographer to rehearse, it inspired "a whole new conversation in the language of dance." As Coiro tells it, "Rodrigo is at first surrounded by the dancers, then the dancers begin to manifest his inner emotions and dialogues and, finally, he takes control of the dancers, conducting them the way he conducts his musicians, but without the technical know-how, guided only by emotional intuition. It is a rare moment to see Rodrigo out of his element and in the presence of an equal genius."
According to Kat Coiro, "The moment when Union Bob and Warren realize that Hailey and Rodrigo are together is particularly awkward and uncomfortable. Hailey, as a sub, has always been at the bottom of the totem pole. Suddenly, she arrives at the symphony hall, dressed to the nines, not as a sub or even as a peer, but as a VIP guest accompanying the maestro. While Union Bob and Warren's reaction is not surprise, but acknowledgment of the inevitability of this relationship, the shift in the power dynamic and status of all the characters is both fascinating and cringe-inducing. Hailey's discomfort with this moment perfectly fuels her next interaction with Caroline Shaw."
After the "Papal March," Rodrigo is conducting Verdi's "Force of Destiny" when the ceiling collapses. Kat Coiro was worried that it would seem strange for Rodrigo to keep conducting and the orchestra to keep playing, "Titanic-style," with dust falling down on them. "However, Gael is so focused and has become such an accomplished conductor in his own right, that even as the special effects blasts sounded and as practical dust fell from the ceiling, he kept his focus and we had to cue him when to stop."