Series creator Pamela Eells O'Connell, who had previously worked on Charles in Charge and The Nanny, developed Jessie specifically to showcase Debby Ryan's talent after collaborating with her on The Suite Life on Deck.

According to Debby Ryan, the show's concept originated from brainstorming sessions with O'Connell as The Suite Life on Deck was ending, and Disney greenlit the project almost immediately after seeing the script.

Before casting was finalized, several characters were very different: the mother was originally a photographer named 'Pandora', Emma was named 'Anabel', Luke was a boy adopted from Korea named 'Hiro', and Ravi was a boy adopted from South America named 'Javier' who had a pet capybara instead of a water monitor lizard.

Some have speculated that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's multi-cultural adoptive family may have partly inspired the show's concept of the Ross family.

Filming took place on Stage 3/8 at Hollywood Center Studios, which had previously housed the production of Disney Channel's Wizards of Waverly Place.

The series skipped the usual pilot phase after casting was finalized and went directly into production, with filming beginning in June 2011 and wrapping on February 22, 2015.

Jessie became the first lead character on Disney Channel to get engaged, an event depicted in a four-episode story arc that concluded the third season.

Disney Channel pulled the episode 'Quitting Cold Koala' from its broadcast schedule after complaints that it made fun of Celiac disease, replacing it with a rerun; an edited version with the gluten jokes removed later aired on July 5, 2013.

The most-watched episode of Jessie was 'Star Wars' with 7.32 million total viewers, while the least-watched was 'Basket Case' with 1.38 million viewers.

Jessie tied with Hannah Montana and Lilo & Stitch: The Series for the most crossovers of any Disney Channel show after its fourth crossover episode, 'Jessie's Aloha-Holidays with Parker and Joey', with Liv and Maddie.