Just Shoot Me! was created by Steven Levitan, who also served as one of the show's executive producers, and is set at a fictional fashion magazine called Blush, comparable to the real-life Vogue.

The show's scheduling was very unstable: after a six-episode first season aired entirely in a single month in March 1997, it was bounced around NBC's lineup, at one point airing on Thursdays between Friends and Seinfeld before being given Frasier's old Tuesday 9 p.m. slot when Seinfeld ended in 1998.

Despite never having a definitive time slot, the show remained popular, becoming NBC's top-rated Tuesday night show in its fourth season with an average 6.1/16 rating/share in the 18–49 demographic.

In March 2020, the cast reunited for a sketch on Lights Out with David Spade imagining a fictional reboot of the show, and that June they held a virtual cast reunion on Hulu's YouTube page.

In the show's sixth season, recurring mailroom character Kevin Liotta, played by Brian Posehn, is revealed to be a cousin of real-life film actor Ray Liotta, who himself had appeared as one of Maya Gallo's love interests earlier in the series.

The season 3 episode 'Slow Donnie,' guest starring David Cross as Elliot's brother Donnie, has been cited as an all-time great sitcom episode.

Model Rebecca Romijn guest-starred in season 4 as Adrienne, a supermodel who briefly marries Dennis Finch before asking for a divorce the same season.

The series was released on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for its first three seasons, later re-released by Mill Creek Entertainment in 2014, and finally issued as a complete series set by Shout! Factory in September 2017, before becoming available to stream on Hulu in 2020.