Black-ish first appeared on ABC's development slate in October 2013, with a script commitment already attached for star Anthony Anderson before the pilot was greenlit in January 2014.

Larry Wilmore joined the show as showrunner shortly after the pilot was greenlit, but stepped down early in the show's run to launch his own late-night program, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.

Laurence Fishburne was cast in mid-February 2014 as the father of Anthony Anderson's character, with Tracee Ellis Ross signing on around the same time as the female lead.

Laila Lockhart Kraner portrayed a young version of Tracee Ellis Ross's character, Bow, in flashback scenes across four episodes.

The season three episode 'Liberal Arts' served as a backdoor pilot for the spin-off Grown-ish, initially featuring cast members like Chris Parnell, Mallory Sparks, Matt Walsh, and Trevor Jackson.

ABC passed on the Grown-ish pilot in May 2017, but sister channel Freeform picked it up, ordering 13 episodes under the working title College-ish before it was renamed Grown-ish.

Tracee Ellis Ross won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2017 for her role as Bow, making her the first Black woman to win that award since 1983.

A planned third spin-off titled Old-ish, which would have starred Laurence Fishburne and Jenifer Lewis, was announced in September 2020 but was ultimately not moved forward as a pilot.