Genius was National Geographic's first ever scripted straight-to-series order, greenlit on April 28, 2016, with the first season adapted from Walter Isaacson's biography Einstein: His Life and Universe.

The third season was originally planned to focus on writer Mary Shelley, but the subject was changed during development, and in February 2019 it was announced the season would instead focus on Aretha Franklin.

The identity of the season two subject, Pablo Picasso, was meant to be revealed during the season one finale, but the network delayed the announcement to the following day so as not to divert attention from the finale.

Season one was filmed in Prague in mid-2016, while season two was shot starting in November 2017 across multiple cities including Málaga, Barcelona, Paris, and Budapest over more than five months.

Production on season three, originally set to begin filming in November 2019 for an early-2020 release, was shelved in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and did not resume until October 1, 2020.

Both Albert Einstein (season 1) and Pablo Picasso (season 2) were portrayed by two different actors representing the character at different ages: Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Flynn played Einstein, while Antonio Banderas and Alex Rich shared the role of Picasso.

For season three, Cynthia Erivo recorded most of Aretha Franklin's music herself, but the producers were unable to secure the rights to use Franklin's two biggest hits, 'Respect' and '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman'.

Despite generally positive critical reception, Aretha Franklin's family publicly stated they were never consulted during production of season three, contradicting the crew's claims of having worked with Franklin's estate.