God Friended Me

The series was developed by Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt, who teamed up with Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter of Berlanti Productions to shape the concept before Warner Bros. Television shopped it to networks.

CBS unusually picked up the pilot straight-to-series on May 11, 2018, skipping the traditional pilot-only order stage.

The show's 'God' Facebook account was actually active outside the fictional narrative, liking pages and changing its profile picture like a real user.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic halting production in March 2020, the final episode had to be reworked into a series finale, with several scenes patched together using stock footage from earlier episodes to replace cancelled shoots.

The finale's closing scene set in the Himalayas actually reused location footage originally shot in Utah during the filming of the pilot, which had been deliberately saved for a potential series finale.

Brandon Micheal Hall was the first actor cast, joining as Miles Finer in February 2018, followed within days by Suraj Sharma, Javicia Leslie, Joe Morton, and finally Violett Beane.

Erica Gimpel, who played Trish Allen in a recurring role during season one, was promoted to series regular for season two in June 2019.

Season two saw viewership drop 20% and the 18-49 demo rating fall 25% compared to season one, and TVLine noted the show had the smallest DVR playback gain of any scripted CBS program at the time.