In an April 2021 Collider interview by
Liz Shannon Miller, show-runner
Christina Lee and creator
Alissa Nutting revealed that "Diane," the sex doll that is Herbert's "synthetic companion," is modeled after Nutting (who in addition to being one of the show's creators also wrote the source novel it is based on): "when it came time to pick out the doll, I decided to get my face cast for it. So, my face is actually Diane's face. That really extended that sense of, this is a person on set. I did it for, like, proprietary copyright reasons, and so that we weren't objectifying any doll that's based on another real person. I was game for any possible objectification that would occur. But we really wanted Diane to be thought of in the same way as all of our human cast members."