The producers could not find any house in Montreal that looked like a "California modern" 1950s house, so they had to build the Reagan family's house on a set. The crew was always running into its many glass walls.
This movie has been disavowed by many who worked with and knew President Reagan, even his estranged daughter Patti Davis, arguing that the movie depicts a caricatured Reagan that never existed. Davis took particular exception to the movie's line "Those who live in sin shall die in sin", saying that her father never said such a thing. Furthermore, the release of The Reagan Diaries revealed a much deeper Reagan than what his critics had alleged.
Viacom originally scheduled this to air as a miniseries on CBS on November 16 and 18, 2003. They moved it to Showtime and aired it as a single film on November 30, following protests by the Republican Party and a threatened boycott over its portrayal of the Reagan family.
In Montreal, producers built an exact copy of the exterior wall of Washington's Hilton Hotel in order to recreate the Reagan assassination attempt.
Producers had set up filming in Toronto in 2003 when the SARS outbreak hit the town. They were forced to scratch nearly all their preparations and move filming to Montreal. They had to find new locations, hire a Montreal-based crew, and import English-speaking actors from Toronto and New York. The last-minute switch cost about $1.5 million, which they made up by cuts from the script and sets.