The Affair

The Lobster Roll restaurant actually exists in Montauk, but is closed in the winter.

The role of Noah was written for Dominic West from the beginning, who originally turned it down.

Star Ruth Wilson shocked people when she abruptly quit the show before its final season in the summer of 2018. When reporters pressed her for an explanation, all she said was "It isn't about pay parity, and it wasn't about other jobs," Wilson told The New York Times. "I'm not really allowed to talk about it. There is a much bigger story." To get to the bottom of what happened, The Hollywood Reporter interviewed numerous insiders, and then it published the untold story of why Wilson left. The actress, who is restrained by an NDA, knew her role on the adult drama would involve showing some skin, but she felt the frequency and nature of her nude scenes were gratuitous. The production team was also reportedly sloppy about protecting actors' privacy on a number of occasions. "There sometimes were people there who didn't need to be, or the monitor was in plain view," an insider told THR. Another source alleged that a complaint was raised after a monitor was left on and someone not involved with the production was able to watch them shoot an on-location sex scene. Wilson finally negotiated her exit from The Affair after a shocking account of a drunken run-in with the show's executive producer and frequent director Jeffrey Reiner was published on the now-shuttered website Lenny Letter in 2016. Allegedly, Reiner crossed paths with Jenni Konner and Lena Dunham in the Hamptons and tried to persuade the "Girls" star to have dinner alone with Wilson, to convince her to "show her tits, or at least some vag" on his show. Then, Reiner allegedly pulled out his phone and showed off a photo of Maura Tierney, another star of The Affair, with a nude male actor's penis near her face. Evidently, it was meant to prove to Dunham the show had an equal male-to-female nudity ratio. Wilson raised a complaint with Showtime in early 2017 alleging The Affair was a "hostile work environment," and the network's parent company CBS opened an internal investigation sometime after. According to THR, the Reiner incident gave the actress the leverage she needed to negotiate her exit from the show. She reportedly received a substantial payout, shot all her scenes in the fourth season early, and refused to share a set with show runner Sarah Treem.

The series was co-created by Hagai Levi and Sarah Treem. However, Levi retired from writing the series during the second season. His stated reason was that the show was moving away from what he had envisioned. Treem was therefore "the best person" to author the show from that point on.

Both actors playing Alison and Noah are UK born.