The Normal Heart

Jim Parsons, who plays Tommy, also played the part in the 2011 Broadway revival, making him the only actor to reprise his role. His co-stars included Ellen Barkin, Lee Pace, John Benjamin Hickey, and Luke Macfarlane.

On June 26, 2013, the day of filming the fundraiser dance, Larry Kramer was in attendance. That became the day that D.O.M.A. was overturned, marking a momentous advancement for gay rights. As a celebration broke out, Larry Kramer grabbed the microphone and said "We did it!"

When Tommy Boatwright (Jim Parsons) pulls a card from his Rolodex, and puts it along with a bunch of cards tied with a rubber band, is based on what David Geffen used to do in those days. On November 18, 1992, AIDS Project Los Angeles (A.P.L.A.) gave Geffen the Commitment To Life Award at the Universal Amphitheater. During his acceptance speech, he said: "When the first person I knew died, I couldn't bring myself to throw his Rolodex card away, so I saved it. I now have a rubber band around three hundred forty-one cards." David Geffen was referring to Michael Bennett.

For the 2011 Broadway premiere of the play "The Normal Heart", Playwright Larry Kramer wrote a flyer called "Please Know" (which he often handed out to exiting audience members himself). "Please Know" explained that most of the events and characters in the play were based on real events, and people. Some of the real people he said his characters were based on included: Paul Popham, one of the founders of the Gay Men's Health Crisis (the basis for Bruce); Dr. Linda Laubenstein, an early AIDS researcher (the basis for Emma); and Rodger McFarlane, a gay rights activist and the creator of the crisis hotline that was the precursor to the GMHC (the basis for Tommy). Like McFarlane, Tommy is a Southerner (McFarlane was born and raised in South Alabama). Like Laubenstein, Emma uses a wheelchair (Laubenstein was left paraplegic after a childhood bout with polio). Although this was not mentioned in Kramer's handout, the character of Felix also had a real-life inspiration: John Duka, who, during the early 1980s, wrote a column in the New York Times's Thursday Style section titled "Notes on Fashion". Duka had been openly gay while working at New York Magazine, but upon his move to the Times in 1980, he felt he needed to re-closet himself because of the Times' then-more-conservative attitudes. Also like Felix, he also had a brief marriage to a woman. The character of Ned is based on Kramer himself.

Barbra Streisand held the film rights to Larry Kramer's original play for a decade, but was unable to get financing for a feature film, and HBO, at the time, was unwilling to meet Kramer's asking price for the screenplay.