According to gossip, the main actors were unhappy on set. Kristin Chenoweth was still coping with her split from Aaron Sorkin, Danny DeVito flew in to film his scenes rather than interact with anyone, and Matthew Broderick could be found on set shaking his head in disbelief, repeatedly stating, "I've hit rock bottom." Kristin Davis told her that she should have her eggs frozen.
Matthew Broderick had to train with a real speed-skater for a few months beforehand for the scene in which Steve and Buddy are in a speed skating race.
In a 22 November 2006 interview on ABC's Live with Kelly and Mark (1988), Kristin Davis confessed she had been nervous being cast as the wife of Matthew Broderick, the real-life husband of close friend and Sex and the City (1998) co-star, Sarah Jessica Parker. She said she received approval via email from Parker, however, not before a re-write of the script added what Davis termed a playful kissing scene between herself and Broderick. Apparently, according to Davis, in her opinion, the scene as filmed was too steamy for the film to keep a PG rating and would have been cut from the final print.
The ice-skating race between Broderick and DeVito is filmed on the same street many scenes from Smallville(2001-2011) were filmed. Often filmed store fronts from Smallville such as The Talon and the Fordman department store can be easily identified.
Danny DeVito's house used LED lights to provide remarkable displays not possible with traditional Christmas lights. Otherwise, the lighting could only be done by special effect computers. The lights, from Boston-based Color Kinetics, formed a "digital skin" around DeVito's house, acting like pixels on a TV screen. At one point, the roof of DeVito's house turned into a live video display of DeVito's face. At maximum intensity, the 14,300 LED nodes used just 7,150 watts of energy, the equivalent of four average hair dryers. Wrapping the house with conventional exterior string lights would have used approximately 100,100 watts, 14 times more than the LED installation, and without the capability for programmable effects. The entire LED installation used a total of 126 amps, about as much as 1.3 average households. Conventional exterior string lights would have used 812 amps, the equivalent of 8 houses' worth of power.