When the book was going to be adapted into a BBC mini series, Lucinda Coxon really wanted to adapt it because she "just felt as though she understood how to do it, in a way she hadn't previously [in 2002, when the novel was going to be a full feature film]. Previously, she had thought that it was an extraordinary book, but she didn't know how to do it". This time, for the mini series, she just thought, she "knew exactly what this needs to be."
When asked if she had the freedom to make the mini series as long as she needed it to be, if she had determined that it would be four parts, Lucinda Coxon answered that they "did determine the four-part thing ahead of time", and that sometimes they wished they "had actually gone to five parts".
Screenwriter Lucinda Coxon had been approached about adapting Michel Faber's book also titled "The Crimson Petal and the White" a long time ago, as a film in the States, in 2002 when the novel first came out. However, "that didn't work out for anybody, and thankfully for me", she herself said.
Karina Cornwell filmed a scene, playing "Alice", one of a pair of prostitutes. However the scene was cut, although it is on the DVD release.