The real Ron Stallworth had originally wanted Denzel Washington to play him, but was ecstatic to find out his son got the role.
According to editor Barry Alexander Brown, there were no deleted scenes for the movie, a rarity in the industry.
Contrary to popular belief, the real Ron Stallworth never used a "white" voice on the phone. He ironically had to use his real voice or they would have caught him if he slipped out of character. When his white colleagues told him it could not work, he asked what made his voice any different from theirs and they never answered.
John David Washington has said that the toughest time on set was filming the banquet scene. He later called Ron Stallworth to ask how he had contained himself amid such hatred when dealing with the actual KKK.
This film contains clips from The Birth of a Nation (1915). When Spike Lee was a student at NYU Film School, he was so outraged that his professors taught the movie with no mention of its racist message or its role in the Klan's 20th century rebirth that he made The Answer (1980) as a response. Many professors took great offense, and Lee was nearly expelled. He ultimately was saved by a faculty vote. After Lee's film industry success, he became a professor at NYU Film School, and Artistic Director of the Graduate Film Department.
Spike Lee: ["I got it. I'm gone."] Ron uses the phrase "I got it. I'm gone." This was previously uttered by Mookie in Do the Right Thing (1989), after Da Mayor tells him to "always do the right thing".