UPN announced that Busy Philipps was cast as Denise on July 25, and was later billed as the show's star. In her 2018 memoir, Phillips said she was initially reluctant the part due to UPN's treatment of Doherty, writing: "they had decided to replace her only after they had trotted her out at the up-fronts and used her for publicity, which I thought was a fairly shitty thing to do". According to Vince Vieluf, the casting change from Doherty to Philipps led to the series being retooled as an ensemble show featuring all the members of the agency rather than focusing on Denise. Vieluf said the alterations in the series' premise were due to concerns that "people would get tired of a show that was only about the mishaps of one person's love life".