1) How To Get Away With Murder is Pete Nowalk's first show as a showrunner. Before that, he worked under Shonda Rhimes for six years writing on Private Practice and Grey's Anatomy. He was also a co–executive producer and writer on Scandal.

2) Prior to creating the show, Nowalk knew nothing about law school and read the same books the actors were reading to learn the basics about the Socratic method.

3) When he made the pilot, Nowalk admits he "didn't know 95% of who Annalise was". It was only during the first season that he had the idea of Sam being Annalise's therapist.

4) In fact, many of the characters didn't turn out how Nowalk had originally envisaged. He recalls thinking that Bonnie was going to be "bubbly and the antithesis of Annalise: the nice cop to the bad cop". But Liza Weil, who plays her, brought "a real heaviness to the role that was so much more interesting".

5) Nowalk says "the best thing about Viola is that she's also [his] collaborator". She helped create the character of Annalise and formulate the backstory.