The set:
On the set it is impossible to see any stress. Everyone seems happy and helps with ideas for storylines. The directors try to do everything so that it looks real and accurate. There are high production values and everything is done so that the final result is appreciated by the audience. As the plot of the series is always getting more and more complicated though, it confuses everybody. Andrea Parker says: "I can´t keep up with the writers!". The only real problem for the main actors is that they don´t always play together. Jarod being on the run all the time, Michael T. Weiss is indeed often working alone (they are likely to shoot at a different location) while Andrea Parker, Partick Bauchau and Jon Gries are together all the time.

The locations:
The series is filmed in Los Angeles, California (USA) and Toronto, Ontario (Canada). The city of Blue Cove, Delaware (USA) where the Centre is meant to be actually doesn´t exist. It has been made up for the plot to look more mysterious. However the Centre building exists as it looks like in the series but is not a federal building of some kind. It is in fact a filtration plant just outside of Toronto.

The story behind the series:
Creators Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle admit that they have been inspired by the true-life story of Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr. (1921-1982). Nick-named "The Great Imposter", this man impersonated several people for more than 20 years. The identities he adopted included a surgeon, a deputy sheriff, a law student and a cancer researcher. As a surgeon he managed numerous successful surgeries while he never even graduated from High School. He said he used his incredible memory only after reading books for the sake of it. He was caught twice and was said to have died of a heart attack "lonely and deeply depressed" as "he felt his talents were wasted". It seems that after the series Steven Spielberg was inspired by "The Pretender" and the similar story of the later Frank Abagnale, Jr. to produce the cinema film "Catch Me if You Can" with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks.

The soundtrack:
The different themes of the series were composed by John Debney, Rick Patterson, Mark Leggett and Velton Ray Bunch. John Debney also worked on famous movies like "Bruce Almighty" and composed the main theme of "SeaQuest DSV". As for Rick Patterson, he did not do much apart from "The Pretender". Mark Leggett did not do much else either, but in 2000 he shared the nomination for an Emmy Award with Velton Ray Bunch for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music for "The Pretender". Bunch had previously been nominated for an Emmy Award in 1993. It was an Outstanding Individual Achievement In Music Composition for a Series Award for the episode "Lee Harvey Oswald" of Donald Bellisario´s "Quantum Leap" TV series. He composed a lot of the episodic music for "The Pretender" and for other series such as "Enterprise", "JAG", "Quantum Leap" (on which he worked with his friend Mike Post), "Magnum, P.I.", "Nash Bridges", "Walker, Texas Ranger" and more.