Eliza Dushku turned down an offer to star in a spin-off series of her character Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) in favor of doing this series.
Jensen Ackles was originally asked to play a part in Tru Calling. He turned it down to take the role of Jason Teague on Smallville (2001). However, the writers liked him so much that they decided to name the character after him.
At the The University of Colorado at Boulder's 57th Annual Conference on World Affairs in 2005, star Eliza Dushku's mother Judith Dushku (a Professor of Government at Suffolk University) told a story about her daughter's growing dissatisfaction with the writing and her character as the show went on. According to Mrs. Dushkhu, Eliza had been promised that Tru Calling (2003) would be another "strong girl" show, in the tradition of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), and that her character would be a role model for young women. However, by about the sixth episode, Eliza was calling her mother to complain about egregiously weak and dumb traits in her character. Examples given by Mrs. Dushku include: an argument that Eliza had with the showrunners because she refused to play a scene in which Tru did not know what a map was (and she had to have a man tell her) and Eliza being told that Tru shouldn't be seen studying for her MCATs (even though she was supposed to be a medical student). Eliza also made a list of all the script instructions written to describe Tru's state of mind, and they always included words like "overwhelmed," "surprised," "shocked," and "bewildered," but never instructions for Tru to be strong, confident, or sure of herself.
After the first season finale, FOX was almost close to cancelling the show, but didn't because the ratings in the middle of the first season improved, and since its competitor NBC's Friends (1994) was in their final season, FOX decided to renew this series and give it another chance. After renewing it for a second season, FOX rolled back the episode order from thirteen to six on the week of filming the sixth episode. On the last day of filming, the cast and crew were told that the show had been cancelled.
The show was canceled by FOX, who thought that the new series Point Pleasant (2005) would work better following The O.C. (2003) than Tru Calling. Point Pleasant was canceled before finishing its thirteen episodes.