The show's first season introduced a multinational ensemble cast, with Aml Ameen, Doona Bae, Jamie Clayton, Tina Desai, Tuppence Middleton, Max Riemelt, Miguel Ángel Silvestre, and Brian J. Smith portraying eight strangers from different parts of the world who suddenly become "sensates"; human beings who are mentally and emotionally linked.

[8] After several days of discussion they decided on creating a show that would explore the relationship between empathy and evolution in the human race, and whose story would be told in a global scale, necessitating filming on location in several countries over the world, in contrast to the standard production model for television which attempts to limit or fake that as much as possible.

[9] On October 2, 2012, Variety first reported the existence of the show, by writing that the Wachowskis, with the help of Straczynski's Studio JMS and Georgeville Television, would be shopping Sense8 around Los Angeles the week to follow.

[29] Lana came up with the idea of making the first episode of the second season a two-hour Christmas special, because of her love for such programming in the television shows that she watched as a kid, such as Hill Street Blues, Mork & Mindy, and All My Children.

Lana explained she enjoyed watching the lives of the characters in specials intersect with her own and considered birthdays, holidays and celebrations unique events for their ability to make one feel connected but also isolated and alone.

[34] The author of Cloud Atlas David Mitchell and the novelist and columnist Aleksandar Hemon worked as additional writers on the second season and were credited as "consultants";[43][44][45] they also made a cameo appearance in an episode as themselves.

[47] Hemon first met the Wachowskis in 2009, when they interviewed him looking for inspiration to write a movie script they wanted, and in turn he profiled them and wrote about the making of Cloud Atlas for The New Yorker in 2012.

Afterwards and for the rest of the year, Mitchell and Hemon were regularly being tasked by Lana to write from distance select scenes on short deadlines, that she and Straczynski would further develop or reject.

[55] On June 20, 2014, Deadline Hollywood announced the cast of the eight lead characters, along with Freema Agyeman, Naveen Andrews, Daryl Hannah, Alfonso Herrera and Eréndira Ibarra.

[72] Earlier in April, Kick Gurry, who had played parts in the Wachowskis' Speed Racer and Jupiter Ascending in the past, revealed he had been cast in the second season, after Lana called to inform him that they had a written a role specifically for him.

[103] The major locations they filmed in, include all of the first season's except Reykjavík, and the following new ones: Amsterdam, Argyll, Chippenham, Los Angeles, Malta, Positano, Redwoods, and São Paulo.

[45] Production start for the main unit of the second season was given an expected date of March 2016,[104] but a separate shoot involving the principal actors began on December 30, 2015, in Berlin, to capture footage during the Christmas holidays.

[117][118] Location manager Matthew Riutta was fined by the Department of Parks and Recreation when "someone accidentally got naked", during a romantic scene set at the tree swing in Billy Goat Hill.

Lana was told that insurance would never allow her to film there, but after writing an eight-page letter about what The Night Watch means to her and the importance of bringing art to the homes of those that are unable to go to Rijksmuseum, she eventually managed to get a permit.

[167] During the first season the Wachowskis were responsible for directorial duties in scenes shot in Chicago[80] and San Francisco[168] along with London and Iceland, two places which were initially announced to be helmed by Straczynski.

[86] Dan Glass, who had been the visual effects supervisor for every Wachowski film since The Matrix Reloaded, reprised his role in Sense8 while also making his directorial debut in the Seoul part of the story.

[67][177] Production sound mixer Stevie Haywood recounted Lana's directing style was to use two cameras as the default setup, and develop the shot over "enormously long takes" which could last up to fifteen to twenty minutes.

[145] Smith, Desai and Silvestre corroborated Lana's style of developing the shots on the set, her dislike for rehearsals, and the use of long takes, with the actors told to try different variations on how they play their parts.

[188] During the first season, Toll, once again collaborating with the Wachowskis and Glass after Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending,[189] personally handled the cinematography in San Francisco, Chicago, London, Iceland, and Seoul.

[190] Toll's approach to shooting was to use a lot of Steadicam and hand-held partly out of the necessity to follow the faster schedule of a television production compared to the feature films he was used to working on.

Toll explained this setup was necessitated by both their tight schedule and large volume of the material, but also by Lana's commitment to stay with the A camera operator, Daniele Massaccesi, and make choices as they were filming.

In fact for a great number of shots which involved the sensates communicating and visiting each other telepathically the cast were simply moving in and out of the frame in timely fashion requiring no additional work.

[199] Of the more visible work done, Glass provided the examples of age manipulation of actors, dramatic enhancement of the weather in the car scenes in Iceland, a few greenscreens, and computer generated blades, blood and wounds.

[172] Technicolor provided dailies and worked with cinematographer John Toll and the Wachowskis to color grade the show giving it a look which colorist Tony Dustin describes as "both real and surreal, with a slightly elevated color-saturation".

The Wachowskis made the mandate for production to not "lock reels", as it is typically done on TV shows, but instead be able to tinker editorially with the series' narrative, look and tone up to two weeks before release.

[214] In the Christmas special episode "Happy F*cking New Year", a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is featured, which was arranged by Gary Fry and recorded by the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, with the lead vocalist being Daniel Martin Moore.

[220][221][222] For the series' almost two-minute long title sequence, Karin Winslow rented a car and with the help of a camera assistant traveled in the eight featured countries of the first season and captured over a hundred shots.

[226][227] Shortly later within the month, Chief Content Officer of Netflix Ted Sarandos during his talk on Produced By Conference, commented that the show was cancelled because its audience, despite being very passionate, wasn't large enough to support the high production costs to travel and film around the globe.

[237] In mid-August 2017, porn site xHamster wrote an open letter to the Wachowskis, offering to produce the third season,[238] and a few days later received a call from Lana to whom they proposed to be the distribution platform.

[239] Screen Rant has criticized Xhamster's move as one of the many publicity stunts that porn companies set out to do to advertise themselves, while Inverse wrote the Wachowskis would never take their show to a platform that uses pejoratives to refer to transgender people.