Woody Allen gave the New York Times a fairly straightforward explanation for the genesis of The Purple Rose of Cairo. He told Eric Lax, “After working on one thing for a while, and for a while is one film because that takes a year to do, you want to do something different. I had just made Zelig and Broadway Danny Rose, and I thought this was a different kind of movie. I thought it would be interesting if a character came off the screen.” Allen goes on to say how the film came together for him as a concept:

Allen adds that this contrast between fantasy and reality provides the necessary “elements” for a successful film: “I thought it had good elements to it: comic elements, surreal elements, farcical elements. I thought it was material that it would be worth it to work a year on.”