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The Office Melora Hardin detailed the consequences of the dismissal of Back to the future after filming weeks of footage as Marty McFly’s love interest.
“Back to the future was a huge disappointment. I was 17, you know. I burst into tears,” Hardin, 58, said. Weekly Entertainment in an interview published Monday, December 22. “It was very sad. There were quite a few things that I remember, you know, things that never really happened. But that I remember being very hard.”
Hardin was originally cast as Jennifer Parker opposite That of Eric Stoltz Marty for the 1985 sci-fi film. But when Stoltz was fired and replaced by Michael J. FoxHardin also found herself on the boot, thanks to a few inches of height on the Family Ties star.
“It was apparently the two female executives at the time who thought it was emasculating for their main male character to be in scenes with a woman who was taller than him,” Hardin claimed. THIS earlier this year. She noted, however, that things ultimately worked out for the best. “If I had done it, I’m sure everything would have happened in a different way. I wouldn’t have done it The office” she told the outlet at the time.
By speaking to THIS On Monday, Hardin doubled down on her optimism, explaining that having “failed more than succeeded” was essential to getting to where she is in the industry. “I think people don’t realize that when they look at things from the outside, you really have to be someone who is comfortable with failure and putting yourself in danger all the time,” she said. “This failure means nothing to you. You just need to fail better, and continue to fail better…to be able to truly overcome this career choice.”
As for the role of Jennifer, Claudia Wells was ultimately cast in the role before Elizabeth Shue reprized the role for subsequent sequels. Fox, meanwhile, starred in all three blockbusters.
In his 2025 memoirs, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time ContinuumFox revealed he was the original choice for Marty but NBC blocked him from taking the role. I want him to concentrate instead on his sitcom. But when Back to the future director Robert Zemeckis and co-author Bob Galé were not convinced that Stoltz was right for the role due to his more dramatic acting approach, they returned to Fox.
“Unfortunately, the dailies were disappointing” Fox wrote of Stoltz’s first version of Back to the future. “Eric was an extremely talented actor, but the creative team felt he just wasn’t the right fit for Marty McFly.”
Stoltz, for his part, has remained largely silent about the casting drama over the years, but subtly addressed the situation during a 2007 interview with Filmhole.
“I rarely look back, if at all, but in retrospect I think just getting through that difficult time helped me realize how liberating it really was,” he said. “I went back to drama school, moved to Europe, did a few plays in New York and invested in myself in a way that was much healthier for me. I couldn’t have walked down the street! It’s a completely different life. I was lucky that way.”
“Great Scott!” » Back to the Future debuted in theaters in July 1985 – and has been a pop culture staple ever since. Michael J. Fox plays teenager Marty McFly, who travels back in time from 1985 to 1955 with eccentric scientist Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and meets his parents in high school. […]
Fox revealed in his memoir that he contacted Stoltz about his book and the two men met at his home, where they “immediately engaged in an easy dialogue about our careers, our families and, yes, our own travels across the space-time continuum.” Since then, they have “maintained a friendly correspondence,” bonding over being actors and fathers, talking about politics and films they have seen.
“What happened in Back to the Future didn’t make us enemies or fatal rivals; we were just two dedicated actors who had invested the same amount of energy into the same role,” Fox explained in his memoir. “The rest had nothing to do with us.”
