Back To The Future Star Makes Surprising Reveal About OG Marty McFly Actor: “Treating Me Very Badly”

Back to the Future isn’t just a movie about alternate timelines and the lives that could’ve been: it’s also a real-life study of those multiversal concepts, as well. For those who have never known, Back to the Future was almost a very different movie, with an entirely different actor in the role of Marty McFly. Actor Eric Stoltz has gone on to have a very successful career in Hollywood (Mask, The Fly II, Pulp Fiction, Anaconda, The Prophecy, Jerry Maguire), and is still very much active in the industry today; however, he hit a low point in the mid-1980s when director Robert Zemeckis pulled him from the lead role in Back to the Future, and replaced him with Michael J. Fox.

In a new interview on actor Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, Back to the Future star Tom Wilson (who played Biff Tannen) recounts working with Eric Stoltz on Back to the Future, and the experience wasn’t necessarily one of warm and fuzzy creative play. At all.

“He was – again, I say, like we were very young men, and it was a long time ago. And I have utmost respect for Eric as a person and his wonderful career and all of those things,” Wilson began. “But we were young guys together in a thing, and Eric was doing a very, very method-heavy approach to Marty McFly. So he was treating me very badly, because he wanted to be called “Marty” by everyone. By everyone. By the hairstylist, the director, everyone. He was trying to embody Marty.”

The anecdotes about Eric Stoltz’s brooding take on Marty McFly are now woven into the fabric of Hollywood legend. Wilson was a very much a stage actor, getting his first big movie break, and it quickly made him feel like he was being pushed around by the more experienced screen actors.

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“I thought it was odd coming in because he had been in a movie with Leah Thompson. He was supposed to be uncomfortable around her, but to him, she was Leah, and they were all palsy-wowsy there, but he’s treating me bad,” Wilson explained. “So I thought it was a ‘selective method.’ Back then, I didn’t appreciate that, because I have an instrument too; I’m on this stage as well as you are. We both need what we need to work this scene: I’m not your servant in this scene, where I’m going to act a particular way to make you comfortable. We’re here together in order to do this. And I’m not asking you to do anything; to call me anything, to do anything. I’m asking you to know the words and show up here ready to rock. And there was a lot of drama and angst and things I think were not productive – as a young man back then – that led to his being replaced.”

Back to the Future had been shooting for over a month when Stoltz was fired, making it one of the most unusual late-game substitutions in the history of a major film production. “I was shocked because it was a big thing for a movie to do that! It was a big thing.” Wilson confirmed. “So things were getting uncomfortable on the set; in discussions with Bob Zemeckis the director; with Dean Cundey, the cinematographer. Things were unusual, and then everything got shut down. And I thought ‘They’re pulling the plug on the movie.’”

Wilson went on to describe how the director and executives called him down to the Universal Pictures office, making Wilson believe he was about to get fired. Instead, Fox, a TV star, was brought in, and the change was immediately felt.

“Michael got the script, he understood the vibe of the whole thing… so he got what everyone was doing, myself, Crispin [Glover]…” Wilson explained. “So he came in and took the movie! Took it! And so it became what it became… I was so relieved. I was so relieved. Because it just felt like we did a scene together, not that you were doing a thing and I was doing a thing.”

Wilson described the humility that Fox brought to the set, feeling that he had to prove himself as being a TV actor worthy of a big screen leading role, “He was intimidated… He was insecure, which was funny.”

Back to the Future remains a legendary film and trilogy, and you can stream it on Roku, Sling TV, and other platforms. Let us know your favorite BTTF moments and trivia on the ComicBook Forum!