It’s well-documented that the Back to the Future movie that fans know and love, which kicked off one of the best science fiction movie franchises of all time, is not at all the movie that the team started making when production began. When filming began on the movie, Michael J. Fox wasn’t actually playing Marty McFly; instead, Eric Stoltz was in the part. Though Stoltz had filmed on the movie for well over a month, it was eventually decided that he wasn’t right for the part, and he was fired, with Fox brought in to take over the role and make cinema history.
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What movie fans may not know is that the firing of Stoltz wasn’t the only cast member who was removed and replaced on the production. After Fox was brought in, Melora Hardin, the original actress cast to play Marty’s girlfriend, Jennifer, was also replaced, after it was deemed that she was too tall for the role. Hardin stands 5’5″ to Fox’s 5’4″, something that wasn’t an issue when she was acting opposite Stoltz, who stands 6′. Now, Hardin has broken her silence on being replaced in the film.
Original Back to the Future Star Melora Hardin Breaks Silence on Being Recast
Though best known to fans now for playing Jan Levinson, Steve Carrel’s love interest for multiple seasons on The Office, Hardin still recalls her feelings after being let go from Back to the Future, though time and her career since have given her a fresh perspective on it. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Hardin opened up about it, calling her firing from Back to the Future a “huge disappointment.”
“I was 17, you know. I burst into tears,” Hardin revealed. “It was very sad. There were quite a few of those that I remember, you know, things that never really got made. But that I remember being very tough….To be where I am, you have to have failed more than you’ve succeeded. I think people don’t realize that when they look at it from the outside — you have to really be somebody who’s comfortable with failure, and with putting yourself on the line all the time. That failure doesn’t mean anything about you.”
As fans know, Claudia Wells stepped into the role of Jennifer for Back to the Future, but even she was replaced for the sequels, with actress Elisabeth Shue taking over for the two sequels.
Changes to the roles of Jennifer and Marty aren’t the only big ones made to the Back to the Future cast throughout the series’ life, though. Most famously, Back to the Future recast the part of George McFly for Back to the Future Part II, replacing Crispin Glover with Jeffrey Weissman. It’s one thing to replace an actor between films, but Weissman was also fitted with prosthetics (and turned upside down in the film) to trick audiences into believing that it was still Glover in the part. That change prompted a lawsuit from Glover, and has changed bylaws in Hollywood’s Screen Actor’s Guild, preventing a similar issue from ever happening again. In short, Back to the Future changed a lot about Hollywood, and even more behind the camera than you know.
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Image Courtesy of HBO Max
