Actor Melora Hardin, best known for her role as Jan Levinson on NBC’s The Office, recently told Entertainment Weekly that she “started crying” when she was fired from Robert Zemeckis’ blockbuster hit Back to the Future. In one of Hollywood’s most infamous recastings, when original Marty McFly actor Eric Stoltz was removed from production and replaced by Michael J. Fox, it turns out that decision led to his second firing. Hardin was originally cast as Marty’s girlfriend, Jennifer Parker.
“I was very disappointed in Back to the Future. I was 17 years old, you know. I burst into tears,” Hardin told EW. “It was very sad. A lot of what I remember never really happened. But I do remember that it was very difficult.”
Hardin revealed earlier this year that when Stoltz was fired, he was offered the role in Back to the Future because studio executives thought he was too tall to play opposite Michael J. Fox. “I think the two female executives at the time thought it would be watering down for the lead male character to do scenes with women who were taller than him. If I had done that, I’m sure everything would have gone in a different direction. I wouldn’t have done The Office,” she explained.
“For me to be here, I have to fail more than I succeed,” Hardin now tells EW. “I don’t think people realize that from the outside looking in. You have to be someone who’s really comfortable with failing and always putting yourself at risk. That failure doesn’t mean anything to you. You just have to fail better and keep failing better…to be able to really survive this career choice.”
Stoltz and Hardin During Back to the Future’s six-week production period, it was decided that Stoltz would be hired and the lead role would be recast with Fox, the director’s first choice, who had been previously blocked due to his role on the NBC sitcom Family Ties. Hardin was replaced by Claudia Wells. In his new memoir, Future Boy, Foxx revealed that he wrote Stoltz a letter to finally meet him 40 years after he was recast.
“Eric had been silent on the subject for 40 years, so I was prepared for the possibility that he would want to do it,” Fox wrote in his memoir, noting that the two never met to discuss the casting exchange. Ms. Fox wrote him: “If your answer is, ‘Just piss off and leave me alone,’ then that’s fine too.”
In a “beautifully written reply,” Stoltz responded, “I started saying, ‘Get angry and leave me alone!'” Thankfully, this was followed by, “Just kidding…” Eric was thoughtful about my activities, and although he politely declined to participate in the book, he seemed open to the idea of getting together. ”
When Fox and Stoltz finally found themselves in the same room, the actors “immediately struck up a quick conversation about our careers, our families, and, yes, our own journeys through the space-time continuum,” Fox writes. “[Stortz]came in with a smile on his face and we quickly acknowledged that we were fine with each other. Nothing that happened on Back to the Future made us enemies or archrivals. We were just two dedicated actors who put the same amount of energy into the same role. The rest had nothing to do with us. As it turned out, we had a lot more in common than our spins as Marty.”
