The Office’s Melora Hardin detailed the aftermath of being fired from Back to the Future after shooting 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, told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published on Monday, December 22. “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.”
Hardin had initially been cast in the role of Jennifer Parker opposite Eric Stoltz’s Marty for the 1985 sci-fi film. But when Stoltz was let go and replaced by Michael J. Fox, Hardin found herself also getting the boot, thanks to having a few inches of height on the Family Ties star.
“It was apparently the two female executives at the time that thought that it was emasculating for their lead male character to be in scenes with a woman that was taller than him,” Hardin claimed to EW earlier this year. She noted, however, that things ultimately turned out for the best. “If I had done it, I’m sure it would have all gone in a different way. I wouldn’t have done The Office,” she told the outlet at the time.
While speaking to EW on Monday, Hardin doubled down on her positive outlook, explaining that it was essential to have “failed more than you’ve succeeded” in order to get where she is in the industry. “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,” she said. “That failure doesn’t mean anything about you. You just have to fail better, and keep failing better … to be able to really weather this career choice.”
As for the role of Jennifer, Claudia Wells was ultimately cast in the role before Elisabeth Shue took over the part for the subsequent sequels. Fox, meanwhile, starred in all three of blockbusters.
In his 2025 memoir, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum, Fox revealed that he was the original choice for Marty but NBC blocked him from taking the role, wanting him to instead concentrate on his sitcom. But when Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis and cowriter Bob Gale weren’t convinced that Stoltz was right for the part due to his more dramatic acting approach, they swung back to Fox.
“Unfortunately, the dailies were disappointing,” Fox wrote of Stoltz’s early version of Back to the Future. “Eric was an immensely talented actor, but the creative team felt that he just wasn’t the right fit for Marty McFly.”
Stoltz, for his part, has kept largely silent on the casting drama over the years, but did subtly address the situation during a 2007 interview with Moviehole.
“I rarely look back, if at all, but in retrospect, I think just getting through that difficult period helped me realize how freeing it really was,” he said. “I went back to acting school, I moved to Europe, I did some plays in New York and I actually invested in myself in a way that was much healthier for me. I would’ve been unable to walk down the street! It’s a whole different life. I was lucky in that way.”
Fox revealed in his memoir that he has reached out to Stoltz about his book and the pair met up at his home, where they “immediately fell into an easy dialogue about our careers, families and yes, our own trips through the space-time continuum.” They have since “maintained a friendly correspondence,” bonding over being actors and dads, talking about politics and movies they’ve seen.
“What transpired on Back to the Future had not made us enemies or fated rivals; we were just two dedicated actors who had poured equal amounts of energy into the same role,” Fox shared in his memoir. “The rest had nothing to do with us.”
