It’s hard to envision a time when Lea Thompson and Michael J. Fox weren’t friendly with one another, as they spent a great deal of time together making the Back to the Future movies and have frequently interacted with each other in the decades since the trilogy concluded. However, it’s not as though these two have always been on good standing with one another. Thompson admitted that when she first met Fox on the first Back to the Future movie’s set, she was “snooty” to him, though she had some understandable reasons for that.
While appearing on the Still Here Hollywood podcast, Thompson, who played Lorraine McFly in all three Back to the Future movies and Maggie McFly in Part III, recalled to host Steve Kmetko that she “probably” didn’t hit it off right away with Fox. That was in part due to her being friends with Eric Stoltz, who was originally set to play Marty McFly, but was fired after director and co-writer Robert Zemeckis deemed he wasn’t right for the role after all. On top of that, though, Thompson shared that she looked down on Fox for the following reason:
I remember specifically being really snooty because there was a big division between movie stars and TV stars at that point. I remember being like, ‘He’s just a TV star, and I’m a movie star. I was in Jaws 3D.’ So, I think it took me a while to warm up to him, but he was so funny and so fun to act with.
While she is correct that there was a larger divide between movie and TV actors back then, let’s no forget that Family Ties was one of the more popular shows of the ’80s and is still considered to be one of the best sitcoms of all time. But what’s really funny about Lea Thompson’s recollection is that Michael J. Fox was actually courted to play Marty before Eric Stoltz. The only reason it didn’t work out the first time around was because he was busy with Family Ties, but after things with Stoltz fell through six weeks into filming, Fox was approached again, and they figured out a way to shoot Back to the Future (one of the best sci-fi movies) with him without it disrupting the sitcom’s production.
Despite her initial iciness towards Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson did believe that the Marty McFly recasting would improve Back to the Future’s chances of success, reasoning that the filmmakers must have known what they were doing because of how it expensive it was to change the actors this far along into the creative process. The actress also said:
You know, everybody always wants to be like, ‘Oh, wasn’t that fun?’ You know, that’s what people wanna hear. And it was very — it was a lot of pressure, and it was scary business, especially after they fired Eric Stoltz. You were like, ‘This is not fun and games. This is big business and, you know, a big deal.’
34 years after this sci-fi saga concluded with Back to the Future Part III, Lea Thompson and Michael J. Fox remain “friendly” with one another, with the former mentioning that she sees the latter a few times a year at fan conventions. Thompson and Fox’s co-stars in all three Back to the Future movies included Christopher Lloyd and Thomas F. Wilson. Crispin Glover and Claudia Wells respectively played George McFly and Jennifer Parker in the first movie, but Jeffrey Weissman and Elisabeth Shue took over those roles for the other two.
Currently the Back to the Future movies can be streamed if you’re subscribed to Star, either directly or as an add-on for something like a Hulu subscription. Lea Thomson can currently be seen on the TV series The Chicken Sisters, which airs on Hallmark+.
