Christopher Lloyd has been chatting about when Eric Stoltz was replaced by Michael J Fox, weeks into the filming of the first Back To The Future.
It’s gone down as one of the most famous casting changes in blockbuster cinema: the moment when director Robert Zemeckis decided that Eric Stoltz wasn’t working out as Marty McFly in 1985’s Back To The Future.
By that stage the film was several weeks into filming, and Zemeckis knew a change needed to be made. With a heavy heart, Stoltz was given the news, and Michael J Fox was cast instead. The rest is history.
Now, the co-star of the films, the mighty Christopher Lloyd, has been reflecting on what happened. “They just decided that the needed somebody with a comic flair”, Lloyd told GQ. “Stoltz is a wonderful actor. I had no idea the change was coming”.
It meant that effectively filming had to go back to the start, with Lloyd having to re-record sequences he’d already shot in the character of Doctor Emmett Brown. His worry was that he wouldn’t be able to do everything again and get it right. “My biggest fear, because I was really working to get Doc right, I thought ‘I don’t know if I can get it up to do that again’”.
He added that “I was worried about it all, but it all worked out”.
The full conversation can be found here, with Lloyd going right the way back through his career roles. Worth a watch.
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