Why Melora Hardin was fired and replaced on Back to the Future

Filmmaking can be a ruthless business, especially for actors. While it’s true that all creatives are judged on their personal attributes, performers face the added pressure of embodying the physical and emotional attributes required to play a particular role. This means that they are hired or rejected based on their appearance and nature as humans. It’s hard for everyone, but it’s especially brutal for young actors who are in or near puberty. Additionally, it can be hard for the people behind the camera; An actor who is still comfortable in his growing body may shine in an interview, but once you get him on set, he’s just not right for the role. Just ask the supremely talented actor Tamzin Merchant and the people responsible for bringing George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones to life for HBO. They shot an entire pilot film with her, some of which had to be scrapped because she wasn’t considered for the key role of Daenerys Targaryen.

Imagine this: you get your first big role, finish production, and then watch helplessly as the producers scrap your hard work and reshoot the whole thing with another actor in your place. And it’s not for nothing that they become icons in this role!

One of the most famous cases of an actor being replaced during production is Eric Stoltz in Back to the Future. The rising star, fresh from impressing as Rocky Dennis in Mask, played the role of Marty McFly for a month before director Robert Zemeckis had to pump the brakes and recast his lead role. Zemeckis has often cited the moment he fired Stoltz as one of the toughest experiences of his career, but it’s rarely discussed that the actor’s sudden exit led to a co-star also losing her job.

That was Melora Hardin, who decades later would be a regular cast member of NBC’s The Office. Why did it cause so much attention?

In a chat with the New York Post’s Page Six, Hardin discussed how she lost the role of Jennifer Parker to Claudia Wells after Michael J. Fox was hired to replace Stoltz. The reason? The then 17-year-old was taller than the little star from “Family Ties.”

Hardin told the Post the experience was “so very, very painful. There is no doubt it was very painful.”

Unfortunately, there was more to her dismissal. According to Hardin, two female executives at Universal believed that a taller Jennifer had “emasculated” Marty – which is odd considering the character portrayed by Fox is hardly a model of machismo. That’s what makes him teaching his father to be more assertive so amusing (aside from Crispin Glover’s aggressively wacky performance). Per Hardin: “I think it’s an interesting sign of the times that it was the female executives who felt they had to protect their main character’s masculinity in this way.”

Hardin recovered quickly and did not want to work in film or television during her still-blossoming career. She told the Post that she probably wouldn’t have appeared on “The Office” as Jan Levinson without overcoming that early setback, so fans of the popular series have 1980s Hollywood sexism to thank for that!