The “disappointment” of being recast in 1985’s Back to the Future is still fresh for The Office star Melora Hardin 40 years later.
Hardin revealed her raw reaction to the news at the time in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. “Back to the Future was a huge disappointment,” she told the site. “I was 17, you know. I burst into tears. It was very sad.” It was hardly the first or last time a project or role didn’t come through for the actress.
“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,” she added.
Claudia Wells replaced Hardin as Jennifer Parker after Hardin had already filmed the role for six weeks. Hardin had signed a two-picture deal with a guaranteed spot in any sequel, which made landing the role a “big deal” for her career at the time. Though Wells took on the 1985 role, she did not appear in subsequent sequels, as the role was recast again—this time with Elisabeth Shue. Hardin went on to play the iconic character Jan Levinson on The Office from 2005 to 2013, appearing across seven seasons.
Hardin recalled learning that her height became an issue on the film after Michael J. Fox replaced Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly. “I went and did some promotional pictures and stuff. And then [weeks] into filming, they fired Eric and brought in Michael J. Fox,” Hardin explained on The Joe Vulpis Podcast. “When they did that, it was apparently the two female executives at the time, that thought that it was emasculating for their lead character male to be in scenes with a woman that was taller than him.”
Fox explained his thoughts on the last-minute casting change in his October memoir Future Boy.
“My goal as a child was self-preservation. Bullies often ridiculed my height, an easy target. I suffered the indignity of short jokes and prejudice against my smallness,” the actor wrote.
Fox continued, explaining how his height “worked in my favor when I was a teenage actor playing a younger kid, but it turned against me as an adult, when I went up for romantic leads opposite taller actresses.”
He expressed his “regret that this prejudice inadvertently affected” Hardin.
