‘The Office’ Star Melora Hardin ‘Burst Into Tears’ When Fired From ‘Back to the Future’ Amid Michael J. Fox Recasting Drama: ‘A Huge Disappointment’

Melora Hardin, the actor best known for playing Jan Levinson on NBC’s “The Office,” recently told Entertainment Weekly that she “burst into tears” when she was fired from Robert Zemeckis’ blockbuster “Back to the Future.” While original Marty McFly actor Eric Stoltz being let go from the production and replaced by Michael J. Fox is one of Hollywood’s most infamous re-castings, it turns out that decision led to a second firing. Hardin was originally cast as Marty’s girlfriend Jennifer Parker.

“‘Back to the Future’ was a huge disappointment. I was 17, you know. I burst into tears,” Hardin told EW. “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 revealed earlier this year that she also got the boot from “Back to the Future” when Stoltz was fired because studio executives thought she was too tall to star opposite Michael J. Fox. She explained: “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. If I had done it, I’m sure it would have all gone in a different way. I wouldn’t have done ‘The Office.'”

“To be where I am, you have to have failed more than you’ve succeeded,” Hardin now told EW. “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. 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.”

Stoltz and Hardin were in production for six weeks on “Back to the Future” when the decision was made to boot Stoltz and recast the lead role with the director’s first choice, Fox, who had originally been blocked from the film due to his commitment to the NBC sitcom “Family Ties.” Hardin was replaced by Claudia Wells. Fox revealed in his new memoir, “Future Boy,” that he wrote a letter to Stoltz asking to finally meet 40 years after the recasting.

“Eric has maintained his silence on the subject for 40 years, so I was prepared for the likelihood that he’d prefer to keep it that way,” Fox writes in the memoir, noting the two had never come face to face to discuss the casting swap. Fox wrote to him: “If your answer is ‘piss off and leave me alone’… That works, too.”

Stoltz responded with a “beautifully written reply” that “began, ‘Piss off and leave me alone!’ Thankfully, this was followed by ‘I jest…’ Eric was thoughtful about my outreach, and although he respectfully declined to participate in the book, he seemed open to the idea of getting together.”

When Fox and Stoltz finally found themselves together in the same room, the actors “immediately fell into an easy dialogue about our careers, families, and yes, our own trips through the space-time continuum,” Fox writes. “[Stoltz entered] with a smile, and we quickly acknowledged that neither of us had an issue with the other. 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. The rest had nothing to do with us. As it turned out, we had much more in common than our spin as Marty.”