40 years later, “Back to the Future” is still the biggest movie of Michael J. Fox’s career. It’s the time-travel blockbuster that made him a household name, the one so successful it spawned two sequels and countless sci-fi rip-offs. And those sequels weren’t bad either. Sure, they gave Marty a weird character arc about him hating being called a chicken, but they also moved away from all the incest stuff; I’d consider them a win overall.
But although “Back to the Future” feels like a vital part of Fox’s legacy, he almost didn’t star in it. At the time he was busy filming the hit sitcom “Family Ties,” a show where Fox played the young Republican teenager Alex who was constantly arguing with his ex-hippie liberal parents. (It was the most ’80s sitcom ever made.) The show went on for seven seasons, all of which were over 20 episodes. This was the norm for TV shows of the pre-streaming era, but that didn’t make it any less of a heavy workload. The sheer length of each “Family Ties” season made it hard for Fox to make time for anything else.
In a 2010 interview, the movie’s producer and co-writer Bob Gale explained how the filming schedule had to revolve around Fox’s “Family Ties” day job:
“Once Michael J. Fox was in it, the hardest thing was the schedule. … Michael would work on ‘Family Ties’ at 9 in the morning. He’d work there til 5 or 6. He’d go over to Universal, and we’d work with him til 1, 2 in the morning. So shooting a movie under those conditions, that was hard.”
Filming the two sequels was a bit easier for Michael J. Fox, especially the third one where filming took place entirely after “Family Ties” had wrapped up on NBC. By the time the trilogy ended Fox had left the world of television for the world of of film, which was less time-extensive and more respected by critics.
Read more: 5 Star Trek Characters Who Disappeared Without Any Reason
Michael J. Fox wasn’t the only sitcom actor to struggle through a busy schedule
Gale talking to Sidney outside in Scream – Dimension Films
Courteney Cox, who played Fox’s love interest Lauren on “Family Ties” for a season, would pull off a similar feat a decade later. In the ’90s she filmed the hit horror movie “Scream” and returned for even bigger roles in “Scream 2” and “Scream 3,” all while never missing an episode as Monica Geller in “Friends.” Filming for each “Scream” film largely took place in between seasons of “Friends” so it wasn’t as big of a deal, but it still set Cox apart as the only “Friends” actor to be a central part of two major pop culture phenomena at the same time.
Another sitcom actor with a uniquely busy schedule was Alison Brie, who starred as an important recurring character throughout “Mad Men” (beginning in 2007) and as a main lead on the sitcom “Community” starting in 2009. “‘Community’ came up very quick,” she explained in a 2009 interview. “So quickly that I think we didn’t even have time to kind of run it by the folks over at ‘Mad Men.’ I don’t think that went over too well.”
Thankfully both the crews at “Community” and “Mad Men” were cool overall with her busy schedule, and Brie was allowed to play both Trudy Campbell and Annie Edison as much as the scripts required. Brie even followed in Cox’s footsteps by starring in a “Scream” film in 2011, all while balancing those two shows. Brie’s “Scream” character didn’t have as much prominence in the story as Cox’s character, but the role did contribute to that feeling in the early 2010s that Brie was everywhere. To those of us who loved “Mad Men” and “Community” and the “Scream” franchise, Alison Brie in 2011 seemed on top of the world.
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