Sophia Michaels
Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd reunited during a Back to the Future panel at Comic Con in New York on Saturday. The pair — who starred in the three-film franchise — discussed their longtime friendship and working together, as AV Club reports. The pair also recently reunited in 2020 alongside other castmates for Josh Gad’s YouTube series.
During the panel on Saturday, they shared that they first met on set in early 1985 when Fox was brought in several weeks after filming to replace Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly. McFly is the teenager central to the franchise who teams up with Lloyd’s Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown and they time travel via a DeLorean time machine in the science fiction comedy.
“I didn’t know Michael other than hearing about him,” Lloyd said. “And I felt that I had barely made it through the six weeks, and now I was going to have to do it again?” When Fox emerged from the DeLorean to meet his new costar for the first time, Lloyd said, “There was immediate chemistry, as they say.”
Fox added he was impressed with Lloyd’s exposition. “No one wants to do exposition because it’s boring…The freaking thing is you retain it all, because he’s just so good at it, and he’s brilliantly entertaining,” he said. “I would be like, ‘I gotta watch my ass, because this guy will blow me off the screen.’”
Both stars praised the U.K. productions of Back to the Future: The Musical, which is expected to hit Broadway in 2023. “They could have fallen into a trap imitating us,” Fox said. “But they made the characters fully realized on their own. I’m gonna go when I come to New York.”
Fox also discussed his work with the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which he launched after disclosing his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in 1991 at age 29.
“Parkinson’s is the gift that keeps on taking — but it’s a gift, and I wouldn’t change it for anything,” he said. “People like Chris have been there a lot for me, and so many of you have. It’s not about what I have, it’s about what I’ve been given — the voice to get this done, and help people out.”
