Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd brought down the house at New York Comic Con on Saturday, where they reminisced about their partnership in the Back to the Future trilogy.
The pair chatted about how Fox came to replace Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly in the 1985 blockbuster — after weeks of filming with Stoltz as the lead.
“I felt that I barely made it through the [first] six weeks, and now I was gonna have to do it again?!” Lloyd recalled thinking.
Fox — who at the time was doing double-duty as the star of Family Ties — immediately made an impact, continued Lloyd. “The chemistry was there from the first scene we had…It hasn’t gone away, by the way,” he noted.
Fox said all he had to do was “react” to the “brilliant” Lloyd playing the eccentric Dr. Emmett Brown. He added, “It was a thrill. Anytime I got to work with him, I knew it was gonna be a good day.”
Fox retired from acting in 2020 because of his Parkinson’s diagnosis. He remained inspiring, even as he at times struggled with the spasms from the disease, for which he’s raised $800 million through his eponymous foundation.
Fox’s sense of humor was very much intact: At one point, a source tells ABC Audio that a tic caused Fox to drop his gum out of his mouth onto the couch. Immediately, he scooped it up and popped it back in. “You saw it here first, folks: The moment I just got COVID,” he joked.
Fox later said, “I’ve said to people [Parkinson’s] is a gift, and they say, ‘You’re nuts.’ …But it’s a gift, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
The pair also signed autographs for hundreds of fans, who Fox explained “gave me my whole life.”
Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.