Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd reunited for a Back To The Future panel at Comic Con tonight
Embracing frequently, Fox and Lloyd discussed their first meetings, the Back To The Future musical, and their decades-long appreciation for each other
During a warm, emotionally fulfilling conversation at New York Comic Con on Saturday, Back To The Future stars Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox hilariously reflected on their decades-long friendship and career together. Fielding questions from the audience—and embracing frequently throughout the reunion session—the two spoke happily about their time together on the films and their friendship since, dating back to the moment Lloyd first met Fox, who was brought in to replace Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly after several weeks of filming on the movie’s set in early 1985.
“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?” But then, as he literally emerged from the franchise’s iconic DeLorean to meet his new co-star, Lloyd says, “There was immediate chemistry, as they say.”
Fox, meanwhile, praised his co-star as “the king of 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… I would be like, ‘I gotta watch my ass, because this guy will blow me off the screen.’”
The duo also turned their praise outward, expressing their appreciation for the recent Back To The Future: The Musical. “They could have fallen into a trap imitating us,” Fox noted, “But they made the characters fully realized on their own. I’m gonna go when I come to New York.”
Other topics included the two men’s various talents—trained Shakespearian Lloyd busted out a little Richard III, while Fox talked about accurately mimicking the fingerings for Chuck Berry’s iconic “Johnny B. Goode”—and what, if anything, they’d ever stolen from the films’ sets. (Lloyd confessed to a Western-themed shirt lifted from Back To The Future Part III that his wife apparently doesn’t allow him to wear.) Fox also discussed his work with the Michael J. Fox Foundation—now, per Fox, the biggest Parkinson’s disease foundation in the world—and the ways both fans and friends have inspired his efforts to raise funds and awareness centered on the disease. Fox: “Parkinson’s is the gift that keeps on taking—but it’s a gift, and I wouldn’t change it for anything…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.”
The session ended with Lloyd and Fox both being asked to give a bit of advice to the audience—both, aptly, choosing movie quotes. Fox went with his favorite film, Dr. Stranglove (“You can’t fight in here, this is the war room!”) while Lloyd hit a little closer to home: “It was said once in a movie—the future is what you make it.” (The crowd, of course, went completely wild.)