The producer who nearly ruined Michael J Fox’s career before it even started: “I didn’t want him”
There are many reasons to love Back to the Future, like the music, the special effects, the iconic lines, Christopher Lloyd having a mental breakdown every five minutes, but if you’re a fan of the franchise, then you’re also a fan of Michael J Fox.
As the dim-witted, but kind-hearted Marty McFly, Fox is the beating heart of the series. He’s the one who invented rock ‘n’ roll, rode a hoverboard, and almost got off with his own mother. OK, maybe we should leave that last one out of his list of achievements.
At the same time he was making the first Back to the Future, Fox was also working on a wildly successful TV show, cast as Alex P Keaton on the NBC sitcom Family Ties. A conservative young man looking to take full advantage of Ronald Reagan’s new America, Alex is in constant conflict with his free-wheeling parents, Elyse, played by Meredith Baxter, and Steven, played by Michael Gross.
It ran for seven seasons, received a feature-length special, and won five Emmy awards, so it’s fair to say that, without Family Ties, Fox would not have become the same beloved star he is today. That’s important to remember when you consider that he almost never made it onto the show. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly in 2025, the star remembered filming the pilot for the series, happy with how the shoot went, but not everyone shared his enthusiasm.
“When we had a pickup order for the first season, Brandon Tartikoff wanted to fire me,” Fox recalled, “[Tartikoff] said, ‘I love the show, you’ve just got to get rid of the kid. I can’t see that face on a lunchbox'”.
Brandon Tartikoff was a legendary figure in television history who oversaw the creation of some of NBC’s biggest ever series, such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Knight Rider, Miami Vice, The Cosby Show, Alf, the list goes on and on, and he was also involved in the production of Punky Brewster and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He wasn’t the only high-profile figure who didn’t back Fox, as in that same EW article, Family Ties co-creator Gary David Goldberg is quoted as saying, “When we cast Michael Fox, I didn’t want him”.
Luckily for Fox, he never had trouble believing in himself. Both Tartikoff and Goldberg were ignored, and he was allowed to continue playing Alex, scooping up the ‘Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series’ Emmy three years in a row. He also won a Golden Globe for ‘Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series’, and on a personal level, this is also where Fox met Tracy Pollan, the actor who played Alex’s girlfriend and would become Fox’s real-life wife.
He might have proven everything he needed to prove on screen, but Fox still wanted to stick it to his doubters.
“Years later, when Back to the Future hit and Family Ties was the number two show on TV, I made Brandon a lunchbox with my picture on it,” he revealed, “I wrote, ‘This is for you to put your crow in. Love, me'”.
