This popular 1980s Michael J. Fox sitcom created issues for Back to the Future

40 years later, Back to the Future remains the biggest film of Michael J. Fox’s career. It’s the blockbuster time travel film that made him a household name, a film so successful that it spawned two sequels and countless sci-fi rip-offs. And those consequences It wasn’t bad either. Sure, they gave Marty a weird personality about him hating being called a chicken, but they also stayed away from all the incest stuff; I would consider them a win overall.

But even though Back to the Future seems like a vital part of Fox’s legacy, he almost never starred in it. At the time he was busy filming the sitcom “Family Ties,” a show in which Fox played the young Republican teenager Alex who constantly argued with his liberal, ex-hippie parents. (It was the most produced 1980s sitcom ever.) The show ran for seven seasons, all of which were more than 20 episodes. This was the norm for TV shows in the pre-streaming era, but that didn’t diminish the heavy workload. The sheer length of each season of “Family Ties” made it difficult for Fox to make time for anything else.

In a 2010 interviewthe film’s producer and co-writer Bob Gale explained how the shooting schedule had to revolve around Fox’s day job on “Family Ties”:

“Once Michael J. Fox came on board, the hardest thing was the schedule. … Michael was working on Family Ties at nine in the morning. He would work there until five or six. He would go to Universal, and we would work with him until one or two in the morning. So, shooting a movie under those conditions was difficult.”

Filming the two sequels was a little easier for Michael J. Fox, especially the third one as all filming took place after NBC’s Family Ties had finished. By the time the trilogy ended, Fox had left the world of television for the world of films, which were less time-consuming and more respected by critics.

Courteney Cox, who played Fox’s love interest, Lauren, on Family Ties for a season, achieved a similar feat a decade later. In the nineties she The hit horror movie “Scream” was filmed. She returned for larger roles in “Scream 2” and “Scream 3,” all without missing an episode like Monica Geller in “Friends.” Pretty much every “Scream” movie was filmed between seasons of “Friends,” so it wasn’t a big deal, but it still marks Cox as the only “Friends” actor to be a key part of two major pop culture phenomena at the same time.

Another sitcom actress with a uniquely busy schedule was Alison Brie, who starred as an important recurring character throughout Mad Men (beginning in 2007) and as the main lead on the sitcom Community starting in 2009. ‘Community’ came along very quickly. He explained in a 2009 interview. “So quickly that I think we didn’t even have time to have the people at Mad Men manage it.” “I don’t think it went very well.”

Fortunately for the “Community” and “Mad Men” crews. Overall she was great with her busy scheduleand Brie was allowed to play both Trudy Campbell and Annie Edison as often as the scripts required. Brie even followed in Cox’s footsteps by starring in “Scream” in 2011, balancing the two shows. Brie’s character in “Scream” didn’t have as much importance to the story as Cox’s, but the role helped reinforce that feeling in early 2010 that Brie was everywhere. For those of us who loved the “Mad Men”, “Community” series and the “Scream” franchise, in 2011 Alison Brie seemed on top of the world.