Fans of “The Boys” may have wondered why Madelyn Stillwell, the scheming Vought VP who forges a dangerous, intimate alliance with Homelander in season 1, seemed so familiar. The reason is that there’s a very good chance they’ve seen the actress Elizabeth Shue in a previous film or movie. Shue isn’t quite a household name, but her number of minor roles stretches back all the way to the ’80s, when she was starring in Burger King ads alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar.
One of her biggest roles was as Marty’s girlfriend Jennifer in the “Back to the Future” trilogy, although she didn’t play Jennifer for all of it. The first film had Claudia Wells in the role; it makes for a jarring experience when binge-watching the movies today, as the second movie starts off with a recreation of the first film’s final scene, except we’re watching a different version of Jennifer with no explanation given.
So, what’s up with the cast change? Well, it’s pretty tragic: Claudia Wells’ mother was dying of breast cancer, so the actress no longer had the time nor the will to film the sequel. “I just didn’t have it in me to do anything but deal with the stress and the emotions that were going on as a result of my mom being in the process of dying,” Wells explained in a 2015 interview. “I just wasn’t in a place to be able to think about my career or the film or anything other than what I was doing with my own life.”
How the role changed for Elizabeth Shue
It’s not clear how much the change in actresses affected this creative choice, but Jennifer becomes slightly more fleshed out as a character in the second movie. Whereas Jennifer in the original film was straight-up ignored for most of the second and third acts, “Part II” makes her feel like a real person, even if it doesn’t do much else. Jennifer isn’t treated that well by Doc and Marty — at one point Doc sedates her and they leave her unconscious body in an alley, which is insane — but she’s still given a little more agency than Wells’ version of the character ever received.
A lot of this seemed to be result of “Part II” being beholden to the ending of the first film, where they show Jennifer getting into the DeLorean with them as they travel back to the future. That closing scene was written largely as a joke, with no real intention of making a sequel. As co-writer Bob Gale explained in a 2015 interview, “When it came time for us to write the second one and figure what we were going to do — ‘What’re we going to do with Jennifer?’ She’s not a very well developed character and the story is not about her, and we actually ended up having to have her unconscious for most of ‘Back to the Future II.'”
And how did Wells feel about Elizabeth Shue taking over the role? “When I found out she was cast, I was actually very flattered and honored because I think she’s an amazing actress,” Wells said. “And funny enough, [the lead role in] ‘Adventures in Babysitting’ was between her, me and Phoebe Cates. I have nothing but respect and praise for her.”
