‘Back to the Future’: Why Biff Actor Thomas F. Wilson Refuses to Call Fans ‘Butthead’
What To Know
- Thomas F. Wilson, who played Biff in Back to the Future, stopped calling fans “butthead.”
- Wilson explained on the Inside of You podcast that he now prefers to interact with fans as himself.
- He shared that constantly being asked to play his character made him feel less like a person and more like a collectible.
Back to the Future star Thomas F. Wilson recently opened up about why he refuses to call fans “butthead” 40 years after the 1985 film premiered.
In a January appearance on the Inside of You podcast, hosted by Michael Rosenbaum, Wilson, 66, confessed that he had changed his approach when interacting with fans. The actor who played Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future trilogy explained that he stopped saying his character’s catchphrase in 2010, around the 25th anniversary of the first film.
“This year will be the 40th anniversary … and for 25 years, I really tried to make everybody happy. Everybody who came up to me,” Wilson shared. “After 25 years, I said, ‘You know, I think I’ve been generous with this, but after 25 years, I’m not gonna knock anyone on the head, and I’m not gonna call anyone ‘butthead’ anymore.'”
Instead, Wilson said he interacts with strangers who recognize him from Back to the Future as himself.
“I’m gonna have a season of my life where I just, if you wanna take a picture of me, I’m not beating you up,” the actor, who is also known for voicing villains like Flats the Flounder in SpongeBob SquarePants, explained on the podcast episode. “We just both look nice, and we smile. And those kinds of things. But yes, everyone wants me to call them a ‘butthead,’ everyone wants me to knock them on the head, everyone wants me to push their nephew around.”
Wilson told Rosenbaum that “you become not a person,” as an actor, if you’re too closely associated with a character.
“You become the end of a treasure hunt. ‘If only I have you sign this, say this, record this, videotape this, whatever, then I’ll have another little diamond in my treasure chest,'” he said. “And I would rather just meet people as a person.”
In addition to Wilson, Back to the Future starred Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, Christopher Lloyd as Dr. Emmett Brown, Lea Thompson as Lorraine Baines, Crispin Glover as George McFly, Claudia Wells as Jennifer Parker, and more.
Back to the Future, streaming on Philo