Megan Fox denies being 'preyed upon' by Michael Bay after old interview resurfaces
Megan Fox is denying that Transformers director Michael Bay mistreated her after an old interview from 2009 was resurfaced and went viral. But the 34-year-old actress added that there are “many names that deserve to be going viral in cancel culture right now.”
There have been calls to cancel Bay, 55, as well as Jimmy Kimmel, who conducted the 2009 interview in which Fox described having to dance in a bikini at age 15 for Bay’s Bad Boys II (2003) as the TV host grinned. Fox, who went on to work with Bay in Transformers (2007) and sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) though famously falling out and then making up, addressed it in a lengthy Instagram post on Monday night.
“I know that a discussion has erupted online surrounding some of my experiences in Hollywood and the subsequent mishandling of this information by the media and society in general,” Fox began. “While I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support, I do feel I need to clarify some of the details as they have been lost in the retelling of the events and cast a sinister shadow that doesn’t really, in my opinion, belong. At least not where it’s currently being projected…”
Fox said she “was around 15 or 16 years old when I was an extra in Bad Boys II. There are multiple interviews where I shared the anecdote of being chosen for the scene and the conversations that took place surrounding it. It's important to note however that when I auditioned for Transformers I was 19 or 20. I did ‘work’ (me pretending to know how to hold a wrench) on one of Michael’s Ferraris during one of the audition scenes. It was at the Platinum Dunes studio parking lot, there were several other crew members and employees present and I was at no point undressed or anything similar.”
Fox continued, “So as far as this particular audition story I was not underaged at the time and I was not made to ‘wash’ or work on someone’s cars in a way that was extraneous from the material in the actual script. I hope that whatever opinions are formed around these episodes will at least be seeded in the facts of the events.”
“Please hear me when I thank you for your support,” she added. “But these specific instances were inconsequential in a long and arduous journey along which I have endured some genuinely harrowing experiences in a ruthlessly misogynistic industry. There are many names that deserve to be going viral in cancel culture right now, but they are safely stored in the fragmented recesses of my heart.”
She ended by writing, “But when it comes to my direct experiences with Michael, and Steven [Spielberg] for that matter, I was never assaulted or preyed upon in what I felt was a sexual manner.”
And said, “I’m thankful to all of you who are brave enough to speak out and I’m grateful to all of you who are taking it upon yourselves to support, uplift, and bring comfort to those who have been harmed by a violent and toxic societal paradigm.”
The Fox interview went viral not just her recapping on Jimmy Kimmel Live how at 15 she was brought in as an extra on Bad Boys II for a night club scene. “I was wearing a stars and stripes bikini and a red cowboy hat and, like, six-inch heels,” she recalled. “He approved it and they said, ‘Michael, she’s 15 so you can’t sit her at the bar and she can’t have a drink in her hand.’ So his solution to that problem was to then have me dancing underneath a waterfall getting soaking wet.” She repeated how she was 15 and in 10th grade before saying, “That’s kind of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.”
Instead of calling out the problematic nature of the situation, Kimmel replied, “Well that’s really a microcosm of how all our minds work.” During the interview, the Man Show alum also gave Fox a drawing of himself and the actress “together” in bed in which his caricature was “trying to stick his tongue in Fox’s mouth.”
clip from 2009 where megan fox tells a story about michael bay sexualising her as a 15 y/o
the crowd laughs, and kimmel makes gross jokes
teen girls being preyed on by older men has never been taken seriously and still isn’t pic.twitter.com/t1rF80UTj1— liz w 🧸 (@reservoird0gs) June 21, 2020
Kimmel, who announced last week he’s taking the summer off from his show, has since been torn apart on social media. A clip of the Emmy winner in blackface was resurfaced — and Fox News reportedly obtained audio from a 2013 podcast in which Kimmel, 52, admitted to having used the N-word in 1996 when imitating Snoop Dogg for a Christmas song.
Fox famously had a falling out with Bay before shooting Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the series’s third film. She compared Bay to Hitler and said he’s “a nightmare to work for.” She was fired — Bay later said at EP Spielberg’s request (Spielberg denied it) — and the director’s crew retaliated by writing an open letter calling the actress “dumb as rocks,” “trailer trash” and suggested a job as “porn star.”
Fox and Bay made up after the Dark of the Moon debacle and worked together again for 2014's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and 2016's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, which Bay produced.
In 2018, she talked about them making up during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live, saying, “I was young when a lot of that was happening, and I was really self-righteous in my anger. I thought I was right to speak the way that I spoke. As I got a little older, I understood regardless of whatever my issues were, they should always have remained private. You should never blast someone like that in public.”
Fox has been in the headlines recently for ending her marriage to Brian Austin Green. She met the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum on the set of Hope & Faith when she was 18 and he was 30. They were together on and off ever since, marrying in 2010 and having three sons together.
Amid their split, confirmed in May, she’s now dating Machine Gun Kelly, whom she met on the set of Midnight in the Switchgrass earlier this year.
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