Megan Fox clarifies some stories she told about Michael Bay back in 2009
For years, Megan Fox told stories about Michael Bay. Bay has always been known as a pig who treats all women as objects, whether it’s in real life or as a filmmaker. Fox’s stories about Bay were next level though – the one story which ALWAYS sticks in my mind is the one about her audition for Transformers, where Megan said Bay told her to come to his house and wash his Ferrari in a bikini while he filmed her. Yeah. I remember that story even eleven years after she told it, that’s how bad it is. In 2009, Megan went through a phase where she just told horrifying story after horrifying story about Bay, and it looks like people are still rediscovering those stories. This clip went viral over the weekend:
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
— liz w 🧸 (@reservoird0gs) June 21, 2020
This was from that 2009 period of Megan’s IDGAF interviews, and she was eventually fired from the Transformers franchise and blackballed within the industry for several years after this promotional tour (Steven Spielberg was said to personally order Bay to fire Fox). Post-Me Too, post-Time’s Up, there has been a conversation about whether Megan Fox’s situation deserves another look, and whether she was trying to tell her own Me Too stories publicly, only to see her career destroyed as powerful men lined up against her. I believe that’s a conversation worth having, and Megan has said as much too, that she feels like she was trying to force those conversations without having backup, or having the language necessary to really talk about what happened to her. Anyway, after that clip went viral this weekend, Megan issued a statement:
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. 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…
I 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 Ferrari’s 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. 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. 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. But when it comes to my direct experiences with Michael, and Steven for that matter, I was never assaulted or preyed upon in what I felt was a sexual manner.
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.
Okay, so now she’s saying she didn’t go to Bay’s house and wash his Ferrari in a bikini while he filmed her? She’s saying the audition was actually at the studio and that other people were around while she fiddled with a wrench? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the audition process was still stupid and sexist, but the devil is in the details and it feels like Megan did misrepresent some details back in 2009 for the sake of “telling a good story on a chat show.” Which is also fine – every actor has some exaggerated story they tell for chat shows. But it feels like Megan feels like she can’t admit she misrepresented some things AND she’s also a victim of sexism within the industry. Both can be true and both things are true in Megan’s case.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
