A 2009 Megan Fox interview with Jimmy Kimmel and story about her Transformers audition resurfaced this week and sparked widespread concern that Fox was preyed upon by director Michael Bay.
In the Jimmy Kimmel interview, a then 23-year-old Fox discussed her Bad Boys II cameo, saying, “We’re shooting this club scene and they brought me in and I was wearing a stars and stripes bikini and a red cowboy hat and like six-inch heels…and he [Bay] approved it and they said, ‘You know, Michael, she’s 15 so you can’t sit her at the bar, and she can’t have a drink in her hands.’ So his solution to that problem was to then have me dancing underneath a waterfall getting soaking wet. At 15, I was in 10th grade. So that’s kind of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.”
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clip from 2009 where megan fox tells a story about michael bay sexualising her as a 15 y/othe crowd laughs, and kimmel makes gross jokesteen 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
As that went viral, comments about Fox’s audition for Transformers also resurfaced from Jason Solomon’s piece for The Guardian. He wrote in the 2009 piece: “Talking to Megan Fox who was in town for the Transformers 2 premiere, I found her more forthright and intelligent than her performance in the mega-hit would suggest. The role demands that she drapes herself over motorbikes and runs around in a vest. How did she get the part which has made her what lads’ mags call the ‘hottest girl on the planet’. She told me she went to director Michael Bay’s house to audition and he made her wash his Ferrari while he filmed her. She said she didn’t know what had happened to that footage. When I put it to Bay himself, he looked suitably abashed. ‘Er, I don’t know where it is either.'”
Fox responded to people’s concerns about both stories on her Instagram last night, saying, “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 [Spielberg] for that matter, I was never assaulted or preyed upon in what I felt was a sexual manner.”
Here, her full 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 is sister 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 impossible to note however that when I auditioned for Transformers I was 19 or 20.I did ‘work’ (me pretending 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 yourself to support, uplift, and bring comfort to those who have been harmed by a violent and toxic societal paradigm.
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Fox spoke about her experience working with Bay in 2011, comparing him to Napoleon and Hilter during an interview with Wonderland magazine because of the environment he created on set. “God, I really wish I could go loose on this one. He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he’s not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he’s so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it’s endearing to watch him. He’s vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set he’s a tyrant. Shia and I almost die when we make a Transformers movie. He has you do some really insane things that insurance would never let you do.”
Источник: www.elle.com
