Footage of Megan Fox talking about an audition with Michael Bay to be an extra on ‘Bad Boys II’ has resurfaced online, prompting public outcry over what many deemed to be inappropriate or sexualised treatment of the teenaged actress at the time.
In a 2009 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Fox recalls Bay approving her in a stars-and-stripes bikini, a red cowboy hat and six inch heels when she was only 15 years old, as an extra in ‘Bad Boys II’.
“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. I’m 15, I was in 10th grade. That’s sort of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works,” said Fox.
Kimmel, who is also under fire for his comments during the interview, responded: “Well, that’s really a microcosm of how all our minds works.”
'I was never assaulted,' clarifies Fox
However, Fox has now issued a statement saying that she didn’t feel preyed upon by ‘Transformers’ director Bay or executive producer Steven Spielberg.
“I do feel the 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,” wrote Fox on Instagram.
“I was around 15 or 16 years old when I was an extra in ‘Bad Boys II’ … It’s important to note however that when I auditioned for Transformers I was 19 or 20,” said the actress, clarifying that she 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.”
Fox blasts misogynistic industry
Fox said that she had experienced much worse treatment in “a ruthlessly misogynistic” industry over the years.
“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,” wrote Fox.
“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 brain. 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,” she added.
Fox was replaced in the ‘Transformers’ franchise after filming two instalments as she made comments about how difficult Bay was to work with, comparing him to Hitler. She worked with Bay again in 2014 for ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’.