Megan Fox Denies Being Sexually ‘Assaulted or Preyed Upon’ by Directors

“Transformers” star Megan Fox has been relatively quiet for the past decade. She recently had a lot to say, though, in regards to audition she had with film director Michael Bay as a teenager.

After a recent split with Brian Austin Green, her husband since 2010, the actress has been spotted with rapper Machine Gun Kelly, whose music video she appeared in back in May. These events have propelled the star back into the spotlight, and with that return comes a resurgence of a controversial interview.

An interview that the 34-year-old actress did with Jimmy Kimmel back in 2009 recently resurfaced in which she tells Kimmel how she had been sexualized in Hollywood as a teen. Kimmel’s response was to make a sexual joke to Fox.

In the interview, which was shared by now private Twitter user @reservoird0gs, Fox reflected on her first time working for director Michael Bay when she was 15 years old. Bay wanted to include Fox as an extra in the 2003 film “Bad Boys II” in a club scene, but since she was a minor and could not legally hold a drink or sit at a bar, Bay came up with something else.

The “something else” featured young Fox in six-inch heels, a stars and stripes bikini, and a red cowboy hat dancing under a waterfall. “His solution to that problem was to then have me dancing underneath a waterfall getting soaking wet. At 15, I was in 10th grade,” she said. “That’s sort of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.”

In response, Kimmel told her, “Well, that’s really a microcosm of how all our minds work. Some of us have the decency to repress those thoughts and pretend that they don’t exist.”

After the clip resurfaced 11 years later, many were shocked that Kimmel would respond in such a way that supports and normalizes the sexualization of minors.

Jimmy Kimmel really said that all men think about underaged girls in bikinis, and the audience laughed when Megan Fox retold what was probably a very traumatic experience for her… and y’all wonder why women don’t come forward after being sexually abused. https://t.co/1blrdifr9B

— kristen barry (@kmbarry27) June 21, 2020

Fox went on to work with Bay for two other films, but their relationship took a turn for the worse when the actress described working for the director as like working for Adolf Hitler during an interview in 2009 with Wonderland.

She was then fired from the production of “Transformers 3” after the film crew slammed Fox in an open letter calling her “trailer trash.” Fox was, for the most part, blacklisted by other directors after the letter, only appearing in “Jennifer’s Body” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” for the next 10 years.

In response to the outrage against both Kimmel and Bay, Fox responded on social media, writing in a lengthy post, “But when it comes to my direct experiences with Michael [Bay], and Steven [Spielberg] for that matter, I was never assaulted or preyed upon in what I felt was a sexual manner.” She did, however, describe some of what she’s faced in the industry as “genuinely harrowing experiences.”

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A post shared by Megan Fox (@meganfox) on Jun 22, 2020 at 6:15pm PDT

Throughout her entire career, Fox has been overtly sexualized. An online poll back in 2008 deemed her the sexiest woman in the world. “Megan Fox is the deserving winner of this year’s FHM title. She’s young, she’s hot, she’s a rising star and her sex appeal has definitely transformed this year’s list. She’s got a great future ahead of her,” said FHM Online U.S. Editor JR Futrell.

That “future” would be a hyper-sexualization of the star, from her car-washing scene in “Transformers” to the 64-second lesbian make-out scene in “Jennifer’s Body” that was geared towards teens.

Twitter users pointed out that the reaction to Fox’s story with Bay may have been a reason she remained quiet during the #MeToo movement.

megan fox also said she didnt feel like she could come out about her assault during MeToo bc she wasn’t supported when she spoke about Michael Bay doing this to her!!!! she said she didn’t want to take away from the other women!!!! fuck hollywood https://t.co/JwUTDDTQQv

— corgan 🌤 (@lameinfluence) June 21, 2020

During a 2018 interview with The New York Times, Fox shared that she’d decided against sharing her stories as part of the #MeToo movement. The star felt that she would not be well received by people, especially mainstream feminists, if she came forward with her experiences because of how she had been portrayed in films.

“I don’t want to say this about myself, but let’s say that I was ahead of my time and so people weren’t able to understand. Instead, I was rejected because of qualities that are now being praised in other women coming forward. And because of my experience, I feel it’s likely that I will always be just out of the collective understanding. I don’t know if there will ever be a time where I’m considered normal or relatable or likable,” the actress said.

She continued, “I just didn’t think based on how I’d been received by people, and by feminists, that I would be a sympathetic victim. And I thought if ever there were a time where the world would agree that it’s appropriate to victim-shame someone, it would be when I come forward with my story.”

After years of being sexualized, assumed to be easy or unintelligent because of the way the media portrayed her, it is understandable why Fox would feel ostracized by a movement that didn’t exist on a large scale when she needed it.