A 2009 Jimmy Kimmel interview with Megan Fox has gone viral on Twitter. This comes after a clip where Megan talks about being an extra on the Michael Bay movie Bad Boys II resurfaced.
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 isnβt
"I was wearing a stars and stripes bikini and a red cowboy hat and six-inch heels, and he approved it," Megan began. "They said, you know, Michael, sheβs 15, so you canβt sit her at the bar and she canβt have a drink in her hands."
"So his solution to that problem was to then have me dancing underneath the waterfall, getting soaking wet," she continued. At this point, the audience laughed and clapped.
"At 15, I was in 10th grade," she reiterated. "Thatβs sort of a microcosm of how Bayβs mind works."
Jimmy responds by saying, "Yeah, well, thatβs really a microcosm of how all our minds work β but some of us have the decency to repress those thoughts and pretend that they donβt exist," as the audience continued to laugh and clap.
For context, later that year, Megan was fired from the Transformers series and, as a result, her career did not continue at the pace many previously expected. The movie series was a breakout role for Megan, whose audition involved pretending to work on Michael Bay's car as he filmed it. She was fired after she called Bay "a nightmare to work for" and compared him to Hitler. Bay claimed that her firing was at the behest of Steven Spielberg, who denies the claim.
In the wake of her departure from Transformers, some crew members published an open letter on Bay's website, where they accused Fox of "blabbing her trash mouth" and compared her to "trailer trash" and a "porn star."
Later, Megan's co-star Shia LaBeouf claimed that her firing was because βMegan developed this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women."
As Megan's name began trending on Twitter, many took the opportunity to look back on her career and voice their support for her:
Everybody failed Megan. It makes me so angry because she always has been outspoken about it and something should have been done but now feels like she canβt and itβs all so fucked. https://t.co/3DYIYNs7WO
hollywood owes megan fox a big fucking apology. the fucking misogyny. disguisting.
Since Michael Bay is trending for his shitty, sexist behavior, I would just like to remind everyone that Megan Fox is an extremely underrated comic actress and her line delivery in JENNIFER'S BODY is close to god-level.
her reaction is heartbreaking. this is thee megan fox having to pretend like being sexualised at 15 by a grown man was normal because the talk show host and audience find it amusing. on national tv. think about what women go through on a day to day in private https://t.co/prjNRmjHVM
UPDATE: Megan Fox just responded to the controversy β and seemingly defended Michael Bay β in a statement posted to her Instagram.
BuzzFeed has reached out to Michael Bay for comment.