Megan Fox’s early career can only be described as very Transformers-heavy. She and director Michael Bay famously (and publicly) exchanged insults, and Steven Spielberg sided with Bay, and things grew very contentious before, eventually, she and Bay put the past behind them to work on those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flicks. Before all that happened, Fox spoke out during a 2009 interview with Jimmy Kimmel to promote Transformers: Rise of the Fallen. Over a decade later, that clip went viral, given that Fox relayed how Bay had sexualized her at age 15 (by having her dance under a waterfall, while wearing a bikini and heels on the set of 2004’s Bad Boys II). The interview clip in question didn’t go over well at the time, although the perception back then was that the incident was somehow “funny,” as observed by Kimmel.
At the time, Fox told her waterfall story while adding, “I was in 10th grade, so that’s a sort of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.” In response, Kimmel said, “Well, that’s really a microcosm of how all our minds work, but some of us have the decency to repress those thoughts and pretend that they don’t exist.” In the harsher light of 2020, people started to realize that Fox endured some hellish vibes during the resurfaced interview and overall in her career, and the clip went viral.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f59bSovKiMg
Well, Fox has now reflected upon that interview while speaking with The Washington Post. She’s now calling that Kimmel interview “a microcosm of my whole life and whole interaction with Hollywood.” She also declared, “It was just very dark.” Here’s an extended version of her quote:
“That was a microcosm of my whole life and whole interaction with Hollywood. It was just very dark. I was so lost and trying to understand, like, how am I supposed to feel value or find purpose in this horrendous, patriarchal, misogynistic hell that was Hollywood at the time?”
Fox previously (in 2018) discussed her own reluctance to speak out during the #MeToo movement, and her take was a sobering one. “I didn’t speak out for many reasons,” she declared at the time. “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.”
As a result, it’s 2021, and Megan Fox is finally starting to really come forward with her story. People are listening.
(Via Washington Post)