What would North by Northwest’s famous crop-dusting scene look like if Michael Bay had directed it? Perhaps it would have resembled Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s harrowing first meeting with Michael Bay, the man who would eventually cast her to replace Megan Fox in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The two first met on the set of a 2009 Victoria’s Secret commercial Bay was directing, when Huntington-Whiteley showed up in what she described to GQ as “a bra and underwear and a big, billowing, black, floor-length cape and high heels.â€
“I remember the first thing Michael said to me – before he even introduced himself or asked me my name — was ‘Can you walk?’ And I looked at him like, ‘What is this man talking about? Yeah, of course I can walk.’ And then he proceeded to tell them to get me in the car, and then I was driven — I mean, honestly, I want to say it was about half a mile out in the desert. I kept thinking, ‘This is a joke, right?’ And the car dumped me in the middle of the desert.â€
“And he says, ‘OK, when we shout action, you’re going to walk!’ and I assumed I would be doing this in several stages. They yelled action, and the car sped off back to set, and I just was like, ‘Well, what am I supposed to do?’ So I walked all the way back to where the camera was standing, which took me — I would say a good 10, 12 minutes, and it was a proper runway stomp — on salt flats; it was like 100 degrees, felt like fire. I remember walking back and being not impressed by the whole thing. I was pretty pissed off afterwards; I just looked at Michael, and he goes, ‘I guess you can walk, then.’â€
Tyra Banks just got so many ideas for the season premiere of Top Model.
The Oral History of Michael Bay: Bonus Outtake #1 — Rosie’s Story [GQ]