After a late-night clip from 2009 resurfaced and gained steam on social media over the weekend, where Megan Fox shared a story about being sexualized as a teenager for her role in Michael Bay’s Bad Boys II, the actress released a statement to clarify that she was never “assaulted or preyed upon in what I felt was a sexual manner.†In an Instagram post on June 22, Fox said that she was “around 15 or 16 years old†when she was an extra in the film, where Bay had her dance under a waterfall during a club scene. Several years later, when Fox auditioned for Bay’s Transformers, she said that the audition was at a studio parking lot with “several†other crew members and employees present. Although Fox was asked to provocatively hold tools and pose around Bay’s sports car, she “at no point†was asked to undress or do “anything†similar. “While I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support, I do feel I 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,†she wrote. “At least not where it’s currently being projected.â€
Fox reiterated her thanks for the support she’s received since the Jimmy Kimmel Live! clip resurfaced, and insisted that Bay’s behavior shouldn’t be equated to the more serious — or more criminal — experiences that women face in Hollywood. “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,†she wrote. “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 heart.†As for the names that “deserve†to be met with a reckoning, Fox doesn’t specify.