Megan Fox has experienced a unique career trajectory since her big-screen breakout role in Transformers quickly followed the feminist cult horror classic, Jennifer’s Body. The two projects not only established the actress immediately as a rising force but one to be contended with in the years to come. But one slip-up in a public interview managed to nearly cost Fox not only her reputation but also her entire career in Hollywood even before it could fully take off.

Megan Fox Addresses Allegations Against Michael Bay

The lord of action, Michael Bay, has directed every high-octane adrenaline-pumping action movie which has more cars flipping in the air and crashing into the ground than the entire roster of Fast & Furious films combined. As such, it was no surprise that the first-ever live-action movie adaptation of the infamous Hasbro toy line, Transformers, would find a director in him. Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox then filled up the roster as perfectly cast actors for their respective roles. But this is where it all starts getting convoluted.

Rumors started to float around regarding a certain suspiciously missing audition tape from when Megan Fox had screen tested for her Transformers project. The reports originated from The Guardian reporter, Jason Solomons, who made a claim in 2009: “She told me she went to director Michael Bay’s house to audition and he made her wash his Ferrari while he filmed her. She said she didn’t know what had happened to that footage.” In a Jimmy Kimmel Live! interview that same year, Fox revealed that she was asked to “be hot,” or “just be sexy,” by the Transformers director on set.

Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf in Transformers

The online outcry and repercussions that had resulted from the allegations convinced the actor to take to social media, and for years, they were refuted vehemently by Fox and supported with picture proof from the audition supplied and reposted by Bay himself. In 2022, she wrote on Instagram,
“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. I did ‘work’ (me pretending to know how to hold a wrench) on one of Michael’s [Ferraris] during one of the audition scenes.

It was at the Platinum Dunes studio parking lot, there were several other crew members and employees present and I was at no point undressed or anything similar. When it comes to my direct experiences with Michael, and Steven for that matter, I was never assaulted or preyed upon in what I felt was a sexual manner.”
The Guardian report had been published almost a decade before the #MeToo movement and Megan Fox later claimed that although the interpretation of her opinion on Michael Bay got “lost in the retelling of events,”  there were definitely other people in positions of power who had exploited her, who she did not wish to name 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” – because of her newfound fame and exposure after Jennifer’s Body.

Megan Fox’s Controversial Interview On Michael Bay

Megan Fox with director Michael Bay

The allegations against Michael Bay were quick to catch steam, especially since Megan Fox had delivered a scandalous interview for Wonderland in 2009 and name-dropped Michael Bay, Napoleon, and Hitler in the same sentence, stringing them together in terms of personality.

“He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous madman reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work with […] He’s vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set he’s a tyrant. Shia and I almost die when we make a Transformers movie. He has you do some really insane things that insurance would never let you do.”

Shortly after the incident, Steven Spielberg who served as a producer on Transformers personally asked Michael Bay to drop the actress. Bay, however, chose not to pay heed and has maintained a great working relationship with Fox through the years and still continues to support her, claiming “I’m proud to have worked with her and still am planning on working with her.”

Transformers is available for streaming on HBO Max.

Source: The Things