Megan Fox has spoken out in response to claims that she was assaulted or preyed upon during a teenage audition with Michael Bay, saying, “I was never assaulted or preyed upon.”

The Transformers star made the remarks after fan criticism about her supposed treatment.

Fox issued a long explanation on social media after footage of her talking on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2009 about an event from her early career resurfaced.

Fox said she was shot by Bay wearing a bikini and dancing beneath a waterfall when she was 15 years old as a test for a sequence in which Fox appears as an extra in a club scene in the 2003 film Bad Boys II.

Nathan Congleton/NBC

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“I know that a discussion has erupted online surrounding some of my experiences in Hollywood and the subsequent mishandling of this information by the media and society in general.”

“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,” Fox said in an Instagram statement.

Fox says that as a woman in the entertainment industry, Fox has had “genuinely harrowing experiences,” but none of them include Michael Bay.

Fox added, “That’s sort of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.” The video has also resurfaced a rumor that Bay reportedly forced Fox to wash his Ferrari as part of her audition for the Transformers franchise.

The original clip poster “liz w” commented: “Teen girls being preyed on by older men has never been taken seriously and still isn’t.” Much criticism has been thrown at Bay for his apparent sexualisation of Fox. Further controversy over Bay’s treatment of Fox was fueled by a story in the Observer in 2009 that she was ordered to wash Bay’s car as part of her audition for Transformers.

Others questioned whether Spielberg, a Transformers producer, pushed Fox to quit the show when she compared Bay to Adolf Hitler.

After finishing the first two films in the Transformers trilogy, Fox was dismissed after criticizing Bay in a magazine interview, stating “he’s a nightmare to work for” and “he wants to be like Hitler on his sets.” Bay said that the show’s executive producer, Steven Spielberg, demanded that she be fired. When Bay cast her in the 2014 reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, their relationship looked to have been repaired.

Fox emphasized in her statement that she auditioned for Transformers when she was 19 or 20, and that she did not wash Bay’s car. “I did ‘work’ (me pretending to know how to hold a wrench) on one of Michael’s Ferarri’s [sic],” she said. “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.

She continued, “I was not underaged at the time and I was not made to ‘wash’ or work on someone’s cars in a way that was extraneous from the material in the actual script. I hope that whatever opinions are formed around these episodes will at least be seeded in the facts of the events.”

“But 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. There are many names that deserve to going viral in cancel culture right now, but they are safely stored in the fragmented recesses of my heart.”  Fox, 34, thanked the audience for their continued support.

“I’m thankful to all of you who are brave enough to speak out and I’m grateful to all of you who are taking it upon yourselves to support, uplift, and bring comfort to those who have been harmed by a violent and toxic societal paradigm.”

 

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