Megan Fox defends dancing in bikini for Michael Bay aged 15 in resurfaced clip

Actress Megan Fox has said the resurfaced TV interview where she describes being asked to dance in a bikini and heels aged 15 “casts a sinister shadow” on the truth.

The 2009 clip from Jimmy Kimmel Live shows the Transformers actress describing working with director Michael Bay for the first time, where she talks about a scene in Bad Boys II.

Fox says: “I had just turned 15 and I was an extra in Bad Boys II. They were shooting this club scene and they brought me in and I was wearing a stars and stripes bikini and a red cowboy hat and six-inch heels.

“[Bay] approved it and they said ‘Michael, she’s 15 so you can’t sit her at the bar and she can’t have a drink in her hand’, so, his solution to that problem was to then have me dancing underneath a waterfall getting soaking wet.”

The audience then laugh, and Kimmel replies: “Perfectly wholesome.”

Clarifying her age, Fox goes on: “At 15, I was in 10th grade. That’s kind of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.”

Fox has since posted a statement on Instagram saying she felt the need to “clarify some of the details” which had been mishandled by “the media and society” after the resurfaced clip went viral.

Fox had previously spoken about auditioning for the the first Transformers movie, which came out in 2007, by re-enacting a scene from the film on Bay’s own Ferrari in a car park.

She said she was not underage at the time of the audition and was “not made to ‘wash’ or work on someone’s cars in a way that was extraneous from the material in the actual script”.

Fox described these particular experiences as “inconsequential”, adding: “I have endured some genuinely harrowing experiences in a ruthlessly misogynistic industry”.

Twitter user liz w, who shared the 2009 footage, described the video in her post as: “A clip from 2009 where Megan Fox tells a story about Michael Bay sexualising her as a 15 y/o.

“The crowd laughs, and Kimmel makes gross jokes.

“Teen girls being preyed on by older men has never been taken seriously and still isn’t.”

The post, which has been retweeted over 50,000 times, caused the names Megan Fox and Michael Bay to trend on Twitter.

Fox has previously hit out at Bay – who she worked for in both Bad Boys II and the Transformers franchise – describing him as wanting to “be like Hitler on his sets” and “a nightmare to work for” during a 2009 interview with Wonderland magazine.

Following her comments, an open letter appeared on Bay’s website, purporting to be from three anonymous members of the film crew, criticising Fox for unprofessional behaviour on set.

The letter credited Bay with “granting her the starring role in Transformers” and so making her “one of the most googled and oogled women on earth”.

It went on to describe her as “the queen of talking trailer trash” and then compared her to a “porn star”, calling her “thankless, classless and graceless”.

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After appearing in the first two Transformers films, Fox was replaced by British model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in the third movie, which was filmed in 2011.

Fox has gone on to play April O’Neil in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, and star in the TV series New Girl.

She has most recently appeared in a music video for her boyfriend, American rapper Machine Gun Kelly.

Sky News has contacted Megan Fox, Michael Bay and Jimmy Kimmel for comment.

(c) Sky News 2020: Megan Fox defends dancing in bikini for Michael Bay aged 15 in resurfaced clip