Fans are rushing to Megan Fox’s defense after a 2009 interview with Jimmy Kimmel resurfaced on Twitter — and now many are seeing the actress and her treatment in the public eye in a new light.
In the 2009 interview, Megan, now 34, shared a disturbing story about being sexualized in a Michael Bay film when she was just 15 — but rather than sympathizing or seeming troubled by the story, Jimmy, now 52, cracks an inappropriate joke about her teenage sexuality.
Commenters have called the clip ‘disgusting’ and ‘terrible,’ with one making a convincing case for how unfairly Megan was treated in Hollywood in her 20s.
Twitter user Liz W shared the clip, which has been viewed over six million times.
Re-examined: In a 2009 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Megan shared how she was cast to dance in a bikini under a waterfall at age 15 — and she is clearly put off by the memory
‘Megan Fox tells a story about Michael Bay sexualizing 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,’ she wrote.
In the clip, Megan recalled being on the set of Bad Boys II, for which her credit read ‘Stars-and-Stripes Bikini Kid Dancing Under Waterfall.’
‘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,’ she said.
‘And he approved it, and they said, you know, “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,’ she concluded with a straight face.
When the crowd laughed, she reiterated: ‘At 15. I was in tenth grade. So that’s a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.’
Kimmel then responded: ‘Well that’s really a microcosm of how all our minds work.’
Yikes: When she tells the story, though, Kimmel replies with a sexual joke and the audience laughs
Not OK: Viewers are now looking at the interview with horror, pointing out that Megan was trying to share a troubling story and it wasn’t taken seriously
Megan looked uncomfortable, running her hands down her legs and cringing at the audience while Jimmy added that ‘some of us have the decency to suppress those thoughts and pretend that they don’t exist.’
The interview doesn’t appear to have spurred much outrage online at the time, but now Twitter users are expressing their horror at the way Megan’s experience was made light of.
‘His response is even worse what the hell,’ wrote one. And another: ‘WTF were they doing casting a 15 year-old as a bikini-wearing clubber?’
‘I think Fox’s reaction shows a lot,’ said a third. ‘She’s so clearly visibly upset by Kimmel’s reaction but can’t say anything to his awful joke. This is terrible to watch, it’s a kind of abuse in real time. Even a high star celebrity is not immune.’
‘That single nod she did after his “joke” was the exact moment she realized all men are the same and it probably scared the shit out of her to get that response from a tv host with so much power,’ another agreed.
One more chimed in: ‘What an utterly disgusting take by Kimmel. Why is, “I’m so sorry that happened to you”, something that is beyond his imagination to say. Instead he offers, “We all have those thoughts, but we repress them”. God damn, she was 15. Who the Hell is “We”?
And yet another wrote: ‘The way Hollywood and the media treated Megan Fox in general was deeply disgusting.’
