It’s no secret that Jimmy Kimmel is (most definitely) an asshole. Okay, that’s probably too harsh, so let me rephrase: There is a large amount of evidence that suggests Jimmy Kimmel, late-night host and longtime comedian, has behaved in ways that people find revolting. The #CancelKimmel hashtag has plenty of examples. That resurfaced blackface sketch from The Man Show—which prompted Kimmel to take an extended summer hiatus—was just the beginning of his worries.
In a past clip from an interview with Megan Fox in 2009, she attempts to share with Kimmel how she’d been sexualized in Hollywood as a teenager. In response, Kimmel openly laughs at her and makes a joke suggesting that all men feel the way Michael Bay does about her and her body:
In 2009, there were already public displays of sexism surrounding Fox’s starring role in Transformers, both on and off the internet, and around its director Michael Bay, with whom Fox famously clashed. Removed from its context, it might be easy to miss that specificity in this clip. Kimmel’s response was already cringe-inducing. Knowing that he made it, with full knowledge of the conversation surrounding Fox’s career, is nigh unimaginable, considering how this conversation has progressed in the nearly 11 years since.
Clips like this are brought back around constantly, and usually, celebrities ignore them. But Megan Fox, in a rare move, responded to the tweet, adding her own perspective as the woman at the center of it. It began:
“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. At least not where it’s currently being projected. I was around 15 or 16 years old when I was an extra in Bad Boys II. There are multiple interviews where I shared the anecdote of being chosen for the scene and the conversations that took place surrounding it. It’s important to note however that when I auditioned for Transformers I was 19 or 20. I did ‘work’ (me pretending to know how to hold a wrench) on one of Michael’s Ferrari’s 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.”
Later in her open letter, she states that “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.” The real baddies, she claims—notably not Michael Bay or Jimmy Kimmel—fully “deserve to be going viral in cancel culture right now.” However, Fox says they are “safely stored in the fragmented recesses of my heart.”