UPDATE – JUNE 2020: After a clip of Megan Fox talking to Jimmy Kimmel about working for Michael Bay on Bad Boys II resurfaced and went viral, the actress released the following statement regarding her audition for Transformers, where she clarified that she was not washing a car, but rather enacting a scene from the script with a wrench. You can find Fox’s statement below, followed by the original story from 2017:

With the release of Transformers: The Last Knight [read our scathing reviews here and here], let’s take a moment to remember that director Michael Bay has a somewhat shady past regarding how he apparently cast Megan Fox in the first movie back in 2007.

While researching for my latest article – Michael Bay is a disgusting, deplorable director – I recalled nugget of information from Jason Soloman during the press tour for 2009’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. In it, he claims that Megan Fox auditioned for the movie by washing Bay’s car while he filmed it.

“She told me she went to director Michael Bay’s house to audition and he made her wash his Ferrari while he filmed her,” Soloman wrote. “She said she didn’t know what had happened to that footage. When I put it to Bay himself, he looked suitably abashed. ‘Er, I don’t know where it is either.'”

Fox ended up leaving the franchise following the second movie, and was very vocal about not wanting to work with Bay ever again comparing him to Hitler in one interview.

During the promotional tour for Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, co-star Shia LeBeouf told The LA Times, “Megan developed this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment stuff that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women. Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old sexuality. It’s summer. It’s Michael’s style. And I think she never got comfortable with it. This is is a girl who was taken from complete obscurity and placed in a sex-driven role in front of the whole world and told she was the sexiest woman in America. And she had a hard time accepting it. When Mike would ask her to do specific things, there was no time for fluffy talk. We’re on the run. And the one thing Mike lacks is tact.”