Last month I had the pleasure of sitting down with Megan Fox to discuss her latest project Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to hear how she balances life as a working mom and to find out if she has any passion projects in development. I have to admit that when I signed on to interview Megan Fox, I had mild anxiety about what I should wear, how to do my hair, make-up, etc. Megan is gorgeous and I felt slightly insecure about how I would be received by her. I think it is fair to say that I am not alone in having preconceived notions about her because of her beauty. However, let me be clear that after the interview I was more than impressed with how she presented herself. Megan Fox is one cool chick!
Megan plays April, a fearless reporter, in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When asked about being a fan of the previous movies and TV shows, Megan said “I just genuinely became a fan [of the movies]. So they’ve been talking about remaking this movie for a long time and finally it sort of came into fruition and then I got in for a meeting, and I just fired off tons of emails. Afterwards, basically begging to be in the movie because the character’s sort of this very like ambitious, um ambitious journalist type and I knew when that you say those words you don’t necessarily think of me so I was going to have to fight for it. And so I sent just a bunch of emails saying please, please let me do it. You’re not going to find someone that’s a bigger fan so just give me the chance based on that. And so, yes, I was a fan.”
I found Megan very gracious, grounded and self-deprecating at times. For instance, the comment above about how one doesn’t necessarily think of her when it comes to a character who is ambitious and career oriented – that really shows to me that she knows who she is and recognizes how she is portrayed in the media (for better or worse).
When asked about how she responds to social media, obsessive fans and/or haters, this is what she said “I mean I think I just dissociate myself from it because it’s weird. It is bizarre and I think that from the people that I’ve known and I’ve been close to that are in this industry, the ones that you see that go nuts and have like meltdowns, they’re the ones that keep up with the comments section on whatever, their twitter or their blogs or whatever. Perez Hilton, or whatever they’re reading. You cannot…I just don’t think you can expose yourself to it because there is such a tremendous amount of negativity that no matter how strong you are, unless you are like Buddha or Jesus, you’re not going to be able to live through that negativity without it affecting you and eroding part of who you are. And so for me, I have just cut myself off from it completely.”
Something that I learned during the interview is that Megan Fox was pregnant during filming of this movie. I was also amazed to find out that she did most of her own stunt scenes. What a trooper! This is what Megan recalled about those long days of filming, “We were filming in New York City in the Summer. It’s hot…and you know during your first trimester all you want to do is just like watch Bravo and lay in bed and you don’t want to get up and do stuff. I was waking up and I working 18 – 19 hour days to get this done because the movie that we shot, aside from the turtles, it’s me and the turtles and so I was in every scene and they needed me. And you know when you’re making a movie that’s the one thing about filmmaking is that you can’t call in sick or you can’t say like ‘oh my kid has a fever’ or ‘I can’t come in today,’ because when you shut down production for a day, that’s one to three million dollars that’s a loss. And so you have to just make it work.”
I was sitting at a roundtable with some other bloggers and I had the opportunity to ask Megan my one question which had to do with whether or not she would be interested in doing a TV program since those hours (I would think) were more conducive to raising a family. This is what she said “It depends on what kind of TV that like…for people doing sitcoms or like my husband is working on a show with Charlie Sheen right now, Anger Management, and the hours on that are a dream for what they do. But, there are also some shows like the one hour dramas you see, it’s almost like making a movie every week. So, of course I would consider it if it filmed in LA and if the hours were appropriate and it gave me time to spend with my kids.”
I learned that Megan is a big time fan girl who would have jumped at the chance to be in the latest Star Wars movie. She also would love to be a part of a new Jurassic Park movie, especially if it were Spielberg directing it. We chatted a little bit more about self esteem issues, her parenting style versus her husband’s (Brian Austin Green) and her workout routine – which includes running on the treadmill and intense circuit training.
I walked away from the interview feeling that Megan Fox is a lot more relatable than one might think. She has body issues just like us, feeling insecure about herself after giving birth to her son. What one may not realize is that according to Megan the “pressure that an actress feels to get into shape afterwards is extraordinary.” Megan is very passionate about her family and being a working actress. Filming this movie was “months and months, all day every day” and although she had to be away from her older son, she is “proud of it and happy I got to be a part of it.”
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opens in theaters on August 8, 2014.
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Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures. I attended a press event for this film. All opinions are my own.
I can’t even start to tell you how excited I am about this film! I wanted to be April soooo bad as a kid!
I’m not sure about this new TMNT movie. It was the first movie I seen in the theater back in the 80s and it looks way different. lol
I can’t imagine filming in the heat while pregnant! My boys cannot wait for this movie.
Nice. Glad to see her in more stuff. My son would love to see this. I don’t think he loves anything more than Ninja Turtles.