Megan Fox is bravely using art to process the abusive relationships of her past.
The “Jennifer’s Body” star sat down with “Good Morning America” on Tuesday to promote “Pretty Boys Are Poisonous,” a new book of more than 70 poems. Fox noted some of them are autobiographical — and regard physical abuses from people she’s dated.
“This is not an exposé that I wrote or a memoir,” Fox told the outlet, adding she doesn’t actually identify any of her abusers by name. “But throughout my life, I have been in at least one physically abusive relationship and several psychologically, very abusive relationships.”
Fox is currently engaged to rapper Machine Gun Kelly, whose real name is Colson Baker. However, she was previously married to Brian Austin Green and dated actors David Gallagher and her “Transformers” co-star Shia LaBeouf. Fox was adamant, however, that they hadn’t hurt her.
“I’ve only been publicly connected to a few people,” she said in the interview. “But I shared energy with — I guess, we could say — [people] who were horrific people and also very famous, very famous people. But no one knows that I was involved with those people.”
While some of her poems were metaphors, all were “real life experiences,” Fox said ― she’s previously spoken about being mistreated throughout her Hollywood career. In her new book, she detailed physical abuse in a poem entitled “Oxycodone & Tequila.”
She said of the personal entry, “I wrote a lot of things that didn’t make it in the book, because I was like, ‘This is maybe for God’s eyes only.’ Some of it is too much when you’re a known person. If I had the freedom of just being a poet … I would’ve included more entries like that.”
Fox revealed that Kelly urged her to chronicle her personal history through poetry. The pair has been responsible for countless headlines since they began dating in 2020, but recently experienced a miscarriage that Fox said “sent us on a very wild journey.”
Speaking of the pregnancy loss and the children she co-parents with Green, she said: “I had never been through anything like that in my life, I have three kids. So it was very difficult for both of us … trying to navigate, ‘What does this mean?’ and ‘Why did this happen?’”
As for Fox eventually naming her abusers, she was adamant in her interview that “Pretty Boys Are Poisonous” isn’t a “Mean Girls”-inspired “burn book,” but intended as a guiding light for women to not stay silent in the face of abuse.
“It gives an elegant place for your pain to live,” Fox told “GMA.” “To put it into art makes it useful to other people, and so you don’t just suffer with it on your own.”
“Pretty Boys Are Poisonous” hit shelves and digital bookstores Tuesday.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.