Megan Fox Leaned Into The 'Darkest Parts' Of Her Own 'Shadow' For Jennifer's Body
Karyn Kusama's 2009 film "Jennifer's Body" has officially been rescued. Initially a bomb, the film has, in the last decade, undergone a massive critical reevaluation, with many finding it to be a modern feminist classic.
"Jennifer's Body" strikes an uncanny balance between being a savvy essay on the exploitation and commodification of teenage girls, and being a fun, wicked slumber party fright fest. Megan Fox plays Jennifer, often described as the prettiest girl at her high school. Jennifer's best friend is Anita (Amanda Seyfried) who goes by the unfortunate, and unfortunately descriptive nickname Needy. Their relationship is warm, but seemingly socially unbalanced, with Jennifer being a popular cheerleader and Needy being a shy wallflower. They have been friends since they were little, and it seems that adolescence and sexuality may complicate their relationship.
That, and the fact that Jennifer, after surviving a fire at an indie rock concert, seems to have been supernaturally transformed into a man-eating succubus.
As early as 2007, Fox was announced as the preferred choice to play Jennifer. This was a savvy casting decision as Fox, having appeared on many magazine covers and shamelessly objectified by the camera of Michael Bay in his "Transformers" movies, would finally be allowed to symbolically attack the dunderheaded boys who would exploit her. According to a 2019 interview with Vulture, the quest to find the right Needy was a little more fraught. Ultimately, both Fox and Seyfried were excellent, but it was Fox who tapped into her own, personal journey to play Jennifer. She ultimately felt that she was uniquely suited to play a part like this.
'F*** it. Let's just go.'
To play Jennifer, Fox said that she didn't really have to act much. The character was more of a cathartic fantasy of her own. She felt that playing a cannibalistic monster would require either a genre actor who can easily play monstrous roles ... or Megan Fox specifically. Because of the way Fox looks — she previously worked as a model — her appearance often had to be written into the films she appeared in. In "This is 40," for instance, Leslie Mann talks at length about how attractive she is. Jennifer allowed Fox to add some violent, vengeful energy to the kind of "hot woman" roles she too often landed. She said:
"I think that it took someone who was, like, genuinely demented at that time to play a demon-possessed man-eating teenager, and I was just at a space in my life and mentally where I could fully embody that and be okay doing it. It wasn't really an acting exercise, per se. It was just leaning into the darkest part of my own shadow. I was ready to do that at that time, because, like I said, I was already struggling against so many other things in my career, and I was like, 'f*** it. Let's just go.' Let's just go deep into this place where I should be hiding all of this from people."
Later in the same interview, Fox became a little more frank about her personal connection to "Jennifer's Body." In particular, a scene wherein Jennifer is tied to an altar to serve as a blood sacrifice. If one knows the plot of "Jennifer's Body," they will also recall that she is being sacrificed by male characters for their own personal gain.
The sacrifice scene
As someone who felt repeatedly exploited by the Hollywood system, Fox felt the scene was all too real and was incredibly relevant to the state of her career. She said:
"One of the things was when I was doing that sacrifice scene, there are of course other things that I can pull from my childhood and past, but for me, that scene represented my relationship with the movie studios at the time and the studio executives and directors and just Hollywood in general, because on almost a daily basis, I felt like I was being sacrificed for their gain with almost no concern for my physical well-being. F*** your mental or emotional well-being"
Not only was the sacrifice of women a theme of "Jennifer's Body," but it's a common practice in Hollywood in general. Women are offered less variety in their roles, and the roles they are offered — at least in the case of the blockbuster machine that Fox went through — are often physically and emotionally taxing as well. When Jennifer was on the altar, contemplating her fate and terrified for her life, so too was Fox, metaphorically.
Luckily, Fox was not traumatized by the experience but liberated. She said:
"That never is a question when you're a woman in Hollywood. Whatever they need to do to me or put me through, they were going to do as long as it got them that they needed. So in that moment I think it was a very visceral, very powerful, almost cathartic experience, because I was able to let out everything that I was trying to keep in and not be vulnerable and play tough and fight it. I could just surrender to it and cry and wilt and it was okay."
Fox's performance is great, incidentally. She's a very good actress.