It’s been quite a week for airing cinematic grievances. John Crawley has now backtracked on his comments disparaging working with Keira Knightley on Begin Again, while Kate Beckinsale also made some rather unsavoury comments about Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay, too. However, now Michael Bay has come and insisted that all is still good between himself and the actress, explaining that Kate Beckinsale’s quotes were just spun by the dastardly media.
The Rock, Bad Boys 2 and Transformers blockbuster director took to his own website to reveal that he and Kate Beckinsale have already laughed over the online kerfuffle, insisting that it’s just a "funny story" that has been blown out of proportion. Michael Bay wrote about the pair now being enemies:
Well, totally untrue. Kate and I are friendly. She is a fantastic actress, very funny, witty lady, sassy, speaks her mind, and I truly respect her. That’s why she ahs come to so many of my Christmas parties and Birthday parties. This so called ‘problem of us not liking each other’ was reported by a tabloid-esque reporter after Kate appeared on an edgy English talk show, speaking about our meeting 16 years ago while casting Pearl Harbor. The reporter made her story into some scandalous confrontation, when it was nothing of the sort. Spoke to Kate and she felt she told a funny story.
Well, that cleared that up. To be fair to the various outlets, Cinema Blend included, that picked up the quotes, it did seem like Kate Beckinsale’s remarks were rather pointed and negative. For those of you catching up, here's what Kate Beckinsale said of Michael Bay during a recent interview on The Graham Norton Show:
I think he was baffled by me because my boobs weren’t bigger than my head, and I wasn’t blonde. … I don’t think I fit the type of actress Michael Bay had met before. When we were promoting the film, Michael was asked why he had chosen Ben and Josh, and he said, ‘I have worked with Ben before and I love him, and Josh is so manly and a wonderful actor. Then when he was asked about me, he’d say, ‘Kate wasn’t so attractive that she would alienate the female audience.’ He kept saying it everywhere we went, and we went to a lot of places.
Nevertheless, according to Michael Bay, this was just Kate Beckinsale jostling and publically making fun of her old chum in a very public arena. I mean, she could have said much worse things about the filmmaker, like comparing him to Adolf Hitler as Megan Fox did shortly after she'd finished her tenure on the Transformers franchise. Now that the dust has settled, we can finally get down to the real business of pairing Michael Bay and Kate Beckinsale back together for Pearl Harbor 2. Am I right? Hello?
