Brian Austin Green has opened up in detail about his highly publicized relationship with ex Megan Fox, directly addressing longstanding accusations that he “groomed” the actress.
The Beverly Hills, 90210 star - now 51 - began dating Fox when she was 18 and he was 30, after they met on the set of Hope & Faith in 2004.
Their tumultuous relationship saw multiple breakups and reconciliations before finally ending in divorce in 2020. In their 15 years together, the couple married, had three sons, and weathered public scrutiny over their age gap and the dynamics of their relationship.
Now, for the first time, Green is confronting the narrative around how their relationship began — and why he remained quiet for so long.
“The grooming stuff… it just continually lessens”
Speaking on his Old-ish podcast, co-hosted with his fiancée Sharna Burgess and Randy Spelling, Green was asked directly why he had never publicly responded to accusations that he “groomed” Fox when she was younger.
“I think it comes from my dad. He’s very good at cutting emotion out of something and just being logical in his choices,” Green explained. “I really, logically understood that if I defend myself this one time, it’s never gonna stop. I’m gonna have to defend myself for who knows how long, because people are gonna believe what they wanna believe.”
“So, to me, time is the only thing that regulates that.
"People spend more time seeing me not being that way and then they start questioning it and they start going, you know, ‘We’ve seen him for five years. We’ve never once seen him being controlling or hearing any other story from anyone else about.’ It’s the long game of it.”
Green added: “There was so much stuff — you said, the grooming stuff, the controlling stuff, it seems like that just continually lessens and lessens until I run into people now that are like, ‘Yeah, I used to think that, or that seemed to be the case,’ but they just genuinely don’t believe that anymore. And it’s not because of anything I said… It’s actions that truly paint a picture and tell a story.”
“I was devastated”
Green also opened up about the emotional rollercoaster of their breakups — particularly their 2015 separation, which he says blindsided him at a time when he was physically incapacitated by ulcerative colitis.
“The first time she wanted a divorce, we had two kids,” he said. “She went to New York to do the sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I couldn’t even go with her because I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t do anything. I had to stay home, and I was doing physical therapy, speech therapy and all sorts of stuff.”
“So the first time she wanted a divorce was when she came back from that," Green added. "I didn’t even have the physical ability to, like, argue with her on it and fight for the relationship… It killed me.
"It was out of nowhere. It was the most vulnerable thing I had ever experienced in my life at that time.”
The couple reconciled not long after and welcomed their third son, Journey.
“Journey was born. Then we were just kind of back in the wheel … and it seemed like we were in a good place of like, ‘Oh, we’ve been through a lot together. We can do this. There’s no mountain that’s too high to climb. We’ve got this. This is all figured out,’” he recalled.
But in 2020, Fox asked for a divorce again — this time for good.
Watching Fox move on “quickly and intensely”
Fox’s post-divorce relationship with Machine Gun Kelly, which began that same year, made headlines for its intensity. She referred to the rapper as her “twin flame” and “ultimate soulmate.”
Green admitted he experienced jealousy and confusion during that period. “At the point when she approached me and then the Machine Gun Kelly stuff and everything was happening, I was genuinely in a place of… ‘I can deal with this. This is not gonna kill me. I’ll be OK.’ It sucks. And it’s really hard. And I had absolute moments of jealousy and all the normal things you go through.”
He added: “It went from, like, ‘Hey, we should get a divorce.’ To all of a sudden it was like, ‘Hey, you know, my twin flame and this is my soulmate. And I manifested him.’”
During the early days of that relationship, Green said he was even asked to downplay things publicly. “I remember at that point when the pictures came out, Megan saying to me, ‘We’re just friends. Please, can you, on your podcast, say [that]?’ It was a little tailored to better that side because it was such a big deal,” he explained. “I completely caved to that ’cause I loved her. I didn’t want to badmouth her even though it was a s***** situation… I wanted the best for her, begrudgingly.”
A heavy burden at 18
Reflecting on the beginning of their relationship, Green shared how Fox had quickly taken on adult responsibilities while helping raise his son Kassius, who is now 23.
“When we were first together, I already had Kass,” he said. “So she became very responsible for his well-being and was involved in all of the legal stuff that was going on with Vanessa [Marcil] and I, and it’s a lot at a young age.”
“It was amazing, but it was so much responsibility, I think she kind of just got to a point in her life where she was like, ‘I missed out on being a kid, like, being an irresponsible kid. I jumped in at just over 18 years old with a guy that had a 2-year-old.’ I think it became overwhelming for her.”
“When she realized that, she wanted out quickly, which is then what made it hard for me. I understood it, but it doesn’t make it any less hard.”
“No regrets”
Despite everything, Green said he harbours no regrets about his past. “Sharna is the love of my life. We have an amazing family life, an amazing baby,” he said of his current fiancée, with whom he shares a two-year-old son, Zane.
“My life is nothing I ever had expected it would turn out to be. I was a shell of who I am now… I genuinely believe what I went through is what created who I am now.”