True romance: Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly are Hollywood’s hottest new energy couple

Within the backroom of a studio, Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox are giving one another tattoos whereas I watch. The lovebirds’ matching tattoos will learn, ‘The darkest fairytale’, a phrase Fox says ‘alludes again to one of many first textual content messages we ever despatched one another’. Fox desires to get inked first, as a result of MGK has tattooed earlier than and he or she’d reasonably not delay the ache. MGK clarifies he’s finished some drunk scrawling with the tattoo gun earlier than, however that is critical. He dips the needle in ink, presses down on the traced phrase and appears at Fox to ensure she’s OK. Fox puffs on a CBD joint to chill out and so they each determine they may as nicely simply soar into it. He begins going over the stencil with the needle, pausing typically to take inventory of his work and wipe the pen ink. ‘God, that’s sick,’ he says as she seems at his handiwork. He smiles at Fox. It’s going very nicely, however they may use extra direct gentle. 

That is how I discover myself holding my iPhone flashlight over Machine Gun Kelly’s pelvis whereas he reclines on a inexperienced velvet chaise. Fox, clad in a flannel shirt, crouches over him and locations the tattoo stencil alongside his hip. Whereas they’d initially wished to have the tattoos on their respective inner-arm veins, MGK is totally coated in tats already, from his abdomen anarchy image to an enormous ‘MGK’ again piece. To discover a place the place the tattoo wouldn’t get misplaced, they need to go additional south. Fox presses the inked tattoo needle into his pores and skin whereas he encourages her to go tougher. A couple of minutes later, she’s finished. ‘I’m simply scared that I fucked it up!’ she exclaims nervously. He reassures her immediately: ‘Fucking greatest tattoo I’ve ever seen in my life.’ Fox thinks she went too gentle, however they’ll let it heal and go over it later. ‘It seems like a fairy ghost did it, proper?’ MGK says. ‘It’s all haunted.’ She laughs at that and so they kiss. 

I’m witnessing a ritual that’s equal components sacred and profane – a bodily consummation of types for the pair. The very first thing you could know is that they’re a fully attractive couple, seemingly made for one another. The musician, born Colson Baker however higher often called Machine Gun Kelly, is a good-looking 6ft 4in punk with white-blond hair and is roofed in tattoos. Fox, an actress, is probably the most stunning girl I’ve ever met, a Frank Frazetta pin-up woman drawing come to life, right now carrying Bettie Web page bangs and a deep brown lip color. She is the perfect cool-babe consort for a burgeoning famous person like MGK, a rapper turned rocker whose new album, Born With Horns, is executive-produced by Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. The document is darkish pop punk that chronicles MGK’s latest life main up to date he met Fox on a film set and so they fell in love. 

Whereas they make fairly a pair in particular person, their love runs deeper than the plain bodily chemistry, to a spot of what they describe as a religious connection. It’s intoxicating to be round two people who find themselves this far gone for each other. Along with their double-date friends Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker, they’re bringing again Sundown Strip rock’n’roll glamour for the 2020s, because the sort of couple that’s enjoyable to observe be in love with one another and who’ve what Fox calls the ‘flamable component’ of all celebrities. They stroll within the footprints etched by the platform boots of partnerships equivalent to Tommy and Pam, Kurt and Courtney or Mick and Marianne, however with a key distinction: they’re attempting their damndest to ensure issues don’t blow up. They’re each at a spot of their lives the place they’re actually keen to put all of it on the road for love. 

It’s solely been a number of hours since I first encounter the pair at a photoshoot deep in Downtown LA’s warehouse zone. They’re entangled collectively in entrance of a gunmetal-grey Nineteen Seventies Cadillac whereas “Chief Of The Pack” by The Shangri-Las performs on the stereo, as two vehicles shine headlights on them and horror fog is blasted via the parking zone. 

Fox and MGK are in Love, with a capital L. Whereas they’re each well-known intercourse symbols, they act like children collectively. He treats her with the respect she has all the time deserved and that itself may be very romantic. Their vitality collectively is playful. They make one another snort. The carnal element is clearly off the charts, however they will also be candy and humorous. Whereas they wait round between shoot setups, Fox stands barefoot on MGK’s leopard-print slippers and he slow-dances her across the room. When they’re collectively, it’s like no one else exists. For an intimate close-up, he requests a music change and asks for ‘Mazzy’ – which I assume shall be some up-and-coming rapper however seems to be Mazzy Star, the melancholic LA band fronted by Hope Sandoval – and their traditional “Fade Into You”. That is considered one of many surprising twists about MGK. He jokes that if they’ll’t discover the tune on his cellphone, he’ll additionally settle for “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It” by Dem Franchize Boyz. 

The following cease is the Soho Warehouse for dinner, the Downtown LA outpost of the members’ membership Soho Home. Plates of lamb chops, prawns, ravioli and pizza are introduced out to the desk. The eating room overlooks the glowing LA skyline and loud 2000s music (assume Ja Rule and J.Lo) blares from the audio system. MGK has become a T-shirt he was gifted on the shoot. It’s printed with a photograph of Mickey and Mallory, the enduring outlaw couple from Oliver Stone’s Pure Born Killers performed by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. Films are one of many issues that introduced the 2 collectively. ‘The Misplaced Boys was our first film we watched collectively,’ he reminisces, ‘after which True Romance and Level Break.’

‘Oh, Level Break is the most effective – he had by no means seen it,’ Fox provides. ‘True Romance was his selection.’

‘I like a darkish fairy story,’ he confirms. 

MGK and Fox say they actually met for the primary time in 2020 on the set of the motion flick Midnight In The Switchgrass, however they really met briefly a number of years earlier than that, launched at a GQ get together in LA. ‘This bizarre factor occurred,’ says Fox. ‘We didn’t see one another.’ She seems at him. ‘Do you bear in mind [seeing] my face?’

‘That’s what’s loopy,’ he says, ‘I don’t. I don’t bear in mind your face.’

‘I don’t bear in mind your face… And I positively would have remembered his face,’ she continues. ‘I simply bear in mind this tall, blond, ghostly creature and I regarded up and I used to be like, “You scent like weed.” He regarded down at me and he was like, “I’m weed.” Then, I swear to God, he disappeared like a ninja in a smoke bomb.’ 

They each snort about how they couldn’t see one another’s faces. Fox has a concept: ‘I feel we weren’t allowed to see one another but. We weren’t speculated to run into one another that evening, so our souls, our spirit guides, had been luring us away from one another, since you actually had no face, like that factor from Spirited Away. It’s arduous to see his face typically, however actually he had no face that evening.’ She turns to him. ‘Thank God, [because] what torture had I identified you had been there and I couldn’t get to you. It was higher that I didn’t know.’ 

So when Fox and MGK met for the second time, the primary actual time, she reminded him of their first assembly. Then, whereas capturing, by way of his character’s first line of dialogue to the actress, he needed to say one thing fucked as much as her. However what they had been each feeling didn’t take phrases. ‘It was apparent from second one what it was going to be,’ Fox says of their relationship, ‘however we didn’t hook up immediately.’ They began courting within the inexperienced room ‘She was identical to, “How are you feeling?” he remembers, ‘And I mentioned, “I’m misplaced.” She mentioned, “Properly, let’s discover you.” That was the primary actual dialog we had.’ 

He despatched her a few textual content messages, one which mentioned, ‘I’m weed,’ and one other that repeated his filthy first line of dialogue to her, as if he couldn’t consider he’d mentioned these dumb issues to Megan Fox the primary two occasions they interacted. Fox was charmed. ‘I simply responded like, “How each fairy story begins.”’ To which he ended the dialog with, ‘All the great ones not less than…’

After that they texted some extra and graduated to speaking on the cellphone. ‘Did you ever speak to a woman for 3 hours on the cellphone in your complete life?’ Fox teases. ‘Had been you want, “How the fuck am I going to speak to her?”’ 

‘It felt like 5 minutes, so it didn’t even really feel like three hours,’ he responds. ‘Even our first kiss, she wouldn’t kiss me. We simply put our lips proper in entrance of one another and breathed one another’s breath after which she simply left.’ 

Fox says she was attempting to guard her coronary heart, though she knew she was already falling arduous for him. She wasn’t on the lookout for love: ‘[I was] positively open [to] love, however I didn’t anticipate strolling proper into my soulmate like that. I used to be clearly over the best way I had been residing, and people paths lined up, these doorways opened. It was [as if] all of the obstacles that had stored us aside all these years [had been removed] and we had been in a position to lastly intersect.’ 

For his or her first actual date MGK picked Fox up in a 1974 Cadillac convertible and so they listened to Ella Fitzgerald. He drove her to a canyon’s edge the place he had a good friend ready with a picnic arrange on a blanket and a sea of roses. Then they drove down Sundown Boulevard to the Roxy Theatre, which was closed. ‘We went to the roof and performed pop punk and made out,’ he remembers, tippling a glass of Casamigos tequila. 

Had MGK ever fallen in love earlier than? ‘No, no, no. It’s, like, since you’ve been world wide and skilled a lot shit, you assume you understand the whole lot. After which you might be within the arms of your future and realise “I don’t know shit but”. That’s when the journey begins, proper?’ Fox, too, looks like she lastly discovered somebody who actually will get her: ‘I feel I had both put myself in, or allowed different folks to place me in, this bizarre field that didn’t fairly match me, the place I hadn’t lived my very own life as myself for a extremely very long time – the components of me that had been all the time eccentric or unusual and didn’t belong inside my circle of relatives unit or inside Hollywood.’ 

Fox was a teenage actress from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who was ceaselessly solid as a ravishing imply woman earlier than doing a stint on the ABC sitcom Hope & Religion. She ended up within the Transformers blockbusters the place she turned a famous person intercourse image who sparked public debate concerning the sexualisation of actresses, a dialog that made her into a logo and spiralled distant from her precise personhood. In particular person, she is considerate and initially slightly shy. She chooses her phrases very rigorously, particularly when speaking about her profession path. She has proven a variety of depth extending to darkish dramas, horror and comedy, whereas Gen-Z star Olivia Rodrigo, in her “Good 4 U” music video, channelled Jennifer’s Physique, the 2009 Karyn Kusama horror comedy through which Fox portrayed a cheerleader with very sharp tooth. Hollywood seemingly nonetheless has no concept what to do with a stunning, sensible actress, forcing them to construct their careers on their very own phrases. Fox has shifted to indie motion pictures and ensembles. Upcoming releases embrace Massive Gold Brick with Oscar Isaac and Night time Tooth on Netflix in October. 

She’s lastly discovering consolation in who she’s all the time been deep down: a star who doesn’t match neatly into containers and doesn’t again down from their private convictions. ‘You already know, famously, like, I’m an uncommon particular person,’ she says. ‘And I had buried lots of that as a result of it didn’t have a spot to reside. That’s one thing that, assembly him, it’s like assembly your individual soul’s reflection. I recognise a lot of myself in him, and vice versa, and that locked-up a part of me that I had put away. I’d all the time felt like there was that factor lacking, that I’d given up on, that you simply’re all the time in search of. However you then meet the person who completes that for you and also you’re like, “Oh, that is what my coronary heart was trying to find. That’s what that beacon was this complete time.”’ Once I ask if she discovered love as a result of she stopped on the lookout for it, she demurs. It’s extra that she had gotten herself to be in a spot the place she might be with somebody nice. Fox thinks there’s nothing shameful about wanting to seek out that sort of deep, all-encompassing love.

MGK is having a tough time listening to me over the extremely loud music taking part in within the restaurant, which the workers can’t flip down. ‘Can we simply go to the fucking bar?’ he shouts. He’s annoyed that Fox’s sentiments about their souls assembly are being drowned out by the Calvin Harris songs booming over the audio system for the Saturday-night clubbing crowd. We abscond from the restaurant down the lengthy, echoing hallways to the foyer.

He makes a joke about the way it’s like one other considered one of his favorite motion pictures, Cameron Crowe’s Virtually Well-known, through which the lead singer of a band makes a journalist comply with him from place to put with out ever making time for the precise interview. We now have discovered someplace quiet eventually, in entrance of the constructing that basically does appear to be an industrial warehouse, the place some tables and chairs are arrange. MGK lights a cigarette, clearly already far more comfy outdoors.

Assembly Fox gave MGK new inspiration that fuelled his music. ‘It’s virtually like she reconnected a wire in my mind. Creativity gained’t cease popping out,’ he says. They encourage one another’s creative ventures, together with a top-secret movie mission they’re engaged on collectively this autumn. He wrote
half of his newest album earlier than they met and the opposite half afterwards. MGK looks like he’s not expressing himself nicely with phrases. ‘I’m simply higher at talking with my music,’ he says. He was so awkward about telling her how he felt that he put his emotions into the brand new songs. ‘I couldn’t categorical myself the best technique to her, so I introduced her a tune. It says the whole lot. It’s the best guitar line with the purest type of how one might really feel about one other particular person and representing how they love one another.’ However you too can hear how he feels about her when he tells tales about their adventures. ‘I bear in mind she actually fell in love once I made her die laughing in a fort we made in her front room,’ he remembers.

Machine Gun Kelly was born in Houston, Texas, to missionary dad and mom who lugged him all around the world till they ended up in Denver, the place he discovered solace listening to rappers equivalent to DMX and Eminem whereas struggling household strife at house. He moved to New York and gained a sequence of freestyle battles, ultimately netting a document contract with Diddy’s Dangerous Boy Information in 2011. In 2014 he began performing, successful accolades for his efficiency in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Past The Lights. After 4 rap albums, he began a pop punk part that become his 2020 album Tickets To My Downfall, which featured interludes from Fox and was a US Billboard No1. He additionally performed Tommy Lee in Netflix’s The Dust, cementing his standing as a contemporary incarnation of the rock star as cultural satyr. Now, he’s shifting into directing and writing movies, with a mission within the works with Pete Davidson.

MGK says he by no means witnessed the sort of love he and Fox have in his personal life till now. ‘I got here from damaged properties and I watched love by no means work. Then I grew up the place in popular culture they don’t even make romantic motion pictures any extra. It hurts my soul that I wasted 30 years of my life not having any need. Dude, I used to be right down to die. I used to be good. I used to be like, “All proper, received music on the market. That’ll maintain me down.” You already know, my daughter is the most effective extension of me and he or she’s going to be higher than I’m. And I’ve seen some shit, so I’m good to go.’ (MGK and Fox each have children from earlier relationships.)

Having grown up amid poverty and familial dysfunction, getting well-known solely amplified a few of MGK’s demons. He and Fox share a way that neither one is right here to repair anybody – simply that as a pair they’ve discovered the desire to combat via the darkness collectively. ‘I’ve misplaced so many associates to suicide,’ he says. ‘Love gave me a purpose to remain right here.’ He begins rambling and turns to Fox and says, ‘Please shut me up. I like you.’ He tells me to ask Fox a query as a substitute.

So I ask Fox how she feels concerning the latest media re-evaluation of the best way she was mistreated earlier in her profession. She sighs. ‘That’s one thing that I did lots of work on.’ Just a few years in the past she determined to take critical time without work from doing press to look inward: ‘I used to be by no means leaving the home.’ She went on a religious quest, studying consistently and practising meditation. ‘I’ve finished the whole lot you are able to do to attempt to make sense of that. As a result of it’s straightforward if you undergo one thing like that to really feel like a sufferer, clearly. That’s your first intuition and response, however that doesn’t serve you and that makes life depressing, residing life as a sufferer. “Why is that this occurring to me?” You’re freely giving your energy consistently.’

At a sure level, Fox says, she simply wished to make peace with the previous and transfer on. She took management the place she might: over her personal response. ‘I did lots of work to take away that feeling of being a sufferer and to grasp that it was a lesson. So there was objective in it and I didn’t need to endure any extra. It’s [made me grow] into a way more fascinating human being than I’d have been with out that. So it permits you the area to have gratitude for one thing that beforehand you felt persecuted by. That’s the one factor in my life I did do lots of work on, I do be happy from.’ Fox is considerate, having clearly spent lots of time working via her personal emotions about it. ‘So it’s not that I really feel vindicated. I’m past that, as a result of I don’t have to be proper about it any extra. Again then I used to be harm – in fact I did endure tremendously – however, you understand, I’m not on the lookout for payback. I don’t want an apology.’

I say {that a} girl as stunning and clever as Fox may be intimidating to lots of males. She agrees however says appearances may be deceiving: ‘We might take a look at someone and assume, “That particular person’s so stunning. Their life should be really easy.” They most definitely don’t really feel that method about themselves.’ Is that how she feels? ‘Yeah, I’ve physique dysmorphia. I’ve lots of deep insecurities.’ MGK has his personal demons too. He’s received post-traumatic stress (which he charmingly unintentionally calls ‘postpartum melancholy’ earlier than Fox corrects him) from his troublesome upbringing and drug points and he is aware of he has an artist’s temperament.

‘I’m mainly attempting to reside with out dying shortly each day,’ MGK says, including that Fox conjures up him to work on his personal points and be open about them along with his followers. ‘I need to be as grounded as she is, however I’m not there but. I’m open to it, however I don’t need to idiot you want I’m there.’ He has ‘the utmost respect’ for his girlfriend as an individual: ‘She’s helped me realise that you may’t bury your trauma. Nobody is aware of something about me. They don’t know the way deep that rabbit gap goes with my childhood and with the whole lot that my physique has saved in itself.’

Fox agrees the connection has ‘euphoric highs’. But it surely isn’t all enjoyable and video games. ‘It is a very intense relationship,’ she says. ‘Our souls selected this to utterly need to face our shadow selves; to face issues about ourselves we didn’t need to need to know, that we tried to push away.’ I say it looks like they’ve the depth of a primary love. ‘It ought to be gentle, but in addition we go to hell with one another,’ MGK says. ‘It’s ecstasy and agony for certain… I don’t need folks to assume something’s good with us. I didn’t say it was the darkest fairy story for no purpose. God provide help to if you happen to would’ve met us final Saturday.’ She laughs. ‘There’s additionally the demonic facet,’ she notes, with a devilish smile. Fox solely smiles or laughs when she genuinely means it, which makes it really feel particular when she does. Theirs is a Gomez and Morticia Addams kind of affection.

They’re each attempting to really feel extra current in actual life. He says hanging out collectively all the time leads them to surprising locations and he tells a narrative about how they took a visit to Bora Bora that ended up with the 2 of them taking mushrooms, getting on a ship and climbing a mountain on the lookout for a sacred Banyan tree they noticed on a map, which they discovered. MGK was glad she lastly received to see him play reside at a pageant in Florida after pandemic restrictions eased up. ‘It was bizarre to do a 12 months in a relationship the place I used to be like, “I swear to God I’ve a job. I swear to God I’m cool. You will note considered one of today what I really do.”’ Fox says that, though she’d already seen him do filmed performances, this was completely different. ‘Clearly I’m not above the intoxicating component of watching and having coronary heart eyes.’ Fox lastly received to see the complete image of who he’s as an artist: a rock star who leaves all of it on the stage.

Megan Fox’s love could also be remodeling Colson Baker into his highest self, however it hasn’t modified Machine Gun Kelly: ‘I’m nonetheless a motherfucking outlaw.’ Collectively they’re good companions in crime.

Images: Daniella Midenge. Trend course: Nicola Formichetti. Styling: Hunter Clem

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