Maybe Michelle "Bombshell" McGee really is feeling remorseful over what she did to Sandra Bullock. Maybe the tatted one really did get "duped" by Jesse James. Or maybe the Australian exchange rate is just way better than we thought.
Whatever the reason, James' original other woman sat down for an interview with, of all places, Australia's Channel 7 news team, giving her soft-spoken side of the story and offering up a not-so-better, late-than-never apology to Bullock.
"I know what she's going through," McGee said. "She must be hurt, devastated, upset, embarrassed. I want to give her a heartfelt apology. I'm sorry for her embarrassment and her pain—I do feel really bad about it.
"I would say, 'Sandra, you know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your embarrassment, I'm sorry all this is public.' It is a heartfelt apology. I'm sorry for what she is going through."
But she's just as sorry at her own victimization at the hands of Jesse—equal, she claims, to Sandra's.
"I feel like he lied to me as much as he lied to her. I wouldn't have been with him if he was just honest in the beginning."
After initially contacting him via MySpace, ostensibly to secure employment at West Coast Choppers, McGee said they met face-to-face just one week later at his Long Beach shop. They spoke of kids and their families.
"I did know he was married to Sandra, yes," she said, adding that she questioned him about his marriage, only to be shut down. According to McGee, James' reply was: "I'm not allowed to talk about it. I don't want to discuss it. She lives in Austin, I live here, we don't live together, we're not together, it's 'cause she's filming this movie. We just can't talk about it. We can't discuss it."
So they didn't. But they did consummate their fledgling relationship "two or three times" that first night.
Throughout their supposed 11-month relationship, which McGee says they mutually ended when James went to Europe and which included a text message from him as recently as a week before the story broke, he "never, never, never" spoke about Sandra except to say that they were separated.
"I believed it."
In what seems like a particularly flagrant move on James' part, McGee says that for one of their "dates," the duo sat on a couch in James' office watching the MTV Movie Awards—the very ceremony that Bullock appeared on.
As for the question plaguing many—If James wasn't ready or willing to settle down, why get married in the first place?—McGee offered up her expert opinion.
"I don't know. I don't really see what they had in common, but I really don't know much about Sandra. Maybe opposites attract? I don't know. It's hard to say."
After the reporter floated the idea that maybe Jesse was more interested in the fame the union would bring, McGee said, "Who knows?"
"Maybe he was in love with her, maybe he was attracted to her goodness, you know, the cleanliness of it.
"I do feel guilty, I feel bad. I feel like I was duped just as much as Sandra was. I felt like I was lied to just as much as she was. If Jesse was just up front with me in the beginning, we wouldn't be in this situation."
But she still thinks the situation is all for the best, particularly in Sandra's case.
"I feel better that she knows the truth about him, that act that he was doing at the Oscars…I was just really sad for her for the most part. When she said, 'This man has my back,' I was like, No, he doesn't have your back—he's doing it behind your back."
And behind McGee's back, who said she was "shocked, but not surprised" to find out James was juggling other women.
"I kind of had a feeling, like a woman instinct, that there was other girls, just 'cause it was so easy for him to approach me, not knowing me, and he was just so easy to talk to...just seemed like he had done it before."
As for why McGee is speaking out now, she says the time was right to tell her side of the story.
"The biggest misconception is that tI'm a Nazi, I'm a racist, white supremacist, which is absolutely not true.
"I've been called a homewrecker, a slut, a whore. I'm very surprised by that, that more people aren't taking my side. I don't want anybody's pity…but, you know, Jesse is the bad guy here."
She denies that she broke up Bullock's marriage, and says her next move will be to "redeem [her] reputation."
"My reputation's been tarnished, especially with the Nazi and white supremacist stuff. It's very, very hurtful to hear those things over a silly photo shoot. I regret, in hindsight, I shouldn't have done the photo shoot."
She denies, however, that a love of German military garb is a hobby she shared with James, saying the surfacing of his personal "heil" photo shoot was "just a coincidence."
She also denied her ex-husband's claims that she had any undue interest in Nazi culture, saying, "My husband is full of crap. My husband will say and do anything to tarnish me, to make me look bad in the media. He's used this as a way to sway the courts."
No matter what ends up happening, it's already beyond—for better and worse—McGee's expectations.
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