Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly. PHOTO:  MIKE COPPOLA/GETTY IMAGES; DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES

Megan Fox is freeing herself from her past.

During an interview for The Drew Barrymore Show, airing in full on Friday, the Jennifer’s Body actress admitted she wasn’t perfect in the painful past relationships she writes about in her new poetry book, Pretty Boys Are Poisonous.

“Anyone who dated me in my early 20s should probably write their own poetry book, because I was not a peach,” she told host Drew Barrymore during their chat.

Fox, 37, also highlighted the support she has received from fiancé Machine Gun Kelly throughout her writing process, explaining, “I think it helps that he’s an artist himself and recognizes that he has this outlet where he gets to experience his catharsis through songwriting — where he gets to express his pain in that way.”

“As an actor, you don’t really have that, because I’m reading someone else’s dialogue. So I don’t really get to go to work and put my experiences and my pain into my art,” Fox continued. “So he recognized that I needed an outlet for that, and when you love someone, you’re not gonna deny them their right to experience a relief from their suffering.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories.

“And I think that’s just what it is to care about someone and to want to see them heal,” she added.

Though she revisits past trauma in her book, Fox said on Tuesday during an appearance at Racket NYC that she’s not trying to get anyone “canceled,” and wrote the book purely for herself.

“I can’t control how other people react to my art,” she told Bustle‘s editor-at-large Samantha Leach, adding, “I had to write it for me. It could sell five copies or 5 million copies, [it doesn’t matter] … I had to do it for me.”

Some of the poems featured in Pretty Boys Are Poisonous detail physical and emotional abuse from Fox’s past relationships, though she doesn’t name names.

Megan Fox on The Drew Barrymore Show Nov. 8, 2023.

Elsewhere in her interview with Barrymore, 48, Fox said she gets why people may think that she and Kelly, 33, purely write about one another through their art.

“Inevitably, once you’re in a famous relationship, anything I do or say for the rest of my life people will probably think it’s about him, because the relationship is so public,” she said. “The same thing [with him] — any song he writes, it’s probably always probably gonna be about me in someone’s mind.”

“So I think you just have to let it go because it’s about expressing the truth and healing yourself through your art, and you can’t really worry about what other people are gonna think,” the actress added.

Fox recently told PEOPLE of her poetry that “some of it is literal, while other parts are allegorical,” but “all of it is something women can relate to.”

Pretty Boys Are Poisonous is available now wherever books are sold.