Wax museum Musée Grévin took Dwayne Johnson’s comments and social media outcry over the star’s botched wax figure to heart. In 24 hours, his wax figure was updated by artists who gave it a slightly darker skin tone with meticulous strokes of oil painting. Johnson’s suburban dad-esque outfit has been retained.
“We found his reaction rather friendly when addressing the fact that his figure was indeed whiter than it should have been,” as stated by Veronique Berecz, the museum’s head of PR who has been at the iconic museum for over 40 years and worked closely with stars such as Michael Jackson, Nicolas Cage and Donald Sutherland on their wax figures.”
“Unfortunately, we didn’t get to meet Dwayne Johnson so we used several photos — but as it turns out, pictures can be very tricky because the nuances of skin tones can differ depending on the lighting on photos,” she said. “Every time, the sculptor has to determine the exact face and body shapes, the volumes and it’s always a very complicated challenge if we haven’t met the person.”
When asked about her thoughts on the accusations of the museum “whitewashing” Johnson’s figure, she said they weren’t fully aware. “This has nothing to do with it — we just made an honest mistake based on the photos we looked at,” she said. “After we saw all these reactions on different blogs and social networks, we changed it immediately.”
The actor’s wax figure debuted at the Grévin Museum last October 16 after Johnson won the inaugural Grévin Awards by a landslide. The awards are fan-voted so people can choose their favorite pop culture icon for the museum to immortalize in wax.
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It took a video that Johnson shared on his Instagram from comedian James Andre Jefferson Jr. comparing him to David Beckham to prompt a reaction from Johnson, who announced that his team would be reaching out to the Paris museum.
Alongside reposting Jefferson Jr.’s video, the actor wrote on Instagram that he wanted the museum to work on “updating my wax figure here with some important details and improvements — starting with my skin color.” Johnson doesn’t seem bothered by it and even said that he would stop by the next time he visits Paris.
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