The Grévin museum in Paris caught wind of all the complaints on social media and even saw Dwayne Johnson’s commentary on his wax figure. Since receiving backlash artists who worked the wax figure have updated it with a slightly darker skin tone.
The museum’s head of PR, Veronique Berecz, released a statement to address the backlash and explained how the mistake happened. “We found his reaction rather friendly when addressing the fact that his figure was indeed whiter than it should have been,” said Berecz. “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 added. “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.”
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Without meeting Johnson in person Berecz states that they had to find a lookalike to try and nail the wax figure. “We conducted a casting of models based on his body measurements, and that wasn’t a small undertaking because we had to find a man who had roughly the same body type as Dwayne Johnson — a height of 6’5″ with those huge muscles — and we found our model in a bodybuilding club!” Berecz said. A lot of folks on social media accused the museum of “white washing” The Rock but Berecz admitted that wasn’t the case at all. “This has nothing 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.”
Johnson’s wax figure made his debut at the Grévin Museum a week ago after the “Fast & Furious” actor won the inaugural Grévin Awards. Once the figure was unveiled many people on social media felt like the figure resembled “Mr. clean,” and looked similar to Vin Diesel.
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Comedian James Andre Jefferson Jr. also made a video on Instagram comparing him to David Beckham. “You know Black ass Samoan The Rock? That’s how Paris thinks he looks,” Jefferson Jr. says in the video. “They turned The Rock into a pebble!… it looks like The Rock has never seen the sun a day in his life… You make the rock look like he David Beckham. It looks like The Rock is going to be a part of the royal family. Did y’all even Google him?”
The rock reposted the comedians video and reacted to the news saying he was going to get his team to reach out to the museum but looks like quickly corrected it!