A wax museum in Paris that was criticised for “whitewashing” a statue of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson says it will give the waxwork a do-over.
The Musée Grévin, which is modelled on London’s Madame Tussauds, unveiled the wax figure of the professional wrestler turned actor last week, but it swiftly attracted widespread ridicule on social media, as well as from the Fast and Furious star himself.
“They whitewashed The Rock,” a user on X, formerly Twitter, wrote, while another likened the figure to Mr Clean. Instagram account the Shade Room called the figure “melanin deficient”.
California-born Johnson is the son of a Samoan mother and a Black Canadian father.
On Sunday evening he joined the pile-on, reposting a video to his Instagram page of comedian James Andre Jefferson Jr saying the statue made him feel “low-key offended”.
“It looks like he works at H&R Block or something … Is this how y’all felt when you lost The Little Mermaid? I understand,” the comedian said. “It looks like The Rock ain’t never seen the sun a day in his life … It looks like The Rock is part of the royal family.”
Alongside the video Johnson wrote: “For the record, I’m going to have my team reach out to our friends at Grevin Museum, in Paris France so we can work at ‘updating’ my wax figure here with some important details and improvements – starting with my skin color.
“And next time I’m in Paris, I’ll stop in and have a drink with myself.”
On Monday afternoon, Musée Grévin, which houses 250 celebrity statues, said on Instagram that its artists were “working on improving” the waxwork. “Your feedback is always valuable to us,” they wrote.
Upon unveiling Johnson’s statue last week, the Musée Grévin’s wrote on its website that its creation had “presented many challenges” to sculptor Stéphane Barret, who had to rely on photos and videos alone.
“The teams went to gyms in the hope of finding a man who matched The Rock’s extraordinary measurements. The star’s Samoan tattoos took the painters 10 days of painstaking work and a lot of research,” the museum wrote, adding that the statue’s eyes were redone three times “to avoid too dark a tint making the star’s face too hard and erasing its warm aspect”.
