A Paris wax museum has confirmed that it will redesign a statue of Dwayne Johnson following criticism from social media users and the actor himself.
The figure was unveiled last week by the Musée Grévin in Paris, but attracted criticism for its dubious resemblence. Much of the reproval focused on the statue’s skin colour, which appeared markedly lighter than that of the real Johnson.
In a post on Instagram, the museum wrote: “Our artists are already working on improving the waxwork of Dwayne Johnson. Your feedback is always valuable to us.”
When the statue was first unveiled, the Grévin said that sculptor faced “many challenges” in capturing Johnson’s likeness.
“The teams went to gyms in the hope of finding a man who matched The Rock’s extraordinary measurements,” they revealed. “The star’s Samoan tattoos took the painters 10 days of painstaking work and a lot of research.”
On Sunday (22 October), Johnson, who was born to a Samoan mother and Black Canadian father, addressed the criticism on social media. The Fast and Furious star shared a video from the comedian James Andre Jefferson Jr, in which Jefferson roasts the statue.
“You know Black a** Samoan The Rock? That’s how Paris thinks he looks,” Jefferson Jr says in the clip. “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’s David Beckham. It looks like The Rock is going to be a part of the royal family. Did y’all even Google him?”
“It looks like he works at H&R Block or something … Is this how y’all felt when you lost The Little Mermaid?” he continued, alluding to the racist backlash that surrounded Black actor Halle Bailey after she was cast in the 2023 live-action remake of the popular Disney animation.
Re-posting the video on his Instagram account, Johnson wrote that he had “belly-laughed” at Jefferson’s Little Mermaid joke, and announced that he would be asking the museum to re-design the wax statue.
“For the record, I’m going to have my team reach out to our friends at the 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 colour,” Johnson wrote.
“And next time I’m in Paris, I’ll stop in and have a drink with myself,” he added.
