Here's What The Museum Who Created That Controversial Dwayne Johnson Wax Figure Is Saying
Musée Grévin is responding to the controversy surrounding their new Dwayne Johnson wax figure.
Last week, the Parisian museum unveiled a wax figure of the actor. However, it quickly came under fire for what some argued was depicting Dwayne, who is Samoan and Black, with a complexion lighter than his skin tone.
Those to call out the wax figure included comedian James Andre Jefferson Jr., who uploaded a video about it to Instagram last week. Then, earlier this week, Dwayne reacted, too.
On Monday, he shared James's video on his own Instagram page. "I knew my boy @jamesjeffersonj had this Rock wax statue in his roasting crosshairs 😂💣🔥," he wrote in the caption. "'Is this how y’all felt when you lost the Little Mermaid?' 🤣 legit belly laughed at this ☝🏾."
He then went on to write that he'd have his team reach out to the museum "so we can work at 'updating' my wax figure here with some important details and improvements," specifically "starting with my skin color 🤣✊🏾💪🏾."
It doesn't seem Dwayne is too upset about the wax figure, as he ended his caption by noting, "And next time I’m in Paris, I’ll stop in and have a drink with myself 🥃 😉."
Now, Musée Grévin is responding to the controversy. The museum uploaded a video to Instagram on Tuesday where its managing director Yves Delhommeau noted they're working to update the wax figure.
"A week ago, we unveiled Dwyane Johnson's waxwork, and we got a big surprise when we put him under the lights," Yves said in the video. "His skin tone seemed too pale."
"And we suddenly realized we might have got it wrong," he said, noting the figure garnered "widespread attention."
"Painting on wax is very complicated. It's a long process, like oil painting. They worked on his skin texture using photos," Yves added in the video. "And we know that Dwayne Johnson looks very different from one photo to the next."
According to the museum's website, it took 10 days to paint the actor's Samoan tattoos. They also note the figure's eyes were redone three times in an effort "to avoid too dark a tint making the star's face too hard and erasing its warm aspect."
"We're going to work on this amazing waxwork so it better represents him," Yves continued. "It's been a major task for the sculptor. We're going to keep improving it!"
Yves ended the video by noting they're looking forward to having that drink with Dwayne. "Long live Dwayne Johnson, who's going to stop in and have a drink with us in Paris soon!" he said.
It appears an updated version of the wax figure has already been revealed, with new photos being released on Tuesday showing an employee updating the figure.
Variety also reported on Wednesday that the figure had been updated. "We found his reaction rather friendly when addressing the fact that his figure was indeed whiter than it should have been,” the museum's head of PR, Veronique Berecz, told Variety.
"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, according to the publication, noting it's hard to determine "exact face and body shapes," as well as "volumes" of a person if they haven't met them.
In response to the publication's question about accusations of "whitewashing" Johnson's likeness, Berecz said, "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.”
BuzzFeed has reached out to representatives for the actor for comment on the museum's response.
