Paris museum remedies skin tone of Dwayne Johnson waxwork after his comments
By Ellie Iorizzo, PA
A waxwork of Hollywood star Dwayne Johnson has been altered, after the actor commented on the need to improve his “skin colour”.
The Grevin Museum in Paris told the PA news agency that Johnson was “right” in his comments on Instagram, and the wax figure was “fixed during the night” and is a better representation of the US star.
“We have remedied the skin tone,” a spokesman for the museum told PA.
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Johnson posted a picture of the figure on Instagram, writing: “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 colour.”
The museum’s website said sculptor Stephane Barret relied on photographs and videos to “create a statue as close to reality as possible without the presence of the international star”.
It also said the team “went to gyms in the hope of finding a man who matched The Rock’s extraordinary measurements”, while the actor’s tattoos took 10 days to create and his eyes had to be re-painted three times “to avoid too dark a tint making the star’s face too hard and erasing its warm aspect”.
Mr Barret said: “When I was told I was going to work on Dwayne Johnson I was really excited to be able to create this celebrity.
“It’s true that it’s always impressive to make people of this size. We were lucky enough to find someone who physically matched Dwayne Johnson’s build and height.
“What was a little harder for me was the sample photo that was chosen, where he just had a very slight smile on his face, an expression that’s quite difficult to achieve. It was very subtle.
“We worked on his face and eyes several times, because the most complicated thing about realism is getting the statue to come alive from the visitors’ perspective.”
The waxwork stands alongside 250 famous faces, including film stars Penelope Cruz and Leonardo DiCaprio at the museum, modelled on London’s Madame Tussauds.
