Musée Grévin has unveiled its second The Rock statue after its original version was slammed for being a lighter-skinned replica of the actor.
The museum has since called it an “honest mistake” and has released a newer version of a darker-skinned version of the 51-year-old actor. Oh, and his face doesn’t appear to have as much of a “Botoxed” look.
“We found his reaction rather friendly when addressing the fact that his figure was indeed whiter than it should have been. 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.” The idea of whitewashing, she says, had “nothing do with it. We just made an honest mistake based on the photos we looked at. After we saw all these reactions on different blogs and social networks, we changed it immediately,” Veronique Berecz, the museum’s Public Relations head told Variety.
The original statue garnered a lot of feedback on social media, with some comparing it to Mr. Clean. “You know black-a** Samoan The Rock?” said comedian James Andre Jefferson. “That’s how Paris thinks he looks. They turned The Rock into a pebble … 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.”
As for The Rock, well, he was livid about it: “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.”
