Being publicly called out by the biggest star in Hollywood will do an excellent job of accelerating any timeline, with the Grevin Museum in Paris immediately rectifying the pastiness of its Dwayne Johnson wax figure after the man himself called it out on social media.
For the most part, laughably inaccurate renditions of famous faces placed on display don’t tend to generate much in the way of controversy, but when The Rock’s recreation was a touch on the pale side for the child of a Black father and Samoan mother, he took it upon himself to make it known he’d have his team reach out to the museum and have an upgrade made in short order.
Sure enough, the new and improved Johnson is standing erect in the Grevin for everyone to see, with head of PR Veronique Berecz (per Variety) owning up to the mistakes that were made.
“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.
Every time, the sculptor has to determine the exact face and body shapes, the volumes and it’s always a very complicated challenge if we haven’t met the person… 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.”
At the second time of asking, fans can now make a pilgrimage to the site of Johnson’s doppelganger without having to question why it doesn’t even resemble him in skin tone, so at least that’s one issue we can put to bed for good.