Mr Clean? A pebble? Billy Zane with a shellfish allergy? Whatever you think it looks like, The Rock isn’t best pleased…
Il y a du bœuf.
Indeed, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has got beef with French museum, Le Musée Grévin.
In an Instagram post, Dwayne Johnson said his team would be in touch with Grévin Museum to request changes after its waxwork model of the actor was mocked by the internet.
Johnson posted a video of comedian James Andre Jefferson Jr. roasting the statue. Jefferson said the Paris museum made The Rock look like a “pebble”.
“Is this how y’all felt when you lost the Little Mermaid?” Jefferson joked.
We thought the replica of the star of Moana, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Black Adam looked more like a jacked up Billy Zane suffering from a shellfish allergy.
Johnson said: “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.”
The Grévin Museum said that it was “reworking” the statue of American star and that a new version would be unveiled today (Tuesday 24 October).
“They’re going to work all night on it so that it’s more in line with the expectations of his fans”, said Yves Delhommeau, general manager of the Musée Grévin, adding that the teams were “also going to change the lighting because there was a question of the light lightening his skin texture”.
The Grévin Museum, which welcomes 800,000 visitors a year and features more than 250 celebrities, had already sparked controversy in 2018 when it presented a sculpture – unsuccessful by its own admission – of the likeness of Emmanuel Macron.
The addition of the wax statue of the wrestler-turned-actor is the result of a competition called the Grévin Awards, launched by the museum in March 2022. Internet users were asked to choose which of ten international stars they would like to see in the Grévin Museum.
Johnson won out (totalling 48% in the poll) over Ariana Grande, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Dua Lipa, Elon Musk, Selena Gomez, Lupita Nyong’o, Chris Pratt and Margot Robbie.
One wax statue takes six months to create and costs between €50,000 and €60,000.