The Musée Grévin, a museum in Paris, France that specializes in wax figures of famous people came under fire recently for a sculpture of Johnson that many found to be too light skinned to represent the actor, who is multi-ethnic.
Some people took to social media to accuse the museum of “white washing” the figure of the “Black Adam” star, commenting that the recently unveiled likeness suffered from a “melanin deficiency.”
Johnson, whose late father, the wrestler Rocky Johnson, was of Black Nova Scotian descent and his mother, Ata Maivia, is Samoan, saw the outrage and addressed it Sunday on social media.
Johnson posted a video of comedian James Andre Jefferson talking about the wax figure and wrote in the caption, “I knew my boy @jamesjeffersonj had this Rock wax statue in his roasting crosshair.”
“‘Is this how y’all felt when you lost the Little Mermaid?’” he quoted Jefferson as saying, adding a laughing emoji.
“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,” Johnson wrote.
According to the museum’s site, “After Dwayne Johnson was chosen at the first edition of the Grévin Awards, sculptor Stéphane Barret had to rely on photos and videos to create a statue as close to reality as possible, without the presence of the international star.”- CNN
