Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has just been turned into a white man.
The Samoan actor became a new flagship for Musée Grévin in Paris, a museum specializing in wax figures that just unveiled his arguable likeness. Baffled social media users rightfully noted the skin tone of this figure was far lighter than Johnson’s actual pigment.
“They whitewashed The Rock,” wrote one user on X, formerly Twitter.
Countless users echoed the sentiment that the museum “turned the rock into a white man” and likened him to Mr. Clean, the Procter & Gamble mascot for all-purpose cleaners who — while certainly bald like Johnson — has historically been a white man.
Johnson was born to a Black Nova Scotian father and a Samoan mother. The California-born actor, who made his bones as a wrestler before becoming a Hollywood A-lister, famously spends much of his time on the plights of Hawaiians — where he lived as a teenager.
While the Musée Grévin presumably didn’t intentionally lighten his skin tone, the finished product has confused social media users. One person noted that “this is so bad,” with another commenting: “I didn’t know Rock was a white man.”
“It’s like the artist who was sculpting the wax statue of Dwayne Johnson had to leave out of sickness in the middle of it, and as a prank, they told his replacement that it was supposed to be a Vin Diesel statue,” joked another user on the platform.
That particular dig regarded a publicized spat between the “Fast and the Furious” co-stars.
Musée Grévin has been in the wax figure business for over a century. One of the oldest museums of its kind in all of Europe, their previous work includes Michael Jackson, President Joe Biden, King Charles III — and the masked “Ghostface” killer from “Scream.”
While these successfully resembled their subjects, Johnson’s reminded many of the infamous 2017 bust of Cristiano Ronaldo — which was so lambasted that the creators later reworked it. Johnson’s might be headed that way if the reactions are any sign.
“He’s missing melanin,” one person commented on the museum’s Instagram post. “FIX IT!”
Another wrote: “Why’s he white? And when are you going to fix it?”
The Rock himself has yet to comment on the matter and is presumably busy with the new nonprofit he launched alongside Oprah Winfrey to help Hawaiians devastated by recent wildfires. Whether his wax figure will actually get a makeover remains to be seen.
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