Whoever that’s supposed to be, it isn’t Lil Wayne.
Following the debacle surrounding Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s “whitewashed” figure at Paris’s Musée Grévin, rap fans unearthed a 2022 video of Wayne’s figure on display at the Hollywood Wax Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Fans weren’t happy with how Wayne, 41, was recreated in wax, with many wondering, “Who is that man” supposed to be? “Why does this look like him but also doesn’t?” commented one fan, who saw how the artist did their best to recreate Wayne’s tattoos, facial features and grin.
The reaction got so loud online that even Wayne had to weigh in. “Sorry, wax museum, but dat s—t ain’t me!” he tweeted on Monday, October 23. Still, he was kind in his reaction. “You tried, tho, and I appreciate the effort.”
While many might think of New York’s Madame Tussauds when it comes to wax celebrities, the Hollywood Wax Museum is just as prominent of an institution in celebrity culture. The museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is just one of four Hollywood Wax Museums, with others found in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Branson, Missouri, and Hollywood, California — the cultural attraction first opened in 1965, the brainchild of Indian-Canadian entrepreneur Spoony Singh.
The Branson location was opened in 1996, followed by Pigeon Forge in 2012 and Myrtle Beach in 2014.
Us Weekly has reached out for comment about Wayne’s reaction to his likeness.
Wayne’s wax headache comes right after Johnson, 51, had to lay the smackdown following the uproar of his figure at the Musée Grévin. After the museum unveiled the figure on October 16, fans remarked that its skin tone was incorrect, considering Johnson’s background. The Moana star’s father, Rocky Johnson, was Black Nova Scotian, while his mother, Ata Johnson, is Samoan-American.
Though the wax figure had Johnson’s muscles, smirk and overall appearance down, the whitening of the skin didn’t sit well with the former WWE champion. “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,” Johnson wrote on October 22, adding that they would be “starting with my skin color.”
However, Johnson wasn’t totally mad over the job done. “And next time I’m in Paris, I’ll stop in and have a drink with myself,” he added. The museum quickly acknowledged its error, telling Deadline they would “remedy it as quickly as possible and send him new photos once completed.”
