Why Madame Tussauds went into meltdown
Olly Alexander poses mid-step in an empty corridor, stomach bared in a black lace crop, ring-clad fingers pointing towards the exit. Visitors milling through Madame Tussauds walk past, seemingly without recognising Britain’s Eurovision entrant (though one French couple I speak to has heard of the competition, at least.) After ranking 18th of 25 in this year’s contest, it’s hard to imagine the waxwork Alexander being swarmed by selfie-taking tourists anytime soon.
Alexander is, objectively, famous: the former frontman of pop outfit Years & Years has had two Number One albums, a clutch of chart-topping singles and six Brit Award nominations; he also starred in the Bafta-winning It’s a Sin, and has over 2m followers online. Yet his figure also seems proof of the bottomless nature of modern fame: that there are now so many ‘celebrities’, it’s impossible to know who most of them are.
Since opening in London 250 years ago, Tussauds’ job has been “to always keep our finger on the pulse...we maintain a keen interest in the trajectory of fame and anticipating those who will make an impact,” according to Bimala Meeuws, head of marketing at the London outpost (there are 23 globally, including Vienna, Hong Kong, Hollywood and Blackpool). But inside what feels somewhere between a nightclub and theme park, where music blares, strobe lighting flashes and bemused staff will recreate your hand in wax for a mere ￡29, figures are either encircled by fans waving their smartphones, or ignored entirely. Eddie Redmayne doesn’t get a look-in; Lady Gaga garners equally little buzz (though that could be because her waxwork at best shares a passing resemblance).
Of the Kim Kardashian figure, one visitor from Liverpool says “we thought that was Nicole Scherzinger”; her mother confuses Steven Spielberg in his director’s chair for a passerby having a sitdown. An Italian couple I speak to estimate the number of figures they know as “half and half.” On the other side of the room, Angelina Jolie is a hit, judging by the man faux kissing ‘her’ in a series of photos being taken by his beleaguered girlfriend.
Madame Tussauds opened in London 250 years ago, perhaps the first real paean to fame at a time when “people were much more interested in royalty, aristocracy, military leaders, and politicians,” Meeuws says. Figures made by the eponymous Marie Tussaud, an artist who was imprisoned during the French Revolution and forced to make death masks of executed nobles as proof of loyalty to the king, “existed when there was no widespread photography, and in fact were a way for the general public to see the famous names of the day.”
Yet with the advent of images, film and now social media, celebrities have never been more accessible. Fan reactions now drive both how fast their star might rise, and “how quickly someone can leave the forefront of public interest.”
Last month, the London HQ announced that their newest figure will be Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa; actor Timothée Chalamet will also join the line-up in 2024. Recent additions include Lil Nas X, Ranveer Singh and RuPaul.
If your reaction to any (or all) of the previous is: who?, blame the present-day “fame fission.” That’s how Ellis Cashmore, author of Celebrity Culture, describes the current celebrity landscape, adding that “there’s more forms of fame every year… Fame reproduces itself and divides into different groups, and then some parts just die out.”
There are over 150 waxworks at Tussauds in London, which is visited by 2.5m people per year (per figures from Trainline) – down from 15m a decade ago. Tussauds, which gets two thirds of its crowds from overseas, will only say that its parent company Merlin Entertainments “welcomed 62m visitors to its 141 attractions across 23 countries in 2023” – but numbers are down from 67m overall in 2019.
London’s attractions have seen variable fortunes since the pandemic: the British Museum’s visitors are up 42 per cent on last year, but down seven per cent on 2019, according to figures from the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions. The Tate Modern, Southbank Centre, V&A and National Gallery are also far behind where they were five years ago, with crowds down at least a fifth, while the Natural History Museum and the Crown Estate are among those to see a modest increase. In March, a Merlin spokesperson said that they were planning to bring in surge pricing across 20 of their global attractions – something that should further boost their revenues, which reached a record ￡2.1bn in 2023.
Though visitor numbers themselves appear to be dropping, Tussauds maintains that “the natural curiosity we all have around celebrity isn’t changing.” Figures vary around the world; Lady Gaga’s waxwork was unveiled in London in 2010, yet debuted in Berlin for the first time this year. (And this time looks like Lady Gaga...)
“There are certain figures that are in high demand across all US attractions like Dwayne Johnson, Beyoncé, Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift,” explains Kim Schrader, regional studio manager for locations across the US.
“Our figures reflect those celebrities our visitors want to see, based on extensive monitoring and research by our global and local teams. We use industry data to discover who’s globally popular as well as those that are in high demand within the specific city where the attraction is located,” she says. They don’t want to reveal their exact method, but the decision-making process combines data analysis and human expertise, taking into account “factors like social media engagement, news mentions, brand endorsements, critical acclaim and more.”
They will soon add Drew Barrymore and Andy Cohen, the reality TV impresario, to their roster. Meanwhile in Sydney, next up is Robert Irwin (the most popular figures there are Steve Irwin, Robert’s conservationist father, and the Hemsworth brothers). Septuagenarian singer Robert Kaiser, along with Gaga, is among the new names in Berlin.
Beeuws says that “we’re very picky” when it comes to who to immortalise in wax. “The modern world of celebrity moves incredibly fast and one of the many things we need to consider is longevity – we’re expecting each figure to remain popular in the attraction for five to 10 years.”
That’s becoming an increasingly tall order. “Celebrity is effectively very fickle,” says art historian Leslie Primo. “In our age, when there are so many around, it becomes increasingly difficult to actually hold that celebrity status for any long period of time.” Primo notes that a growing problem in art – establishing who the subjects of unnamed portraits are – could soon also afflict Tussauds’ thousands of global waxworks. Hundreds of years ago, fame was a status so rare that those recreated would be instantly recognisable – but the people lauded today rarely reach the same monocultural renown, Primo says.
Where Tussauds is concerned, unless the figures are paired with something signifying why they were famous to serve as a clue for future generations, “we are going to be in pretty much the same position.” Today’s “overabundance of celebrities” may feel like a modern affliction. But Primo explains that our obsession with the self began in the Renaissance – or “the first ‘I’ generation”. (Not long before, portraits had rarely even shared a likeness with their subjects, the first to do so being Holbein’s 1537 mural of Henry VIII).
Still, the celebrities of that day were Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo; the age of reality TV and influencers has flattened that otherworldliness, with today’s most-vaunted more likely to be ordinary folk than superstars. The very upper echelons of fame are still reserved for a select few, but influencers walk among us; is not uncommon to find yourself, as I did a fortnight ago, in conversation with someone who has appeared on Love Island, written a book and is one half of an Instagram power-couple, who you have never seen nor heard of. (And likely never will again.)
By all accounts, fame today is more a point in time than a lifelong status. But there is one section of Tussauds to have retained its appeal for a quarter of a millennium: the royals. Meeuws says their continued popularity “shows that the general public’s interests do hold some consistency” (though adds that “how we present them has changed over the last two decades, focusing much more on figures of the senior royals and less on the wider family”).
History suggests they will pass Tussauds’ 10-year test with flying colours. Though they may be the only ones.
