It’s been nearly five years since One Direction broke up and it appears that Madame Tussauds has finally come to terms with that.
The waxwork museum has taken the statues of the boyband out of its exhibit - seven years after they were first unveiled - and there are apparently no plans to display any of them solo at this time.
According to The Sun, Madame Tussauds London decided to remove the statues of Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne and Zayn Malik following the band’s tenth anniversary celebration this past July. Celebrity waxworks are regularly cycled out of the museum as it told The Sun it “reacts to the celebrity landscape.”
The band’s waxworks were first unveiled in 2013 and the group posed for an eerie photoshoot with their lookalikes. Their sculptures were made by twenty craftsmen who worked on the statues over two months, with principal sculptor Stephen Mansfield saying that they worked around the “boys’ crazy schedule” to ensure they were perfect.
After Zayn Malik decided to leave the band in 2015, Madame Tussauds employed a Tissue Assistant to stand by the group’s waxworks as the company revealed there was a spike in fans overcome by emotion at the sight of Malik standing alongside the group’s other members.
Tissue assistant Grace Cadden said to Yahoo at the time, “Many [fans] have also been teary eyed, but we've had a delivery of 150 boxes of tissues over the weekend so we're prepared."
Celebrity statues have been removed in the past, with previously retired statues including Justin Bieber, Cheryl Cole and more.
