As far as celebrity wax works and statues go, it can be a big risk to take. Just ask Cristiano Ronaldo.
Luckily for model Megan Gale and her waxy doppelgänger, which has just been unveiled at Madame Tussauds in Sydney, it has us seeing double.
“I was blown away. You go through the sitting, which takes over three hours, you have all the measurements done and you start to wonder – OK, will I think this looks like me? Will they get the likeness right?” Megan tells us.
“When the time comes and you actually see it, it’s pretty spot on.”
Megan and her wax work strike a pose.
Rocking a one-off Alex Perry dress and her signature pose, Megan admits even her loved ones thought it was her when they first saw a photo of her wax work.
“River just thought it was a photo of mum,” she laughs of her three-year-old son’s reaction.
“They take over 250 measurements, they insert each hair strand by strand. They have a library of different coloured eyes – they couldn’t quite find the right eye colour so they had to custom-make an eye because they wanted to get it right. There’s even the tattoo on the back of my neck,” she says of the meticulous process.
The one thing that’s been left out of course is the 41-year-old’s baby bump.
It’s not every day you get to snap a selfie with yourself!
Last month Megan and her partner, AFL player Shaun Hampson, announced they were expecting their second child together.
But it hasn’t come without a few scares after the cover girl injured her ankle and just last week was rushed to hospital with food poisoning.
Further heightening Megan’s fears for her unborn baby is the fact she suffered a miscarriage last year.
“I’m much better, I was a bit shaky last week. The pregnancy is going beautifully – every scan and test I’ve had they’re saying the baby is absolutely thriving in there. That’s all you can really hope and wish for,” she says.
Megan and Shaun are expecting their second baby together.
The star says her second pregnancy has left her quite fatigued and she’s resting up as much as possible.
“With River, I had as close to a perfect pregnancy you can get. My skin was great, I felt healthy and active. This pregnancy, my skin’s been very dry, reactive and sensitive. I haven’t really had a lot of energy so that’s affected my health and fitness routine.”
“The most important thing is to rest and recharge. I do like to be mindful of what I’m putting on my skin and in my body knowing that everything gets transferred through to the baby,” Megan explains.
As they count down to welcome their newest family member, Megan and Shaun are making the most of their time with River.
“I want to spend as much time with River as I can while it is just the three of us. We’ve had a beautiful three years but we’re really pumped and excited for the next phase.”
“We’re already saying, ‘You have to help with the baby and we need you there!’ We’re very conscious of including him in the experience and getting him excited. He’s a pretty chilled kid,” she says of River’s impending big brother duties.
Megan also reveals she’s taking a very different approach to her birthing plan this time around.
“You just don’t know what kind of labour you’re going to have. You have to go into labour with an open mind. It’s good to have a rough plan but don’t have expectations. If you have expectations and things don’t go the way you want in your head – you can get disappointed.”
“[With River’s birth] very quickly I was like ‘this is a bigger beast than I can control!’ You’ve got to go with the flow and let it unfold because it’s mother nature and you can’t control it.”
“And that’s actually what’s beautiful about it. You’ve got to stay calm and go with it,” she tells us.
One of the most rewarding things to come out of parenthood is seeing her partner Shaun, 29, as a dad.
“He is the best dad! He hadn’t had much experience with kids, which didn’t worry me because I know how calm he is.”
“I knew that such a big change, like becoming a father, that he’d be able to take it in his stride. He’s absolutely wonderful and he’s got such a beautiful bond with our son. He’s a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful role model for River,” she beams.
For now, the couple are in no rush to get married.
“We definitely feel like creating a child together is for life. Marriages are great and it’s wonderful to unite yourselves in that way but I don’t think it makes any difference really to the validity of your relationship.”
“It is a lovely thing to do and a great celebration but it doesn’t make that much difference at the end of the day.”
“When you start creating human lives together, you’re bonded for life. It’s not like we’ve chosen that over marriage, that’s the direction we wanted to go in. That was more important.”
Shaun’s seamless ease into fatherhood further proves to naysayers that their 12-year age gap is irrelevant. And we can’t help but cheer when the Next Top Model star calls out the double standards that still exist.
“I think if I was going out with someone 12 years older they’d be like ‘Oh! She’s found a nice man!’ If it’s the other way around [with a woman dating a younger man], it’s seen as a bit scandalous and taboo,” she admits.
“A very big deal’s made out of it, the same with Deborra-Lee Furness and Hugh Jackman. The same when Demi Moore was with Ashton Kutcher.”
“These names get bandied about like ‘toyboy’, ‘cougar’ – which I think are a little bit insulting,” she points out.
“I feel like it’s a double standard and we’re beyond that now – we just see ourselves as equal.”
The couple love being parents.
