Influencer finds her couple photo used in a Chinese drama, but her face was edited out and replaced with the show’s actress
Dutch influencer Rianne Meijer made a weird but funny discovery: a photo of her and her boyfriend was used in a Chinese TV series as a prop without her permission. But that's not all, her face in the photo was replaced with one of the actresses.
Meijer, who has over 98,000 followers on TikTok and 1.5 million followers on Instagram, shared a 22-second clip of her reaction to her discovery, which she captioned, “The internet is a funny place.”
In the TikTok video she posted, she first showed the original photo, where she and her boyfriend, Roy Atiya, a doctor, all cozied up in a hotel in Vitznau, Switzerland with a backdrop of calm waters and pastel skies. The photo was posted a day after Valentine’s Day in 2019.
Meijer then proceeded with a clip of a Chinese TV series called Summer Again, shown in the iQiyi platform. In the scene was a framed photo that was almost identical with hers. The only thing is, her face was replaced with an actress’ face.
According to iQiyi, Summer Again tells the story of a ballet dancer who is forced to leave the big city to go back to her hometown and learn how to live a small-town life.
“Who is that?” said Meijer, who almost broke into laughter but seemed genuinely concerned.
“I mean, they look good together, it’s fine,” she concluded the video.
In the comments section, people were curious on how she found out about the video. Meijer replied to one of the commenters, “I got a DM on Instagram from a girl who was watching the show and recognized the picture.”
Others were also weirded out by what happened.
“Dude, there are so many couple stock photos, why would they go to this effort?”
“The audacity to replace your face,” said another.
Some said the show should pay Meijer for using the influencer's photo, while several of her followers laughed at the incident.
This is not the first time this has happened with Chinese dramas. In a report by the South China Morning Post, several Chinese dramas have Photoshopped pictures of famous people for their props. This include the crime series Shadow of Justice in 2018, where it used a photo of a famous comedian Zhao Benshan during a funeral scene. The production had to publicly apologize on Weibo for it.
As of this writing, Meijer’s TikTok video has over 4.3 million views and over 780,000 likes.
Meijer also updated her followers in the comments section that the crew of the show already reached out to her and sent their apology.
“All good! They are so sweet and gave us a good laugh.”
The internet is such a funny place, indeed.