Anderson Cooper was being measured - but not for a new suit. Reuters reporter Tara Cleary and photographer Lucas Jackson watch as the CNN news anchor is cloned at Madame Tussauds.

"I never in a million years thought this would happen," says CNN's Anderson Cooper on the "set" of Madame Tussauds. "And, yeah, it's kind of creepy, the whole idea, but it's also really cool."

After selecting a facial expression, the Madame Tussauds team matches Cooper's eye and hair color. And paper dots all over the TV host's body ensure accurate dimensions. Tony Morris, who works in external relations for Tussauds, says meeting the subject is just as important as getting the 100-plus measurements.

"The sitting is the most crucial," Morris says. "To have the privilege of meeting the person and getting to know their personality, it shows a lot and it really does help the sculptor."

Over the course of four months, a team of about 15 people constructed the figure in London last fall. After the mold of the figure was made, the head was removed and worked on separately, which includes five weeks of intricate insertion of the hair. Principal sculptor Victoria Grant says the color of Cooper's hair was the hardest part of matching his likeness.

Four months later, once any differences between the real and the wax Cooper had been resolved, the figure was delivered to the set of Cooper's new daytime talk show. A normally chatty Cooper was almost at a loss for words.

"It's surreal, it is really strange. I mean, you always see this kind of stuff, you know, at Madame Tussauds, but to actually see yourself - you know you never have - I mean, I never have seen myself kind of as a three-dimensional and it's - really, really weird."

The wax Cooper now stands in New Yorks' Madame Tussauds.