Black Cleopatra In New Netflix Series Prompts Egyptian Broadcaster To Make Its Own With Light-Skinned Actress

Netflix

By Melissa Noel ·Updated May 12, 2023

In response to Netflix casting a mixed race actress to play Cleopatra in a new series, a government-owned Egyptian media station says it will produce a documentary depicting the queen with an actress with more European features and lighter skin.

Adele James, an actress of British and Jamaican heritage, will star in the latest installment of Netflix’s docudrama anthology, “African Queens,” portraying the first-century queen as a woman with African roots, according to Variety.

Since the trailer for “Queen Cleopatra,” produced by Jada Pinkett Smith, dropped last month, there has been backlash among local academics and others in Egypt. They claim that Cleopatra, born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 69 BC, belonged to a Greek-speaking dynasty and was of European descent, not Black.

To combat what critics of the docudrama describe as a fabrication of history, the Al Wathaeqya channel, a division of United Media Services, is going into production with a documentary starring a fair-skinned actress as Cleopatra.

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, a government department focusing on heritage, is one of those critics. According to the council via a Twitter post, “statues of Queen Cleopatra confirm that she had Hellenistic (Greek) features, distinguished by light skin, a drawn-out nose, and thin lips.”

One critic is Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, a department of government that focuses on heritage. The council stated, via a Twitter post, that “Statues of Queen Cleopatra confirm that she had Hellenistic (Greek) features, distinguished by light skin, a drawn-out nose, and thin lips.”

Tina Gharavi, director of “African Queens,” responded to the backlash in an op-ed piece in Variety. Gharavi defended the decision to cast a Black woman as Cleopatra, asking, “Why do some people need Cleopatra to be white?”

“Perhaps it’s not just that I’ve directed a series that portrays Cleopatra as Black, but that I have asked Egyptians to see themselves as Africans, and they are furious at me for that,” Gharavi said.