Queen Cleopatra’s descent and looks ignited global debate after Netflix was recently slammed with a legal suit by an Egyptian lawyer, Mahmoud al-Semary, who questioned the depiction of the Ptolemaic Egyptian Queen as a Black woman in Jada Smith’s Queen Cleopatra. The lawsuit also demands to shut down the streaming service in Egypt.
While the issue continues to boil in the courtroom, the upcoming Netflix documentary’s director, Tina Gharavi, has finally spoken her heart out. Feeling agitated by people’s wish to have a white Cleopatra, the director spoke of the hardships she faced to get things right for this series. In the process, Gharavi, who is of Iranian descent, became an easy target of hate campaigns.
Tina Gharavi Was Threatened Over Her Career
As the online debate regarding color continues to take down Queen Cleopatra’s crew with accusations of “blackwashing” and “stealing” the history of many Egyptians, the director of the upcoming Netflix documentary, Tina Gharavi has come forward to express her take on the series, and the controversial queen herself.
Responding to the backlash over casting Casualty star Adele James as Cleopatra, Gharavi expressed that “it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did,” referring to the 1963 film Cleopatra. Gharavi continued:
“I remember as a kid seeing Elizabeth Taylor play Cleopatra. I was captivated, but even then, I felt the image was not right. Was her skin really that white? With this new production, could I find the answers about Cleopatra’s heritage and release her from the stranglehold that Hollywood had placed on her image?”
Known for narrating the stories of rebels, misfits, and outsiders, Gharavi revealed how she became a target of online hate campaigns. She opened up about how Egyptians accused her of “blackwashing” their history, sarcastically pointing out how HBO’s Rome depicted the Egyptian ruler as a “sleazy, dissipated drug addict.” Cleopatra is played by English actress Lyndsey Marshal in that series.
Jada Pinkett Smith‘s upcoming series continues to face agitation from several historians and Egyptian critics, pointing out that the Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt was likely not Black. The lawsuit against Netflix has gained the support of several critics, like Former Egyptian Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass, who condemned the series for “falsifying facts.”
The Truth Behind Queen Cleopatra’s Descent
If we go by logical argument, Queen Cleopatra was the last Ptolemy ruler, which makes her of Greek or Macedonian descent. Tina Garavi also shed some light on the queen’s descent, preferring to rely on “known facts” about the lineage of the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. She said:
“Cleopatra’s heritage has been attributed at one time or another to the Greeks, the Macedonians, and the Persians. The known facts are that her Macedonian Greek family — the Ptolemaic lineage — intermarried with West Africa’s Seleucid dynasty and had been in Egypt for 300 years.
Cleopatra was eight generations away from these Ptolemaic ancestors, making the chance of her being white somewhat unlikely. After 300 years, surely, we can safely say Cleopatra was Egyptian.”
As the controversy continues to gain momentum, celebrities like Gal Gadot, who was declared in 2020 to portray Cleopatra in a new biopic directed by Patty Jenkins, supported Netflix, stating the that queen was Arab or African.
This is not the first time that Gadot spoke against such claims. The actress alleged that the role of the Egyptian queen should be played by an Arab or African actress. “First of all if you want to be true to the facts then Cleopatra was Macedonian,” Gadot told BBC Arabic in 2020.
Queen Cleopatra airs on Netflix on May 10. It is the second season of Jada Smith’s African Queens docudrama that previously followed the story of the 17th-century warrior Queen Njinga. Netflix faced one such controversy back in time when the Polish government slammed the streaming service for The Crown.
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Source: Variety
