Queen CleopatraDirector Tina Gharavi isspeaking out against the backlashsurrounding the upcoming Netflix docudrama. The series starsCasualtystar Adele James as the iconic Egyptian ruler. The casting choice stirred up controversy, andan Egyptian lawyer has sued the streamerfor “erasing the Egyptian identity” by featuring a Black Cleopatra. In film, Cleopatra has been portrayed by white actresses, including Claudette Colbert, Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren, and Monica Belluci. Elizabeth Taylor’s portrayal in the 1963 filmCleopatrais perhaps the most famous iteration. In a recent essay forVariety, Gharavi defendsQueen Cleopatra’s casting writing that “it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did.”
“I remember as a kid seeing Elizabeth Taylor play Cleopatra. I was captivated, but even then, I felt the image was not right,” Gharavi recalls. “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?”
Gharavi also shares that she has become part of an online hate campaign where Egyptians accuse her of “blackwashing” their history. She wonders where this outrage was when HBO’s Rome depicted the Egyptian ruler as a “sleazy, dissipated drug addict.” In that series, Cleopatra was portrayed by English actress Lyndsey Marshal.
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A Cleopatra for the 21st Century
For her version of Cleopatra, Gharavi, born in Iran and Persian, relied on “known facts” about Cleopatra’s much-discussed lineage:
“…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.”
That information and her research amplified Gharavi’s desire to get the casting right to “bring Cleopatra into the 21st century.” Gharavi admits that she does not know if Cleopatra was Black but that “we can be certain she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor.” Gharavi believes that the outrage at the James casting points to a bigger problem with “colorism,” adding that Cleopatra’s “proximity to whiteness seems to give her value.”
The director concludes her poignant essay with a unifying message:
“I am proud to stand with Queen Cleopatra — a re-imagined Cleopatra — and with the team that made this. We re-imagined a world over 2,000 years ago where once there was an exceptional woman who ruled. I would like to draw a direct line from her to the women in Egypt who rose up in the Arab uprisings, and to my Persian sisters who are today rebelling against a brutal regime. Never before has it been more important to have women leaders: white or Black.”
Queen Cleopatrapremieres May 10. It is executive produced by Jada Pinkett Smith as part of a new documentary series exploring the lives of prominent andiconic African Queens.
