Netflix is being accused of “blackwashing” the history of Egypt’s famed queen Cleopatra in its new docuseries that stars a black women in the title role. The attacks became so persistent that the streamer turned off comments on social media posts debuting the trailer for the series.
The four-part series Queen Cleopatra, from Executive Producer Jada Pinkett Smith, stars Adele James as Queen Cleopatra, and features the 37-year-old actress sporting a full afro hairstyle in the role, even though it is being sold as a documentary-style, historically-based treatment of the ruler’s tumultuous life.
Due to stream on May 10, Queen Cleopatra will explore the legacy and life of Cleopatra VII, the Greek Queen of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC. Cleopatra has always been known to be of Macedonian Greek heritage and was a woman of olive skin-tone, with a prominent aquiline nose common among Romans and Greeks.
Despite the long-established facts about Cleopatra’s life, the Pinkett Smith-produced series has race-swapped Cleopatra.
“It’s possible she was an Egyptian” one “expert” says in the trailer for the show, according to the Daily Mail. Meanwhile, another claims that, “I remember my grandmother saying to me ‘I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black.'”
These contentious claims, though, forced Netflix to get ahead of the growing number of attacks on the series by turning off comments on social media sites such as YouTube.
The comment shut off came ahead of a Change.org petition demanding that the show be shelved that had amassed over 85,000 signatures before the pages was removed.
Many have also flooded social media blasting the fake news and lore that Cleopatra is a black woman.
Writer, historian, and Christian author Kemi Owonibi blasted the series, saying, “For the nth time, the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra was not an Egyptian. She was Greek! Cleopatra VII was white—of Macedonian descent, likewise all the Ptolemy rulers, who lived in Egypt.”
Others agreed:
For her part, star, Adele James, jumped to her own Twitter account to attack those who ware criticizing the blackwashing of Cleopatra, and telling them if they don’t like the idea, they should just not watch the show. She also said she would block all detractors.
But several Muslim commenters scolded the actress for her cultural appropriation of their heritage.
This is not the first time that an historical figure has been reimagined as a black person despite the fact that they were most assuredly not. In 2021, a British drama shown on AMC cast black actress Jodie Turner-Smith as 16th century English queen and second bride of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn.
Boleyn was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, later Earl of Wiltshire and Earl of Ormond, and his wife, Elizabeth Howard, who was the daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and was born between 1501 and 1507 in Norfolk, England. She could not possibly have been black.
The series was a ratings flop for BBC Channel 5 in the UK, and fared no better on AMC in the U.S.
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