'Queen Cleopatra' director defends Netflix documentary

Queen Cleopatra director Tina Gharayi defended the upcoming Netflix docudrama after criticism over the Black actress's casting in the lead role.

Writing in Variety, the filmmaker argues, “it’s more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor,” who famously portrayed the historical figure in 1963’s Cleopatra.

“For me, the idea that people had gotten it so incredibly wrong before — historically, from Theda Bara to Monica Bellucci, and recently, with Angelina Jolie and Gal Gadot in the running to play her — meant we had to get it even more right,” penned Gharayi.

She added, “Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white? Her proximity to whiteness seems to give her value, and for some Egyptians it seems to really matter.”

“After much hang-wringing and countless auditions, we found in Adele James an actor who could convey not only Cleopatra’s beauty but also her strength. she continued. What the historians can confirm is that it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did.”

"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. I am okay with this.

So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure, but we can be certain she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor. We need to have a conversation with ourselves about our colorism, and the internalized white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with," she said.

Previously, an Egyptian lawyer sued Netflix's new documentary on Cleopatra for 'blackwashing' the queen.

According to Egypt Independent, the lawyer moved to take serious action against the documentary makers and ban the streaming service in Egypt following the release of the documentary’s trailer.

Mahmoud al-Semary alleges Afrocentrism is promoted instead of Egyptian history in the documentary.

The attorney dubbed the upcoming program on the historical figure as a “crime” and slammed Netflix’s management team for “forgery.”