‘Queen Cleopatra’ Director Defends Casting Adele James as ‘Black’ Historical Figure

Queen Cleopatra director Tina Gharavi responds to the casting criticism of her Cleopatra epic. Academics and artists still debate what Cleopatra looked like millennia after the historical figure reigned as Queen of Egypt. In light of that, Netflix unveiled the trailer earlier this month for Queen Cleopatra, a new season of the docudrama anthology African Queens by Jada Pinkett Smith that explores the histories of various rulers from that continent throughout history. There has been some backlash from Egyptians who have expressed their displeasure at casting Black actress Adele James in the titular role, including at least one legal complaint from the Egyptian government. In a guest essay for Variety, Queen Cleopatra director Tina Gharavi responds to the casting criticism, saying that her team strove to make up for the inaccuracies of previous films that depicted the Egyptian queen as white.

“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,” Gharavi wrote. “What the historians can confirm is that it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did. “While shooting, I became the target of a huge online hate campaign. Egyptians accused me of “blackwashing” and “stealing” their history,” she continued. “Some threatened to ruin my career — which I wanted to tell them was laughable. I was ruining it very well for myself, thank you very much! No amount of reasoning or reminders that Arab invasions had not yet happened in Cleopatra’s age seemed to stem the tide of ridiculous comments. Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian. “So, was Cleopatra Black?” Gharavi added. “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.”

In 1963, Taylor starred as the lead in Cleopatra, one of the most expensive movies ever made. In the French comedy Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra from 2002, Monica Bellucci starred as the queen. A movie from Patty Jenkins and Kari Skogland is expected to release in 2020 that will feature Gal Gadot as Cleopatra. “We’re going to show not just how sexy and appealing she was, but how strategic and smart, and how much impact she had and still has on the world we’re living in today,” Gadot said in a 2022 interview. “I’ve watched all the Cleopatra movies throughout history, but I feel like we’re telling the story the world needs to hear now.” Queen Cleopatra producers told Tudum earlier this month that “her ethnicity is not the focus of Queen Cleopatra, but we did intentionally decide to depict her of mixed ethnicity to reflect theories about Cleopatra’s possible Egyptian ancestry and the multicultural nature of ancient Egypt.” Queen Cleopatra will debut on Netflix on May 10.