Swirl about “Queen Cleopatra”
Director responds to “blackwashing” allegations
Adele James plays the Egyptian pharaoh in Queen Cleopatra.
©Netflix
After criticism from Egypt, a director of “Queen Cleopatra” has now commented on the “blackwashing” allegation about the Netflix series.
In the upcoming Netflix docuseries Queen Cleopatra, the famous Egyptian pharaoh will be portrayed by black actress Adele James. This circumstance recently triggered criticism in Egypt. A case of so-called “blackwashing” is said to exist, i.e. the deliberate casting of a role with a black actress who should actually be embodied by a white actress. Tina Gharavi (50), one of the directors of the Netflix series, has now commented on this controversy.
“Certainly not white like Elizabeth Taylor”
Critics had previously complained that the real Cleopatra came from a Macedonian-Greek family and therefore could not have been black. But Netflix director Gharavi, who directed four episodes of “Queen Cleopatra,” opposes precisely this argument in an article in the US trade journal “Variety”.. Because Cleopatra’s family of European descent had lived in Egypt for 300 years before the pharaoh was born, which, according to Gharavi, would make it “quite unlikely” that she was white.
The streaming service Netflix had previously contributed to the documentary called the casting of black actress James a “creative decision” and “a nod to centuries of debate about the ruler’s ethnicity”. As director Gharavi notes in Variety, “So was Cleopatra black? We don’t know for sure, but we’re sure she didn’t know like Elizabeth Taylor was.” The legendary Hollywood star played the Egyptian pharaoh in the four Oscar-winning 1963 film Cleopatra.