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.
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”, counters this very 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.
In a contribution to the documentary, the streaming service Netflix had previously described the casting of black actress James as a “creative decision” and “an allusion to the centuries-old 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.
