Netflix is facing a global uproar over an upcoming documentary it plans to air in May about Cleopatra.
The controversial documentary is produced by Jada Pinkett Smith and is the second installment of a series highlighting black queens from various historical periods.
Why the uproar? Because Pinkett Smith not only depicts Cleopatra as black in her documentary, but her statements supporting the depiction of Cleopatra as black are historically inaccurate.
Although Netflix hasn’t released a statement to date, they have noticed. The comments have been disabled on the official YouTube trailer and users can no longer see how many “dislikes” the trailer has received from people across the internet.
Prior to disabling the “dislike” feature, more than 250,000 people had pressed the thumbs down button on the trailer.
The uproar has also led to a response from Tine Gharavi, director of the documentary, which appeared exclusively in Variety. In her response, it’s clear that she’s not a historian, nor has an interest in depicting anything historically accurate in the documentary.
She blames Hollywood for the “stranglehold” on Cleopatra’s image, referring to Elizabeth Taylor’s depiction in the 1963 film.
The Egyptian government issued a statement that demands the show’s cancellation. The government argued that documentary nature of the feature “requires those in charge of its production to investigate accuracy and rely on historical and scientific facts.”
Dr. Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in the statement that Cleopatra’s appearance in the show was a “falsification of Egyptian history and a blatant historical fallacy.”
“The Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities confirms that Queen Cleopatra had light skin and Hellenistic [Greek] features,” according to the statement.
He added that his complaint was “far from any ethnic racism, stressing full respect for African civilizations and for our brothers in the African continent that brings us all together.”
Meanwhile, an Egyptian lawyer has filed a complaint demanding that legal measures are taken to block Netflix outright in Egypt, to prevent the show from airing. The complaint claims the docudrama, which drops May 10, violates the country’s media laws.
Another high profile Egyptian official, former Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass,took to the international media and described depicting Queen Cleopatra as a black woman as “falsifying facts”, adding that “This is completely fake. Cleopatra was Greek.”
In a statement provided to the media in promotion of the series, Pinkett-Smith argued, “We don’t often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!”
“Cleopatra is a queen who many know about, but not in her truth,” she added. “She’s been displayed as overtly sexual, excessive, and corrupt, yet she was a strategist, an intellect, a commanding force of nature, who fought to protect her kingdom…and her heritage is highly debated. This season will dive deeper into her history and re-assesses this fascinating part of her story.”
The problem with Pinkett Smith’s statement, according to all who are protesting– Cleopatra’s heritage has not been highly debated. Historical records prove that Cleopatra was not black but rather Macedonian Greek, having inherited both her heritage and her throne as the queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt through her blood relation to the founder of the Ptoelmic Empire, Ptolemy I Soter.
