Unhappy with Netflix’s portrayal of Cleopatra as a black woman, one Egypt-based broadcast network is responding by releasing a documentary of its own.
Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities previously released a statement condemning the Jada Pinkett Smith-produced docuseries, claiming it didn’t truly reflect history.
“Queen Cleopatra had light skin and Hellenistic (Greek) features,” the original statement said, insisting that the project “should be based on historical and scientific facts, to ensure that history and civilizations are not falsified.”
Now, the Al Wathaeqya channel, a subsidiary of Egypt’s state-affiliated United Media Services, has announced that their new Cleopatra documentary will showcase a lighter-skinned version of the queen, per Variety.
“Based on what is always usual in all the work of the Documentary Production Sector and Wathaeqya Channel, there are work sessions currently being held with a number of specialists in history, archeology, and anthropology. In order to subject research related to the subject of the film and its image to the utmost levels of research and study,” the channel said in a statement.
While it’s impossible to determine the real Cleopatra’s actual skin tone, it’s widely accepted by historians that she had a lighter complexion. This has caused some Egyptian scholars to vocally oppose the casting in Netflix’s documentary.
“We have not discovered her tomb. We have not been left with any contemporary descriptions of her. We do not know who her mother was nor who her grandmother was,” Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Monica Hanna told CBS News.
In April, “African Queens: Queen Cleopatra” director Tina Gharavi responded to criticism about casting black actress Adele James to play the titular role, as The Daily Wire previously reported. She said casting a black actress was no different than giving the role to Elizabeth Taylor, whose image was also “not right,” in her estimation.
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“Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a black actress,” Gharavi wrote in an article for Variety.
“Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white?” she asked. “Her proximity to whiteness seems to give her value, and for some Egyptians it seems to really matter,” she said.
Ultimately, Gharavi said she didn’t care if Egyptians were “furious” with her project.
“So, was Cleopatra black? We don’t know for sure, but we can be certain she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor,” she wrote. “We need to have a conversation with ourselves about our colorism, and the internalized white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with.”