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The Newest Cleopatra Casting Controversy Isn’t What You Might Expect
The battle continues
In July of 2021, I wrote an article about the uproar over a film about Cleopatra that actress Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins were in the process of making, with Gadot in the title role. In a nutshell, the controversy centered on the casting of Gadot, who is Israeli, as the famous Egyptian queen. Most of those expressing outrage called it a case of “whitewashing” and demanded that an Arab actress be cast as Cleopatra, which is what prompted my initial article.
In a way, the newest controversy swings to the opposite end of the spectrum. Egyptian scholars are protesting the upcoming Netflix docuseries, African Queens: Queen Cleopatra, over the casting of a Black biracial actress as Cleopatra, going so far as to call it (as reported on Indiewire.com) a case of “blackwashing” the true ethnicity of the Egyptian Queen. Egyptian lawyer Mahmoud al-Semary has demanded that Netflix be blocked in Egypt over the casting of actress Adele James as Cleopatra and “slogans and writings aimed at distorting and erasing the Egyptian identity.”
In both cases, the controversy centers around the true ethnicity of Cleopatra, which seems like something that should not be controversial at all. She was Queen of Egypt, which means she was Egyptian, right?
