Actress Jada Pinkett Smith believes it is important to talk about “stories of black queens” and, in her desire to reclaim the most powerful women in Africa’s history with the documentary series African Queens: Queen Cleopatra Netflix, caused outrage in Egypt.
The reason? Choosing a Black British Actress, Adele Jamesto interpret the iconic Cleopatra in the project that she herself Jada Pinkett Smith (wife of actor Will Smith) tells and produces.
He defends from the production that the color of his skin was “highly questionable” because, while his paternal ancestors are known, there is no information about his mother’s origin.
What is known is that on his father’s side, whose family tree goes back to General Ptolemy, his family came from Macedonia, so experts assume he didn’t necessarily have African traits. Additionally, she was educated in Hellenic culture, speaking Greek privately.
a formal protest
However, Netflix has already received a formal complaint from lawyer Mahmoud al-Semary, according to the BBCOf violating Egypt’s media laws and further attempting to “erase Egyptian identity”. He criticized the promotion of such “Afrocentric” thought content and even asked for it access to the content platform from Egypt is prohibited.
This was stated directly by the prestigious Zahi Hawass, former minister of antiquities of the North African country and Egyptologist, It’s “completely false” that the pharaoh born in Alexandria in 69 BC was black: “Cleopatra was Greek, which means that she had fair skin, not black.”
Hawass also found that the only black rulers in Egypt’s history were the Kushite kings between the 8th and 7th centuries BC”Netflix tries to create confusion by spreading false facts and misleading about the origin of Egyptian civilization as black,” he explained to a local media outlet, demanding that the public openly show their rejection and disagreement to Netflix.
Similar cases on the platform
It’s not the first time Netflix has sparked the conversation about casting actors to play rulers. The vintage series The Bridgertonsone of his most successful productions, presents Queen Charlotte as black due to rumors of Brazilian ancestry of George III’s wife.
In this case, the production has gone even further: it even imagines a biracial English aristocracy as a result of this marriage.
The difference is that while The Bridgertons it is sold as a fiction that uses elements of the past to build a fictional story, in theory African queens has a historical calling for reclaiming powerful African women and, incidentally, empowering new generations of people of color.
And, at the same time, to what extent can it be excluded that she did not also have African origins and that, therefore, the features of Adele James, who is biracial, are adequate to represent her? As of May 10, the series can be seen on Netflix.
Source: Clarin
