A promotional advance in trailer format of just over two minutes has caused a social and political earthquake in Egypt. The next premiere of the docudrama ‘Queen Cleopatra’ (‘Queen Cleopatra’), scheduled for May 10 on Netflix, with the black actress Adele James playing the sovereign, has signs of becoming one of the most controversial issues of the moment. The idea of showing the supposed African roots of the governess and her family environment has infuriated the population, whose protests for allegedly distorting history even threaten to ask for the suspension and ban of the platform in the Arab country.
The matter came to the Prosecutor’s Office with the filing of a complaint by a lawyer, who demanded “serious legal action” against Netflix and demanded the blocking of the platform in Egypt. According to the lawyer’s arguments, collected by the local media ‘The Egypt Independent’, what is shown in the trailer by the platform “contradicts Islamic and social values and principles, especially Egyptian ones”, in addition to “promoting Afrocentrism” which, in his opinion, it would cause to erase the Egyptian identity.
In similar terms, a collection of signatures was also opened (later deleted) on ‘Change.org’ accusing the company of “falsifying the story”. He got the support of 85,000 signatories. In addition, a member of Parliament demanded measures from the Prime Minister, Mostafá Madbuli, to take action on the matter and ban the platform in the country. For her part, the protagonist of the docudrama, Adele James, expressed on social networks that she would not tolerate any type of insult or racist disqualification. “If you don’t like the casting, don’t watch the show,” she said in a message on Twitter, in which she also appealed to discuss the figure of Cleopatra with the participation of expert opinion.
Executive produced and narrated by Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of popular actor Will Smith, ‘Queen Cleopatra’ is a four-episode docudrama based on the figure and life of the reign of Cleopatra VII, between 51 and 30 BC According to the plot of the platform itself, she was “a powerful and misunderstood woman in the world,” whose “daring beauty” and her romances “came to eclipse her true asset: her intellect.” This is the continuation of a saga that premiered on the platform this year under the title of the ‘Queens of Africa’ series, dedicated to the stories of the continent’s monarchs and where, for example, Queen Njinga, who He governed the territories of Ndongo and Matamba, what is known today as Angola.
From the platform they defend that the creative decision to choose James “is a nod to the long conversation about the race of the sovereign.” Likewise, the producers of the series clarify that the project intends to “reveal the hidden stories of powerful women of the past” and, in the case of Cleopatra, “although ethnic origin is not the central issue” of the production, yes that they have wanted to “reflect the theories” about their possible ancestry and “the multicultural nature of ancient Egypt.” And it is that, the roots of the one known by her enemies as ‘the Nile viper’ has been in question among historians. Mostly, it has been considered that her family origins come from Greece and she was blonde, while other studies suggest that the queen’s mother had “an African skeleton”.
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