Netflix’s forthcoming Queen Cleopatra film has been met with legal action from an Egyptian attorney.
On Sunday, Mahmoud al-Semary filed a legal complaint with the public prosecutor in Egypt after the trailer for the docudrama series was released. al-Semary claims that the streaming giant is guilty of “eliminating the Egyptian heritage” by portraying the monarch as a Black woman.
In his filing, the attorney is seeking legal action against the show’s creators and also demands that Netflix be banned in the country.
“Most of what Netflix platform displays do not conform to Islamic and societal values and principles, especially Egyptian ones,” al-Semary said.
According to the BBC, al-Semary’s filing accuses the company of trying to “promote the Afrocentric thinking…which includes slogans and writings aimed at distorting and erasing the Egyptian identity.”
The role of the queen in the upcoming production is played by Adele James, a British actress of mixed race, while Jada Pinkett Smith serves as the film’s executive producer.
“We don’t often get to see or hear stories about Black queens,”Pinkett-Smith said. “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!”
Nevertheless, her opinion about the queen’s race was not shared by several historians and ancient Egypt experts who argue that she was of Macedonian descent and probably had a light complexion. However, some scholars have divergent views, contending that Cleopatra could have had other ancestral backgrounds, and her skin tone may have differed from the commonly held belief.
As of now, Netflix has not commented on the situation.
